YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
With others, Aela expects submission.
There are two categories into which she places all the horses she encounters: they are useful or they are not. For those deemed 'useful', the palomino tucks what those purposes might be until she needs them. Those that have no use aren't given a second thought or glance. Aela moves away from them like summer fades to fall, the way that the brightly-colored leaves eventually lose their color and become nothing more than dirt.
But with Reave, she has come to expect the mischievous glint in his blue eyes. A match to the impish one that burns in her own.
"I did," she lilts back in a sing-song voice to her brother. The awry smile on her lips speaks of her approval. Nerine had belonged to their mutual ancestor once and Aela thinks it's fitting that the moorlands have found their way back to the bloodline. With one brother in charge of Taiga and the other commanding all of the North, Aela thinks this triumvirate of siblings is something she can use to her advantage. It's just one more boon for the Pampas, she thinks.
Ironic, given that this realm is one that still manages to get beneath her golden skin.
The victorious grin that Reave gives her - the first male leader of Nerine - is a salve those irritating thoughts. Perhaps the North was capable of redemption. Her slight smile curves a little more at the thought and the striped mare nearly laughs at what the Nerinian implies next. "Me?" she demures to Reave and lowers her blue eyes, "what trouble could I possibly get up to?" They rise and if the Seer were to skim across her memories - to glance across her Sight - perhaps he might see the meddling she had started in Loess, the opportunity she presented in the Pampas.
Whatever else she has done is kept concealed beneath that same wry smile.
His next question catches her off guard. While Aela was aware that Heartfire could see many things, the future was not something she was aware that their grandmother could foretell. Was Reave's power greater than that? She glances to the chestnut tobiano, holding his stare long enough to search for any sign of bluffing or just brazen behavior. But the young stallion holds nothing; there is nothing that Aela can sense in his emotions or demeanor to signify that he is lying (and why would he do so to her?)
"Is there more than one?" Aela finally asks, because the path forward has never seemed straight. Because something in her - while burning to know - wanted to know that if the future that @Reave saw wasn't what she wanted, Aela wanted to know she still had the power to change it.
