[private] could not hold me back

[Nashua]

Mazikeen is not the first shapeshifter to grace the Forest of Giants.

Nashua assumes that there have been many over the years, but the prevalence at keeping other shifters out stems from the memory of only one. He doesn't think about that day often; he tries not to. Summer had come to Taiga, and the forest was warm. After a harsh and bitter winter, with the clouds and the Sequoia canopy covering so much, the summer sun had been bright and inviting. Wolfbane had stepped from seemingly nowhere, an omen of suffering to everyone except it seemed Nashua.

He does his best to not think about his father, but given that the Curse has re-emerged in his brother Gale, it means that his father is often in his thoughts these days.

It brings back other memories as well. Growing up in Taiga (and perhaps it hadn't been as obvious for Yanhua, with their mother's coloring and her blue eyes), it hadn't been easy for the son of the man who had helped usurp one ruler and then tried bind this forest to Loess. (History was ironic in the way that would attempt to repeat itself; as much as Nashua considers the memories of his deceased sire, he thinks of what Cheri is proposing by uniting the North and South. It doesn't sound much different than what the former Comtesse and her Commandant had attempted, only this time it was an entire kingdom instead of a single territory.) The Northerners had a long memory, and though Cheri was the daughter of one of their Guardians, he wondered if some would recall the last attempt to colonize them.

If they still remembered the Cursed shifter that roamed these woods.

The guttural cry stirs the Freyr from his thoughts. Noel would be nearby, and though most of their children had fledged, the striped pegasus had remained nearby since the theft of their youngest, Bolder. Cloaking himself immediately, the invisible stallion moved towards the source of the sound. He's driven on by other thoughts: perhaps this might be a clue what happened to Yanhua.

When he comes close enough - slipping beneath the Taiga brush while his hooves crunch lightly beneath him - Nashua sees the spiraling horns and the burning eyes of a gryffen. He stops, allowing the shield of invisibility to fall away from him. First, he is a floating head until it recedes to reveal the rest of the copper stallion and all his seething rage.

"You are no more welcome here than Gale is."

@Mazikeen