[open] a sky full of song

[Nashua]

It's easy to lose himself in the past few years because they have been happy ones. (He hadn't intended for things to go quite so far with Noel but the white pegasus had been a welcome distraction when his loss in the Alliance was still stinging.) But the birth of his daughters has ushered in a stage of Nashua's life that has been full - with this family that he has helped create, with the bonds that he has formed within Taiga and the Isle. It almost makes it seem like his dream of having his responsibilities and family become one-and-the-same possible.

That what his Aunt Elena once told him - that responsibilities and families could be heavy things to carry - could intertwine. That the weight of the other might be balanced and shared between the two.

Those are the dreams for the striped pegasus. That is what he hopes for the North, even if the kindling for those ideas never reaches past the fires of his ever-adventuring heart. As he watches Ellie move along the beach - marvel at one thing on the shore and another in the jungle - and away from him, he knows that isn't fair to hope she will stay in the North. She is far too much like him, he knows and the sky has been calling her name before the world went dark. This trip might placate her for a time but he knows eventually that it won't suffice; she'll want to see the world and Nash can't fault her for that.

Part of him still wants to see the world, too.

The words fall from his mouth, a reaction that startles him from his distracted thoughts. "What?" He turns his blazed face to @[Gale], puzzled by the news. She had gone, he says and Gale seems unperturbed by the thought. (It's different for Nash who can't imagine the Taiga without Yan; can't imagine not knowing where his twin was but as he had been taught, the path that he walks will not be the same for another.)

Gale's explanation smooths it over for Nash. Eyas is gone so Gale won't stay. That kind of order makes sense to the striped chestnut, whose forelegs catch and glisten on the tropical sunlight. If he casts a glance long enough, the same is true for Elegance and alerts her father to how far she has gone down along the black beach. His expression is pleased when he mentions Hyaline, just across the river from Taiga. "We'll be neighbors," he teases with a broad and beaming smile again. Turning his bright green eyes from his firstborn and towards his elder sibling, he asks curiously (and not forgetting Gale's earlier shift) "why Hyaline?"

NASHUA