[open] Shadows for Skin [ANY]

[Aela]

Perhaps it was because Aela was more familiar with Obscene that made her more aware of his emotions. The little palomino kept walking, kept herself moving, but the feelings wafting off the dark brute behind made her scowl as he did. His rising irritation became hers, and the only immediate solution that the Empath could think of was to keep a brisk pace and Cheri between them.

Cheri, in a strange way, reminded her of Gale.

The emotions and the feelings and memories were all there. Aela could sense them, she realized with an annoyed flick of her flaxen tail; maybe if she focused solely on the appaloosa mare, she might have been able to discern exactly what they were. Like her Cursed half-brother, they were hard to read, as if they were light refracting in different directions and Aela’s powers didn’t know which way to look.

So the striped woman scowled again when Obscene asked yet another question.

”Do you need me to explain that as well?” Aela chimed sardonically back to the former Prince who had once enjoyed his fill of nectar as he had women. She slowed her measured steps and then glanced behind her, staring up at the red-eyed stallion rather indignantly. It remained there for a moment until the corner of her vision began to flash dark spots and the feeling of an unbidden memory coming on. Her finely-tipped ears pinned and Aela gave her elegant head a shake, pushing whatever Obscene had been remembering out and away from her.

Aela had always prided herself on her cool nature, on her ability to keep calm even when her own emotions and those around her were not. She had spent a great deal of her youth trying to emulate Heartfire, who barely batted an eye at destruction or devastation. But this place… The Ruins often pushed Aela to the limits of her abilities. The ground was saturated with sadness; the very air was permeated with death and ruin. Multiple trips and repeated exposure to this place left her as something she very rarely (if ever) was.

She was vulnerable.

”You were gone months,” Aela said and began to turn around so she could face Obscene, momentarily abandoning their trek towards where the River met the sea. If he was going to take that tone with her, she would give him an equally sharp reply. Her anger began to light in her blue eyes, and it flickered there in warning. A flame sparked nearby, and caught one of brightly-colored (and to Aela, out of place) flowers on fire. ”Months before the South sank,” she cast a deliberate look to Cheri as well, because though she didn’t know exactly when the Loessian Queen had disappeared, there could be no coincidence that first Obscene had gone and then Cheri; that now they had returned together. ”And it's been nearly a year now since then.”

@Cheri