[private] i do not want to move mountains

[Aela]

Aela is rarely in Taiga; it is fortunate that she catches sight of an unfamiliar glow illuminating through the dense fog. It is hazy, as most things are in this immortal forest, another one of the Redwoods' many secrets. But this one makes noise, where many of Taiga’s ghosts do not. She can hear the sound of crunching snow - a brittle layer of melted and then refrozen again during late winter - long before the former Seneschal spies the luminous stranger.

She was no sentry. It was not her responsibility to prowl along the Northern borders to keep others out. But these were the early days of Obscene’s reign and there was still so much left to settle. As harshly as Aela criticizes the Fae stallion, even she acknowledges that he cannot be everywhere. So she pushes through the swirling mist, lighting her own gilded stripes. There will be no missing her when she steps forward, glancing sharply at the pearlescent woman.

This was the mare from the Field. They had spoken briefly, before Aela had gone her own way.

There had been a reason why she hadn’t given her name. And she smiles now, because her reasoning has paid off. "I was hoping we might speak again,” the palomino reveals. She takes another step forward, suddenly not minding the cold and the damp for the first time since she had arrived in the North. Aela listens as the pale girl explains her visit to the Taiga, and there is something that sharpens her blue-eyed gaze when she states that she feels as if she should know who the Empath was.

Lillibet should, and Aela uses it to her advantage that she does not, tilting her head prettily to one side. 

"You’re from Pangea,” she states plainly with an indifferent flick of her flaxen tail. The slender entity draws closer to the other striped woman. Aela hadn’t needed any of her gifts to sense that. The dry, arid scent of her first true home was forever imprinted on her from Aela’s earliest memories and it had clung to Lillibet obviously enough. The confirmation of her name clicks the last piece of the political puzzle in place.

"And I didn’t want to scare away your companion the other morning. But I hear you are the new leader. The Diadem, isn't it?” That smile returns, coy and almost wolfish, revealing that she was never caught unaware.

Something that she would have Pangea's new leader learn before sharing her own name.

@Lillibet