YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Aela does not allow herself to feel loneliness. The memories of that actual emotion are distant and hazy, like her earliest memories of Taiga. She remembers feeling lost once, stumbling through the fog and trying to navigate the murky woods. In some of those memories, Heartfire would come. Sometimes as herself, sometimes using her powers to be a stranger, coming across Aela's path as a child or a crone. It became a game for the young Empath to play with her grandmother, as the Seer taught to never let her eyes decieve her (there was always much, much more than what met the eye).
And it was during those moments that Aela learned to quiet her echoes, to contain her own emotions and those surrounding her so that they could not lead her astray.
But the ache had come unbidden during her last visit to Tephra. Aela had assumed that it must have come from one of the nearby residents (or perhaps even Wherewolf, longing for a nap). She had spent enough time with Obscene to understand what pining felt like; she is too aware of what she is to not feel the way that Pampas Prince wants the future Loessian queen. So when they had come to steal to Tephra to steal Sickle, and she had glanced upon the red-orangle glow emanating from the lava streams coming down the mountain face (reminding her of Skandar), Aela had known the genuine feeling the moment it settled in her gut and where it coiled tight, wrapping itself around a fiery heart that should have only wanted glory at any cost.
She extinguished it; Aela had burnt it away the moment she understood what that feeling was. Just as she needs to burn away the few scars that riddle her body. Goddesses do not have their bodies marked or marred (though this aspiring one keeps a scar at the base of her neck, two pinprick spots where the molten gold of her coat has grown in lighter, the only one she allows that remains hidden beneath the pale luster of her fine mane). Aela wants her praise to come in the shape of perfection, without any blemish to blight it.
Tephra's magical lake has been useful for that, knitting away her scars as if the wounds had never existed.
Tilting her head at the now overo stallion - this not Skandar - her blue eyes glitter approvingly. This is his father, she recalls. The one who had done something to attract the attention of Carnage. He is handsome enough, though skinwalker in his usual shape is far more so, thanks to the ichor in his veins. Her smile curves towards its traditional wry shape, and Aela allows Svedka's illusioned son to lead her towards the nearby pool. (She hates to follow but the golden female reminds herself that other way around would ruin the deception. Why would a Tephran be lead to their lake by an outsider?)
When she starts to step into the water, Aela looks behind her, wondering if he might follow her.
@Skandar
