Aela rarely thinks of the woman who brought her into the world. She doesn't know that she nearly killed Lilliana, that she had been the reason that her body grew weak and frail. She doesn't know that while nestled safely in her womb, she drained her mother of nutrients and sapped her of strength. She doesn't know that the labor took days, that there had been far too much blood, and if neither of them had been Immortal, then the palomino wouldn't be standing here, regarding the iridescent dappled Lord as he flies overhead with something dangling from his mouth.
The slender mare watched as his shadow crossed over her, and tried to make out exactly what Wherewolf had brought back to the Pampas.
When he lands, and after hearing the sound of his added weight drop lifelessly to the flowery ground, Aela approaches. Normally, she was happy to leave the pegasus alone with his spite and his resentment. It was more common for the striped Seneschal to be with Obscene but ever since he had said, 'I would have all of you.' Aela had preferred to keep her distance. It was something that she didn't understand; how was she to give everything to Obscene and yet still save something for herself?
She scowls, both at the thought and the lifeless child lying on the ground. Aela lifts her head, as the winged horse recalls the trek that brought the dappled filly here. There had been multiples of the girl - just as there had been multiples of Wherewolf - and the battle that ensued would make anybody's head spin. Aela blinks and gives a light toss of her pale mane, shuddering away from the confusion that the Lord has brought back.
The striped Seneshchal had been about to tell him that the point of a steal was to be given something in return. Children were easy because their parents would most likely be desperate to get them back. A dead child brings them nothing, and Aela's head was already starting to ache at imagining a mother, weeping and crying and carrying on about whoever this foal was.
But it's something about the dark markings on her back, in the shape of wings. She has seen them before, back in Taiga, back when Kota kept them close to the border of Nerine. Aela can remember taunting the winged stallion because she had been doted and beloved as a child, while his dam would barely look at him.
How Neverwhere is young again is something she can only attribute to Magic, or the universe has a perverse sense of irony.
"Is that... your mother?"
They doused your soul in water,
but the flames raged higher.
And they called you devil's daughter,
such a pretty liar.
@Wherewolf