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  • Beqanna

    COTY

    Assailant -- Year 226

    QOTY

    "But the dream, the echo, slips from him as quickly as he had found it and as consciousness comes to him (a slap and not the gentle waves of oceanic tides), it dissolves entirely. His muscles relax as the cold claims him again, as the numbness sets in, and when his grey eyes open, there’s nothing but the faint after burn of a dream often trod and never remembered." --Brigade, written by Laura


    [private]  you know i never forgot
    #1

    The flight to Taiga takes him hours (though it feels like an eternity).

    Had the weather been warmer or had Nashua waited for daylight, he could have made the journey in half his usual time. But the words that Ciri had said on the Isle keep him company, driving the striped stallion further into the sky and pressing him into a faster pace. Gale, she had told him - speaking the name of one of his elder brothers. The one that Nash had often flown to see in Islandres, who had been genuinely happy for when he moved Hyaline and sought to ease his worries when his brindled sibling revealed that he and Mazikeen were expecting twins the following spring.

    Told to him by a Magician, Nashua thought to himself, replaying their last conversation for the thousandth time. Had he been Cursed then? What about at the Midsummer Fair when he and Gale and Tiercel had laughed together?

    Had those moments been a taunt, a glimpse of what life might have looked like if they weren't their father's sons?

    There are a thousand other thoughts and memories swirling around his frantic mind. None of them take precedent over this one: his family. The moment that the Thane had said Something wore his body, a familiar chill had gone up the chestnut's spine and Nashua knew that he had to return to Taiga. He kept thinking of Noel and their children. He had to reach them. Even if he was wrong (and he hoped to the Winds he was) and Taiga was left alone, he just needed to see them.

    (And for the first time in his life, Nashua is divided. The only one who might understand this anguish best is Yanhua; the one who has been beside him through everything. And yet if he can't immediately find his twin, what happens? The Northern King keeps coming back to the tendril is that he needs to find his mate and children first and once assured they were alright, he would track his brother down. They would -)

    Nashua has no clue.

    He only knows that he needs to see his family safe.

    "Noel!" he roars when he finally lands in the meadow not far from where the white woman and their children often rest. The first hours of daylight creep along the Taigan forest and the dark, sweat-covered stallion calls out for his winged mate again.

    @Noel

    NASHUA
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
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    #2

    The moment they had disappeared, fear had seized her throat. She had taken to the skies, though she had known even then it would be useless. They had not stayed in Taiga. Only a fool would have, and whatever else she might believe of the pair that had stolen her son, she knows they had not been fools.

    The only thing that had kept her from flying farther, from trying to find them immediately, had been the bone-deep need to protect her other children. (As though she could if they decided to return for the rest of them. It’s silly to believe she could do anything against magic, but she would try. She would always try.)

    When she had returned, she had gathered her other children. Had led them, despite their disgruntled protests, to the deeper, darker parts of the woods. Most would find these reaches eerily dangerous, but she knows they would be safe here. And she knows regret, because she should have done it sooner. Should have been prepared, somehow (even if it had been impossible to know something like this would happen).

    Leaving her children now is harder than it ever has been before, but a wild keening claws at her breast. Lumi and Ellie and Bravely and Saffron are safe here. Bolder, though… her imagination conjures the worst sort of images, and she knows she will not be able to rest until she finds him and brings him home.

    As she draws near the sheltered glen they normally call home, Noel looks north, heart splintering inside her chest. She should go to Nash first. She should, but he is far to the North, hours in the opposite direction. Her eyes prick with tears, but she locks the sobs deep inside her chest, refusing to allow them to surface lest she begin second guessing her choices.

    When she hears her name shatter the darkness of early morning however, everything she had been shoving down as deeply as she could suddenly surges forward, battering the dam she had built. She would recognize his voice anywhere, even when he bellows in a way he never has before. She doesn’t hesitate (doesn’t even question her sudden desire to throw herself into his steady embrace).

