His eyes brighten - to a glorious, furious red - while her blue ones darken with interest. She had thought him merely a boy; something to scare away with her memories, something to dismiss with a shrug of her slender shoulders. Aela makes a point to slide away from the pointed stare he gives her, and then the tree, not dismissing the way that his eyes blaze with rage.
It's thrilling and she can't help herself.
Aela has always leaned towards the unpredictable and it props up now in a smile she gives Skander as he incinerates the tree behind her. She glances behind her - admiring his handiwork - before arching a brow as she turns her blazed head towards him. The colt snarls at her and she looks down to his mouth, briefly disappointed that he doesn't grow sharp teeth (or even better, rows upon rows of them).
All she has to do is recall all the 'monsters' (and that boy in Nerine is certainly a monstrosity) she has ever seen and the galaxy-marked boy transforms himself. The air around them is electric; shocked with the shapes that the shifter can take, charged with the memories that Aela could provide. Alone, they are separate entities. Both destined for great things, she knows (and decides then for Skandar). But together?
Together has more potential than anything either of them could devise on their own.
The colt attains those dark wings that she had been imagining and as he swings himself around, the golden-striped girl forcefully leaves an echo of herself behind, just in case that swipe had been intentioned for more than just turning himself around (though Aela thinks there might a little more brain than brawn in this one, at least compared to others; she thinks he might even understand what she sees).
He snaps at her, reaching for the bridge of her nose and Aela gracefully draws back her head. The constellation child claims that is he is not hers to command and the striped filly eyes him carefully. He gets no special treatment in her reaction towards him. Those who cross wills with Aela will come to learn this lesson and submit to it: they are all hers to command.
She'll let him choose which he wants to learn first. She remembers the iron taste of rage and the feathers that she had torn from Wherewolf when they brawled over the moorlands. She recalls the icy chill of fear creeping along her spine as she unthawed Kensley's frozen heart. She projects the might of Pangea as Magicians tear apart the rocky earth in Nerine and Straia had rechristened the North with her rain.
@[Skandar] ripples with shadows - and Aela wonders if he is trying to imagine through the murk of her mind - so she flashes more images at him: the proud cliffs of Nerine, the impossibly tall trees of Taiga, the howling caverns of Panga. The flutter of butterfly wings and the frantic beats of deer fleeing the open. She gives him so many memories - creatures mythical and magical, places he has never been, faces he won't know, moments that aren't his. Aela forces them out quickly, never relenting until even her mind (and slim sides) starts to ache with all the infinities that she has pushed out between them.
The blonde girl is smiling smugly when she is done.
It would be a lesson she hoped to repeat only once; Aela lacked nothing.
let me know if i should change anything but i am having so much fun with them