[private] could not hold me back

[Nashua]

He doesn't have much time. Nashua knows that. His invisibility will only buy him a few moments, or perhaps less. Maybe Mazikeen had a higher power than he anticipated, maybe she had heightened senses that could detect exactly where his furious heart was beating. Maybe her hearing had been altered so that she heard each break of the silver-green needles beneath his hooves, no matter quiet tried to be or how well he knew this ground.

They go on about the subject of his sister, and if Aela had aligned herself with Mazikeen or Gale, the Redwoods were in more trouble than he thought. It was no secret that she hated this place, but if she had somehow gotten their half-brother and his mate to share in it, Taiga was in more danger than any horse realized.

(And he thinks of his children, of Noel. Of Illuminae. Of Reynard and Saturnelle. Of the Shadow Clan, and all the others that call this forest home.)

Nash's time runs out as Mazikeen shifts into a dragon, and her flames scorch the edge of one of his beautiful wings. He flares into existence with sparks and an explosion of light. The feathers catch fire and the smell of burning skin fills the air as his healing tries to hastily knit the burn away. The Freyr swears - a muffled sound that is drowned out by the sound of the draconic snarl - and Nashua continues to attempt to make Mazikeen understand.

Perhaps there was still a chance to reach her.

"No?" he snarls back at her, and thinks of Illuminae, of the way that he had told her that both his brother and father had gone mad with their shifting. Perhaps it was the Curse, but it makes Nashua if it draws out the dark shadows in others as well. "What about the blood, Mazikeen?" Nashua asks her, wishing he had the familial ability to press memories into her mind like Yanhua or their mother. It plays in his troubled mind so often: Bolder as a wolf with blood dripping from his mouth.

An accident, she had told him in Hyaline.

Perhaps it had started this way with her, an accident or some mishap, something that Gale had managed to twist and warp within her until she no longer understood what direction she was heading in. It wouldn't be the first time that the Curse had done it, and the striped pegasus keeps trying to reach some sense in her as he begins to back away from her, thinking that he might still be able to lead them both out of Taiga.

Nash holds the badly burnt wing against his broad side, flaring the other wide when he stops and addresses her truthfully through gritted teeth: "Not here."

@Mazikeen