    There is a wildness in her dark eyes, written across her pale features as she all but crashes into him. But Noel can’t even allow herself the comfort of his familiar warmth. Everything she’d been suppressing for hours comes tumbling from her lips. “Nash, they took him.” Her voice is unsteady, desperate even in her own ears. They took Bolder. Abruptly she closes her eyes, forcing herself to take several deep, steadying breaths. Forcing herself to shove everything back down before hysteria could claim her. When she speaks again, her voice is calmer, though it still trembles. “Gale and Mazikeen. Bolder said he knew them.” When she opens her eyes to look at him again, there is a desperate sort of pleading in her gaze. An ache in her voice. “Why would they do that if they know him?”

    - noel



    @Nashua
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    #3

    She comes tumbling towards him like an avenging angel out of the darkness. For one (blissful) moment, everything is alright. She is alright as his blazed nose reaches for the first piece of skin it can find, moves over her for any sign of harm. He's subconsciously flared his speckled wings, partly from sheer fatigue and the inability to hold them against his muscled sides any longer. The other part of him only wants her near, wants the assurance that she and their children are fine.

    But Noel - who is perhaps the most grounded pegasus that Nash has ever known - speaks with a shaky voice and storms are raging in her dark eyes. They took him, she starts to say and his mind starts to race. It jumps to Yanhua, remembering the way that the Curse had once crept into this forest. ('Don't worry about Yan,' the thing that claimed to be his father had said. 'He'll be plenty good at other stuff.') If the Curse was back, was it back to see what had become of that son?

    Nashua didn't think he was ever capable of filling with such a violent rage - the sheer need to hurt something.

    Not until his mate tells him that it was not his twin - not Taiga's Guardian - that was taken. "Bolder?" he repeats back to the winged mare before him and his green eyes widen briefly before they fill with sorrow. His lightning strike fury momentarily forgotten as Noel looks to him with a begging question that burns through him and nearly reduces to him to ash.

    Why would they do that if they know him?

    He's seen that pleading look once before; it had been the same look that Lilliana wore before Wolfbane had ripped her heart world apart when he had come to Taiga. A realization that what was happening was a deeper kind of cruelty, a kind that was much more vicious than any claw or fang. 

    "Because It loves misery," Nashua suddenly seethes, remembering those days and blazing with the anger that it had taken their son. With a fit of anger simmering inside that he hadn't been here to keep his family safe. Nashua clenches his jaw and fights off the helpless rage that he feels. He doesn't understand Mazikeen's participation in stealing Bolder, but for the time being, he decides to focus on Gale. Perhaps he gave her no other choice.

    Something in his unforgiving expression wavers as he looks down at Noel.
    They had never spoken of the Curse. Nash had never spoken to anyone about it, outside a single conversation with Lilliana and a few questions to Yanhua. Both of them had always gone dark at the mention of Wolfbane and as the years progressed, Nashua had resented the shadow that the shifter's shadow cast from the grave. He joined his mother and brother of not speaking his name and for those few short years, he had believed the Curse to be gone. That it had been banished.

    He'd been wrong.

    Wrong to not tell Noel about his history and wrong to assume that something so evil would succumb to something as simple as Death.

    "It's an affliction that my family has suffered for generations," Nashua finally says, the words strangling free from his anger. "From my father's side." The pegasus tersely adds, the most that he has ever said about his sire to her. (Noel knew about his father but all Nash had ever mentioned was as much as she revealed; that she was the daughter of Ashhal and Ryatah as he was the son of Wolfbane and Lilliana).  He had learned through his mother (who learned it from Wishbone) that it had started in Tephra, with a stallion called Longclaw.

    It destroyed and ruined everything it came across.

    "I want you to take the children and go to Ischia," he says when Nash has finished telling her what he knows. After he finishes telling her of the last time it came to Taiga and how his mother had suffered for it. How it went after the Queen of Nerine. If Gale knew about Bolder, what about Bravely or Saffron? Elegance or Luminesce?

    Even Noel might not be safe.

    "Get out of Taiga and I'll bring Bolder to you there."

