after the storm blows through

[Nashua]

Nashua walks briskly, trying to ignore the way his left shoulder still aches from an earlier sparring season with his Aunt Brazen. She had a particular trick of turning herself to stone (as if the bone armor wasn’t enough!) and Nash often had to test his reflexes when practicing with her. If he was quick enough, there was a chance his teeth or his hooves might actually find skin. 

The question was always a matter of if.

At a little over a year old, the adolescent pegasus still has much to learn and more questions to ask. His Aunt Brazen will be back and when he’s fully healed himself, he’ll test her again. And again. Nash is determined to keep practicing, preparing himself for the day that comes when he’ll actually be ready for a real fight. (And how many times has his sister Celina told him that there was a thrill to be found in the fight? Nashua might not be a hunter like she was but how often had she told him that he had every chance to be an apt fighter?) 

The pegasus winces as he turns his head to the left, appraising the shoulder that still hurts. There is nothing showing outwardly - the swelling is already going down and if the bruising was visible, the colors would already be seeping away. Giving his head a soft shake, the winged boy looks over his wing to find a titan form behind that is not one of Taiga’s trees. It's a stallion and a massive one - with sharp teeth like his sister and stripes similar to his own.

Lifting his head, Nashua nods a greeting. "They call you @[Skeleton Ghoul], right?”

[Skeleton Ghoul]

if i stare into the abyss, will it stare into me?

The dust has been on his mind. It's been gone for days now, and all signs that it ever even blew through Taiga have been washed away by summer rain. Still, the titan thinks about it. What was it? Where did it come from?

What did it do to him?

As soon as it touched his skin, it set Skeleton Ghoul's entire body on fire. Every nerve ending felt raw, like there was sand flowing through his veins -- even a tough old goat like him couldn't hang onto consciousness for long under that sort of onslaught. But when he woke? He felt like a new horse. Nothing was visibly different, he still has his scars and short bobbed tail, but he feels different. Better. His joints don't pop when he gets up from a nap. That bothersome locking stifle of his doesn't ache anymore.

It's bizarre ... but welcome, he supposes. Whatever the dust had been had done something.

Skel lifts his head, licking his scarred lips as water dribbles messily down his chin and off of his beard. Heaving a huge sigh, he turns away from the river at the Taigan border and walks along beside it. He's been treading this same road often and long enough now that there is a visible path where the ferns don't grow anymore because he steps on them. It's not a job commanded on him by the leaders of the land, no, Skeleton Ghoul just patrols the borders of his own accord, keen on keeping the land he's grown to love safe.

He pauses and lifts his heavy head, smelling the air. Someone is nearby, so he waits, and finally spots the stranger. It's not a stranger though, it's a scent Skel has come across before. The gangly yearling lives in Taiga, as does his mother, or so the giant thinks. Skeleton Ghoul is not the best at being social.

The boy notices him, and surprisingly, knows his name. Dark ears tip forward, interested. "That is my name, yes," he replies, shaking his messy mane so that it falls in fairy-braided tangles on both sides of his neck. "I know your scent, but not your name. Perhaps you will indulge me?"

SKELETON GHOUL

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

Nashua had been almost impervious to the dust. It drifted through Taiga one morning with the fog and it had been his pretty Aunt Elaina who had remarked about it. 'We’d call that a stirring,’ she had said with a knowing smile that Nash couldn’t quite disassemble. Like she knew that the way the wind rippled through Taiga that day was different from any other; that she knew something was unusual about that fog.

The dust, the wind and the fog had blown through the Redwoods without Nashua being any the wiser. Nothing about him had changed. His world remained unmoved. It still centered (grounded) around Yanhua, on learning everything he could from Elio and Celina (when she could be found), listening to his Aunt Elaina and Aunt Brazen like his mother would have wanted.

His duty is to his family, says the blood running in his veins. His duty is to Taiga. (Why does that make his soul feel so much heavier? Why does it feel like it binds him to ground instead of bonding him to the sky?)

He has to lift his head higher to fully appreciate the size of the mammoth stallion. There is strength in his bones, the boy thinks to himself (nothing like Nash who is all fine lines and a proud Spanish neck). There is sturdiness in his stance and he remembers what his mother had once said of the black stallion as she tried to explain the newcomer to the Northern woods to her boys, trying to ease Yanhua’s developing nerves of strangers and satisfy Nashua’s growing curiosity of them: 'Maybe Giants dream bigger than we do.’ The red mare had smiled gently, trying to encourage their humor as well as an empathy for others. ’If that were true, I doubt there would be space for the fog between Taiga’s trees.’

