[private] and its harder than you think

[Nashua]

(and it's harder than you think)
telling dreams from one another

Nashua tilts his pale face towards his brother and fights back a grin. He doesn't fight the way his body takes a side-step away from Yanhua, half expecting those horns of his to come swiping at Nash like they had done when they had been young. A glowing wing comes swiping at him instead and then the copper pegasus does grin. The topic they speak of is a heavier one - successions and thrones, kingdoms and territories - and the striped stallion is glad that they can jest about it as they do over who is the more handsome brother.

Life isn't all fun and games, though. They had grown up faster than others because of circumstances beyond their control. They had lost their mother to Pangea at a young age. Their father had been such a fleeting thing that if it weren't for their half-siblings, Nashua might have thought that the cursed shifter had merely been an idea instead of a flesh-and-blood horse.

He does become uncharacteristically serious, stopping their patrol to peer at his brother.

"If the boulder becomes too heavy," he murmurs, "tell me." And then remembering that this isn't a command or something that to even tell @[Yanhua], he is merely saying. "Please." Nash doesn't speak the next words but hopes that his green eyes convey the message clear enough. That whatever Yanhua's weight might be, Nashua would gladly carry it with him. That for Nash, there was nothing he wouldn't do for the horse beside him. That his weight would gladly be Nashua's weight.

The moment lasts only a moment before it is broken by a lopsided smile.

"That all depends on if you can keep up, dear brother."

Nash unfurls his brown wings, spreading them out if he really might take to the sky. It's tempting and if the stars had been up there calling him, if there weren't monsters and a million responsibilities to keep him grounded, he would gladly answer it and dragged his twin up there if he wished or not. Soon, he thinks. Soon the sun will return and I will show Yanhua a million ways to soar. The smile broadens to a grin despite the winged stallion drawing his wings back to copper sides.

There's a moment where he thinks about feigning indifference; him give their mother a heart attack? Many memories come flooding back to Nash, specifically the ones that involved using the stallion beside him as a landing beacon.

Groaning good-naturedly, he says, "If Ellie isn't testing Lumi, then it's me or Noel." Adolescent daughters, one of life's many joys (and they are; but they are also one of life's many frustrations). "Mine traipsed over the border to Tephra," he grumbles, remembering how angry he had been. It's the only exploring (that he is aware of) that his daughters have done outside the Taiga. "I promised Elegance we'd take a trip as soon as the sun returns," Nash explains confidently. Like he has little doubt that the sun won't return. "Maybe Islandres," he adds quietly, speaking of the nearest Tephran territory. An ear flicks towards Yanhua as he says that his daughters not only went further than their neighbors but to the East.

Monsters. Pangea.

Could it get much worse?

It does spark an idea in the pegasus' mind.

"You and I could always take a trip," he murmurs in return, tilting his head back to his brother. Nashua returns to his earlier thoughts. The sun had to return at some point. (It had to; this is not living. This is barely surviving and Nash clings to the belief that this has to get better. The dark can only last so long.) If Yan's girls were old enough to go exploring, his son could possibly maintain his post and patrols for a day or two.

The sun had to return and with it, normalcy. It was comforting to speak of a future filled with light.

"Give you a flight lesson and try to hammer out some kind of peace with the East?" he elaborates. "Or if you'd rather stay nearby, Leilan's been meaning to send me to Tephra."

NASHUA

apologies for the novel, but yours are always worth the wait <3