YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Such a curiosity, this child.
Aela's muted blue gaze doesn't know where to look as the filly approaches. Her stars shimmer against her perlino silhouette and their light glints off the azure stones that freckle her young face. The youth is bold; there is no hesitance in her step as she moves forward to greet the Seneschal who lifts her blazed head in quiet approval. She holds little regard for anyone who might cower in the dark and the palomino wouldn't waste her time with those who conjured imaginary fears in the shadows.
Not when there were things much more fearsome in reality.
The girl's frustration clings to her - so thick that it might as well be Taigan fog - and the striped Seneschal tilts her head curiously towards her new companion. Aela was well acquainted with it; it had accompanied all through her younger years in the Northern Forest when she had longed to break free. But for reasons she hadn't understood, they (she and her milk-mother, Kota) had been forced to stay.
Her gift is an intrusive one and while Aela has worked tirelessly to be as deft as she can with her skills, the Pampas' mare refrains for the moment. She can imagine that paired with the adolescent's age, it most likely has something to do with the growing need for independence. And she certainly doesn't need any magic to smell acrid, dusty Loess on the girl's hide.
There is a slight furrow on her lovely brow but the golden woman hides it beneath her flaxen forelock. But the girl speaks - just as forward with her voice as she had been with her stride - and Aela holds off on the idea of allowing the filly to become target practice for Skandar. She's always appreciated spirit, especially when a horse has a reason to be, as this jewel-touched starchild does.
"I prefer the dark," Aela confides softly to the child. Her glowing stripes begin to dim; there was no need for her light when the younger traveler has starlight glittering around her heels. "Our eyes so often lie to us," she says and looks down to the unusual fox weaving between the perlino's legs. If the girl doesn't understand what Aela implies, she elaborates with an emotion: an awareness, the feeling of being watched that longs to prickle against her skin.
@Kamaria