[open] Shadows for Skin [ANY]

[Aela]

For a brief instant, the world returned as Aela had once known it. There was Obscene with his ember-hued eyes boring down into hers with a flash of indignation on his chiseled face. Cheri - even despite her current state - managed to flick her ears back and for a moment, there it was.

A familiar glimmer of what once was.

The earth-shaking had taken more than just the Southern Kingdom. The former Seneschal had spent nearly a year in the Pampas playing her part, bringing in new recruits (one way or another) so that there would be something brighter than the Pampas wildflowers. There could have been learning there, wild magic taught and practiced and perhaps even tamed; through that, Aela would have begun to chase a different kind of immortality.

But that was all gone, now.

She would start again. Aela knew that much. She refused to let herself under the weight of her worries for those she cared for, and instead focused on discovering what had happened to the place she had once lived. If Fyr were really gone, if something really had happened to Skandar, Aela would learn of it and there would be blood to pay.

And so that was why she had come here, again and again, even when this strange place reverberated a deep, ancient pain that afflicted even her. To find some kind of answer in the strange rock formations, or in the unusual lay of the almost barren plains. And that answer had apparently come in the shape of Obscene and Cheri.

”Alright,” Aela agrees tentatively (surprising herself, because she had never once imagined brokering a deal with her niece),  ”But I will ask something of you in return,” she continues, ”There are two horses I’m looking for.” Cheri might appear weak now, but perhaps by the time they reached the land bridge, the former Queen's health (and therefore her gifts) might be in better shape. Three horses searching would be far more beneficial than just one. "I'll take you both to the landbridge and tell you what I know of the Baltians, and in exchange, you help me find Fyr and Wherewolf."

@Cheri *road trip road trip road trip*