    @Noel

    NASHUA
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
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    #4

    Because it loves misery, he says, and a cold chill shudders down Noel’s spine. He had been confused at first, her words stumbling and unclear. But when their son’s name left her lips, a stillness had come over him before the rage settled. In that moment, Noel finds a small measure of comfort. Comfort, because she knows he would do everything in his power to see their son brought back.

    She doesn’t say anything at first, his words halting on his tongue as he tries to find a way to explain years worthy of history in only a few short breaths. She doesn’t say anything, but she does press forward, sorrow in her dark gaze as she presses her lips to his skin. Noel has never pushed for his secrets. She had always known he would tell them when he was ready. But now - now he is not ready, and still he spills them for her.

    The pale pegasus has no ready words of comfort for him. What does one say to such a revelation? So she offers him the only thing she can, the comfort of her touch, her acceptance. Whatever this affliction is, he may fear it, but Noel does not. Death has never frightened her.

    But when he tells her to take their children and go, Noel immediately withdraws, head already shaking her refusal. Her eyes lift to find his, near black clashing with vibrant green, determined stubbornness written in every line of her body. “The children are safe,” she says before he can argue further. “I brought them to the deepest shadows of the Taiga. They will be protected there.”

    She doubts even Gale, whatever he is, would find anything in those trees if they did not wish to be found. The silent, scentless creatures that dwell there are not something any sane horse would threaten. She almost shudders at the thought, though she knows they would never harm the residents of these woods.

    She presses on, her voice now adamant, brooking no refusal. “I will go with you.” She pauses, her gaze drifting over Nashua’s weary form, a faint note of concern threading her implacable features. “I refuse to run and cower.” She presses her lips to his cheek then, every bit of the love she hasn’t been able to speak out loud in that touch. “I won’t leave you to shoulder this burden alone.”

    - noel



    @Nashua
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    #5

    Nashua has always been afraid of his own darkness.

    He's the son of a monster and every time he felt the shadows in his soul stirring, he often wondered if that was the tainted blood in his veins. The old saying went that the sins of the father were visited on the son and though he considers Leilan that, Nashua feared that the darkness in him was some kind of penance for the crimes that Wolfbane committed.

    It's what had Nash been taught. All magic has a price. There had been so many atrocities committed in these woods and yet, what price had been paid for them?

    Noel presses herself into him and the winged stallion tightens his jaw but he lowers his blazed head into her embrace. This isn't even the whole story - he can't even show it to her like some of his kin could. He only has these broken words and the story he tells her still feels too fragmented; Nashua thinks there are too many things slipping between the cracks but he doesn't know how to explain as something as terrible as the Curse.

    The thing that has stolen their son, that has buried Gale somewhere (there is no time for Nash to mourn the loss of his brother).

    Their other children are with the shadow-dwellers. He knows that she is right. Nobody will find them. The safest place for them to right now is wrapped in the embrace of those distant cousins. There is no Magic that he knows that could pierce the veil of darkness that they wrapped themselves in.

    She is just adamant to go with him as he is determined that she stay. His face breaks and the fire burning in his green eyes momentarily fades as he watches Noel shake her head. She hadn't understood. He wants so badly for her to understand how this evil wrecks everything it comes into contact with and Nashua would sacrifice his soul to keep her away from it. He knows that she won't hide (and he loves her for that) but it doesn't mean that Nash isn't afraid for her. The striped pegasus steps forward to her and lowers his head, pressing it against her once he's accepted that there will be no gainsaying her.

    "It nearly ruined my family," he whispers, thinking of Lilliana and Yanhua. Thinking of scarred Neverwhere and her angry son, Wherewolf. Thinking of the sadness that he had seen reflected at him so many times from behind the eyes of his half-siblings. He closes his eyes. "I can't let it ruin this one."

    Taking a deep breath, he steps away from his pale mate and opens his speckled wings. Nashua is already looking to the sky, towards Hyaline. The need to protect his family fuels him but before they leave, he glances back and wants Noel to know: "I love you."

    And then takes off towards the kingdom that was once rumored to be a sanctuary, the one that had now become the stuff of Nashua's nightmares.

    @Noel

    NASHUA
    [Image: jCdBK6.png]
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