[private] remember when i broke you down to tears

[Nashua]

Leilan's portals are much like the Magician. They are sporadic and unpredictable (the last time Nashua used one, he had arrived in Silver Cove). But his Mentor has vanished again and Nashua doesn't mind making the journey to the mainland the traditional way. Winter has started to spread out from the Isle in icy tendrils all across Beqanna (the pegasus thought he had seen a layer of gleaming ice as he flown over the Pampas, of frost gleaming on the canyons in the morning sun the day that he left Loess after Cheri's Accord).

Returning to the Isle would not be a warm welcome.

But the last stop before returning to his kingdom is the most important.

Noel hadn't been in Taiga when he landed, which wasn't unusual. She had been raised in Nerine, and when the striped stallion hadn't found his mate in the Redwoods in the past, he learned that she could be found among the granite and the moorlands. Perhaps she preferred the open sky, but it was always easiest to find her along the coast, near the many caves that had helped the former kingdom seat gain its secretive and solitary reputation.

There is a sense of relief when he finds her (there always is), a small piece of pale heaven tucked against the drab gray of their grounded world.

Despite how glad he is to see her, the bright green of his gaze falters when it finds the depthless black of her own. He's been away to the South - for the Coronation of his niece and to talk about the current political state of Beqanna - but he hasn't come any closer to bringing their son home or seeking retribution on Gale or Mazikeen (a death wish, he has to remind himself). It's just another reminder that when he might finally get the chance to be a good king, the price paid for it falls with his family.

"Have you been to Hyaline?" he asks hesitantly, wondering if she had news of Bolder, wanting to reach for her and failing at that as well.

@Noel

NASHUA