Aela knows her eventual end goal. She will become something far greater than the girl she is now. She knows that but the uncertainty lies in how she goes from the girl to the woman that she imagines. As she glances up at Straia, the route she might take becomes clearer and clearer.
Act like you have nothing to fear, and it doesn't take an empath to know that the golden girl hears the compliment behind the painted Magician's words. There hasn't been much that Aela has ever been afraid of (water makes her uneasy but that, too, is something that could be overcome with Straia's help) but something in the filly swells when Straia tells her that and the beaming smile she gives the Dominus is a reflection of their shared secret. Aela's (known) family is small - a mother and a grandmother - and that has all she has ever known. @[Straia] replaces nobody and takes nothing from them but gains ground within the striped adolescent in a place all of her own making; just as Aela is coming to expect of the tobiano mare.
The golden girl smiles softly - an expression that she doesn't wear often - as the weight of her decision settles around her. Diplomat, she thinks. Aela, Diplomat of Pangea. The thought sounds sweeter with each repetition of it and the adolescent looks up to her mentor with youthful enthusiasm. Where will we go? she wonders, assuming that diplomats must travel around the various kingdoms. While she thinks that they have all heard of Pangea's greatness, she is excited to remind them of it again and the stripes around her ankles glow with literal excitement.
They only dim when her smile does.
I, she starts, wondering how to explain that she can't recall a time that she had a voice without Magic. Beyza helped me, once. Aela lifts her blue eyes to reveal another memory from when she had been much smaller and Beyza had seemed much bigger. The white girl and a young Aela stood in the Meadow, laughing and trading words like the palomino-looking filly had been born able to speak. Beyza had been her first word. She helped me find my voice.
Sometimes, she shares with the Dominus, I think I do feel it. But there is always a block somewhere, somehow the words always get lost in the transition from her mind to her tongue. Out of habit, Aela shares images of Kota, Heartfire, and a few other memories that hold the gravity of meaning and family behind them. It's like the words are trapped and they don't know how to get out. That's why the pictures come.
She stomps a front hoof and strikes the sandstone ground in mild irritation. Aela hesitates before asking, if I try to find them, would you stay? She doesn't know what this means yet but to her young mind, everything can be achieved with Magic. Their world is a direct reflection of that: those with the most powerful of Magics (like Straia and Beyza) remain at the top while those without linger at the bottom.
And Aela is not one to linger; she was born to rise.