YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
She had fought her way through the Eclipse.
Aela won't consider herself some battle-hardened warrior or Amazonian of old Beqanna. But the monsters had come and it had given the Seneschal a chance to sharpen her skills further, to learn exactly how deep her abilities went. When the shadow creatures bared too many teeth or too sharp claws - the slender mare who had neither - learned that she was capable of something more insidious.
They could shift and twist their tortured souls into different things but the palomino had always been a quick study (it was one of the things her grandmother Heartfire had praised her for). It didn't take Aela long to learn that each time they approached, they rose like a tide with emotions churning with them. She had learned to use the very things that seemed to draw them in as a shield; the palomino shoved feelings such as fear, despair, and anguish at them.
Most of the beasts usually fled after they realized that Aela wouldn't relent in her emotional assault.
And for the ones that remained, Aela had come to enjoy dissecting them emotion by emotion. Tearing them apart until they were nothing but hazy whispers haunting the dark, bare echoes of the souls that they had been.
It's a skill that hasn't left her yet. Each evening, Aela (out of instinct and habit) feels the world around her. She is rarely caught by surprise and even though the Pampas has an idyllic setting, the striped mare refuses to let her guard down. On a night that the moon is full and sings with brightness, the palomino has drifted towards the northern edge of the territory. On one side of the horizon, Sylva glows in a blaze of colors that it never sheds, regardless of the season. Taiga looms in the distance - hovering too close for her liking - and so the young mare looks towards Loess instead.
The Seneschal wonders briefly if the recent trip with the Pampas Prince to meet the Southern Queen has sprouted any discontent. Her pale lips quirk in the shape of a smile, distracted by the thought. Until a glowing trail distracts her from them and the golden woman moves in the direction of the illuminated trail. One of Obscene's fae creatures?
No, she realizes. A girl, a child.
"You're out late," she softly calls to the youth and then calls upon her light to softly shine in the presence of the other. Aela smiles like a beacon but she draws those emotions close, keeps them ready in case this child turns out to be something more.
Because who better to know that things aren't always as they appear than Aela?
@[Kamaria]