[private] the fatal flaw that makes you magnificently cursed

[Nashua]

Nashua rises because it has never been in him to stay still. He'd see the inviting blue of the sky, feel the gentle stirrings of a breeze, the drift of the clouds as they floated by and away he would go - it has never occurred to him to stay in one place for long. His thoughts would fly to whatever present he was chasing and those speckled wings would flare. Exploration flows in his veins, trickled down through the generations of horses who have lived in the highest peaks to the deepest valleys.

He groans and pushes himself past the pain.
Nashua has never been idle and he certainly won't start now, not while there is a demon in his childhood home.

(The pegasus is still haunted by it in his mind. Even if it has fled or dissolved into shadow, he still hears it: 'Name me.' 'Mother-killer.' 'Ill-omen.' Chanting over and over again, fueling his urgent desire to stand. To get up and get away from this spot. Back to Taiga where he can at least put the accusations into action, where he can do something about them.)

He presents his injured wing like an offering. Nash can't bring himself to look at her - not while his mind is clouded with such dark thoughts.

The striped pegasus wonders briefly if she knows how much of a vulnerability this is for him; Nash has always been a confident stallion and about many things. His gift of flight has always been the thing he has been most proud of. It was his sister, Celina, who gave Nashua his first words of praise for his ability and it is her voice that he sometimes hears when he finds the skies. For one bitter second, he wonders that if he can't fly, what can he do? What use will be to the North, to his family? For one resentful moment, he measures his worth by wings and wonders what his life would be without them?

(The black-and-gold woman can't know that by healing his wing, she is saving a part of the striped horse.  She is saving him from discovering the darkest parts of himself that he might have found if he had been stuck on the ground.)

The chimera comes closer, nearer to his ruined wing and his aching chest. Nashua stiffens - though not because of her. Only at the memory of what he had erupted from him. His mind is still flashing red and hearing the splitting of bones and he doesn't want to stain her with that. He is fragmented and broken and yet here she is, whole. Nashua is still trying to piece himself back together and he worries that while he is reaching for them, he will grab something else by mistake. But those green eyes watch her come closer and tell him - reassure him - that the only thing she hears is his pounding heart. It slams so loud that he almost doesn't hear her murmur the words.

"Taiga," he says. A half-truth. "I'm from the Taiga." There a thousand memories there, with at least a hundred of them wishing himself away from the suffocating forest. Now, all he wants is to get back. Back to Noel and their girls. The last strands of her magic are weaving his broken bones back together and Nash thinks that enough of himself is back together that they might get there.

She's right, he thinks. They'll be safer together. He'll never make it to the Taiga on his own. And she's right again, that it will be a long journey when she is depleted of her gift and Nash is exhausted beyond healing. Even though he almost died, his humor hasn't dimmed. The ghost of it emerges now.

An edge of a smile curls against his pale lips. "Should I call out 'back'?" he teases before grimacing when a flash of pain strikes him. Forcing a breath, he says: "I'm Nashua."

@[illuminae]