telling dreams from one another
There is a warmth that lights the emerald embers of Nashua's eyes. He can no more be humble in teasing than the tiger-shifter could refrain from spilling blood; in this way, they are much alike. They are who they are and neither seems to hold any apology for it.
For Nashua, it is a playful shrug of his muscled (and bare) chestnut shoulders.
His demeanor doesn't stay that way for long. A renewed interest brightens his gaze as he regards the sabino again. When they had been paired to fight in the Alliance, that had been a thrill for Nashua. He had been young and as is often the case with youth, he had been eager for an adventure. A real one. Not one of his flights from the Isle. Not some wayward adventure that would lead him into trouble. Something substantial. Something that might change the overall course of his life and what better way to do that than the Alliance? What better way to that than by battling one who had fought in it once before?
When the dark mare says that she has been given a 'pat on the back', the striped stallion says nothing. His pale lips purse together in disagreement but Nash won't vocalize it to her. Titanya had been a considerable force on the battlefield; in an argument, he thinks she could be an absolute windstorm.
But when the conversation drifts towards the topic of Yanhua, he softens. When his Alliance opponent reveals that she had been a twin as well, Nash finds himself grinning. It's only at the mention of her mother - one who was emotionally absent - does something still behind his green eyes. It isn't sympathy or pity but understanding. "Our mother was taken captive before our first birthday," Nashua explains to her when Titanya finishes. They had aunts, he adds, that had stepped in to try and fill the void their dam had left behind. There was no replacing a mother but it had (for Nashua, at least) deepened his reliance on his brother. So many figures came and went into their lives. Yanhua, no matter how often or far Nashua roamed, was always there though. Like the sun rose and set each day, the chestnut pegasus counted on his brother to be in Taiga.
He grins again and when his broad wings come back into view, Nashua spreads them. "My brother was my landing beacon," he laughs, remembering the colt games they had created. Like Titanya, he had watched his brother. Those years are still close. Time has not put distance between the brothers yet; a future will come when mortal Nashua is nothing more than a memory to his Immortal family.
Nashua listens carefully to her as she explains what she thinks of the Fae. On how she merits her worth. She speaks vehemently against them and the copper pegasus can only wonder what caused her to feel so deeply. More than his single trip to the Mountain, he thinks. What they had asked of him hadn't been worth for the price of Magic and so Nash had never gone back. She counts on what they both know. That there will be other fights, that they are mortals (infants to Gods, carrying the faint scent of death that would ripen with time) and therefore prone to conflict.
"I don't know," he tells her honestly. "I can't imagine life without my wings." He was a creature born to the sky. There is nowhere that Nashua can imagine that his wings won't carry him. The invisibility, his healing, his glow, they were pieces of him but his wings were as much a part of the pegasus as his beating heart.
"And when there is nowhere left to wander here?" Nashua asks of Titanya. Does Beqanna become a cage for the tigress? "My mother was born in the Beyond," he adds. "I've always wondered about the other worlds out there."
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