Aela has always felt that the North was always a bit too… confining.
When she had been small, she didn’t have much of say on the matter. As she got older, she and Kota moved around - even venturing to the Common Lands! - but they always came back to the North, like some invisible tether that kept bringing them back. Aela had never understood the pull. There was nothing… wrong with Taiga but there was nothing endearing about it, either.
(How was she ever going to show her lovely golden sheen if she was perpetually hidden by fog? Or worse, damp? What does a girl do with damp?)
Her only other option had been Nerine but that was where the boy had come from and Aela had no more desire to see him again than she had to be perpetually soaked by Taigan mist. So imagine if you can (and it really isn’t hard), her delight when they came cloaked in Magic and wonders. As the wildfire blazed through the Forest and drove most of the residents towards the Nerinian border, Aela arrived just in time to see the dazzling display of what Magic might achieve in Beqanna.
They had meant to knock down Brennen’s barrier and when they had, they had offered Aela her first true glimpse of freedom. So imagine again if you can (and it still isn't hard), where she went as the rain came down and the debris in Nerine settled. She tried to follow the woman who commanded with a raven’s wing. She had tried to follow Beyza, the white mare she encountered from her time in the Common Lands. She had tried but Aela has no traveling Magic of her own and so she was left to the mercy of making the journey on hoof.
It had taken her longer than she wished (thanks to the ram-horned stallion). But as she comes to stop outside the sandstone kingdom, Aela peers into the distance to admire the canyons. An ear flicks back to an unfamiliar sound and she wonders if anybody would notice her arrival, would notice that there was a strange (but lovely) girl at their border.
The mare with the wings that commanded the sky to rain immediately comes to her mind and Aela decides they will. She would know.
AELA