It had been explained who the stallion was - as all the residents had been told to the twins. 'There are no strangers in Taiga,’ she had told them. (There had been one but such was her determination to shield them from that, he never realized it.)

When he settles his weight, the yearling does wince at the sharp pain that emanates from his left shoulder. "Nashua,” the chestnut pegasus offers as he (somewhat gingerly) presses the wing on that side closer to his back. "I live on the other side of the woods with my brother, Yanhua.” He adds because he knows that their scents are similar enough; it wouldn’t be the first time that a horse has mistaken one twin for the other (despite one having stripes and the other having horns, one having green eyes where the other has brilliant Legacy blue).

His eyes are lingering on the gray stripes before they flick up to the sharpness of @[Skeleton Ghoul]'s teeth. They are the ivories of a predator and yet Nashua doesn't smell blood on him (a reprieve?). Curious and with the impertinence of his youth, the copper adolescent asks, "What are you doing out here?" Not hunting, so what then?

[Skeleton Ghoul]

if i stare into the abyss, will it stare into me?

Skeleton Ghoul notices the more exaggerated wince, but he chooses not to comment on it. Whatever the boy had done, or whatever had been done to him, is really none of the stallion's business and he doesn't presume to know Nashua well enough to ask. At least not yet. If the wincing and ginger movements persist, perhaps he will say something.

The boy is lightly boned and fine, as so many are here. An elegant, arching neck, slim(mer) profile, and muscles that suggest speed and agility over power. Those are traits Skeleton Ghoul will never have. He can gallop, absolutely, and he can do it fast -- in a straight line. Otherwise, at speed, the titan has the turning radius of a bus and he doesn't know how to do a three point turn. But chain him to a hundred year old tree stump, and he will pull it out of the dirt.

Tilting his head just a bit, Skel twitches an ear as some imaginary fly bothers it. It's a tick that comes up periodically -- even when there are no flies, the giant's skin will twitch and shudder as though there are. He's not sure why. 

"I am patrolling," he states simply, looking at the path he's worn in his many trips around the border. "There may be no strangers in Taiga, but that does not mean the borders should not be watched. If a stranger comes here with intent to do harm, I want to know about it. That," Skel takes a breath and snorts. "and there is a wolf pack that includes some of Taiga in it's territory. I am working on changing their minds about that."

A big, empty white eye peers at Nashua. "What are you doing out here? On your way to somewhere else?" It isn't really accusatory -- just mildly creepy, as Skel is sometimes prone to being.

SKELETON GHOUL

@[Nashua]

[Nashua]

Nashua likes this trail. It’s well-worn and often traveled, bringing scents from all corners of Beqanna. For each new one that wafts into the forgotten corners of Taiga, the copper adolescent finds his ‘patrols’ spiraling more and more… outward. To the borders of hilly Loess, the burning emblems of Sylva and where the iconic volcano of Tephra smokes. So much of his world has changed since his mother had first brought him and Yanhua to Taiga; is it so hard to believe, then, that the boy has taught himself to look towards the East? 

It’s where the beginning comes from each morning and where it leads him today - where he encounters the massive Skeleton Ghoul, plodding down a path that they both seem to know. 

The dray peers down at him and then past him, watching the hooftrail behind him. Nash flicks an ear back and then his refined head follows, turning around to study the direction that the pegasus assumes @[Skeleton Ghoul] means to travel after their conversation is over. Where will he go? What will Nashua do after the two part ways? 

"Do you know anything about the monster?” the winged boy asks, perking up at the mention of strangers. It sounds almost innocent, coming from one as young as Nash who only has a handful of seasons to his name. The rumors blaze like a wildfire through the North, about the thing that attacked the Nerinian queen - a face from his earliest days - and how it might have played a part in her disappearance. Nerine had fallen quiet, leaving the crags and moors lonely for it’s missing monarch. 

Giving his head a sharp shake, Nashua turns it back around and resumes looking up to the black stallion. It’s easier to see him without that copper forelock of his covering his green eyes. A milky, unseeing void stares down at him and Nash tilts his head, getting a better (bolder) look at it. "The trees were too close together this morning,” he mutters, letting his wings tenderly settle against his lean sides with the confession. "It’s easier to think out here,” Nash says, nodding towards the border where the Redwoods have started to space out and mingle with other types of timber from the different kingdoms and common lands. 

Out here, Nash lets himself dream a little bigger than he might underneath Taiga’s evergreen canopy. He lets himself forget for a little bit, lets himself wonder more than he worries.

nashua

and the days you defend will turn to gold

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