It's funny that her grandmother mentions child's play because that is what Aela imagines. What Straia could really do was potential to be realized, something as mysterious as the entity herself and it had fascinated Aela. But the conversation between the Seer and her golden granddaughter is teaching the girl a valuable lesson.
Aela has aspirations. She might not be able to speak but she will be heard. She is small and slender and lithe, easy to overlook against the brilliant and dazzling array of magical horses that call Beqanna home. She plans to a presence that looms, that when she approaches others, they will feel her magic long before they ever see the golden girl that graces their presence. And while she has come to enjoy chaos (a wonderful courtesy she's learned from Pangea), she wants the ability to seize it and spearhead it towards something. (And all the better if that spearhead is aimed at something that Aela doesn't particularly care for, if it can be joined with one 'cause' or another).
But @[Heartfire] - tactful, cryptic, knowing Heartfire - is giving Aela a valuable lesson.
There is nothing wrong with wanting more.
But in the journey towards it, one needed to be cautious. Climbing towards some pinnacle - whether it be for power, magic, prestige - was all well and good but there would always be a risk with the ascent. Jump too far, too quick and you were liable to plummet down with the full weight of your aspirations, without your aspirations ever fully fledging into anything more than an idea. Aela continues to walk through Pangea, meandering towards the River that flowed through the canyon country while she contemplated the lesson that was formulating in her young mind.
Mind her steps, she thinks. Patience (which is such a hard thing for one so young and ambitious as Aela), she schools herself.
As the adolescent searches for water, she waits. Heartfire is still there. Aela - as perceptive with emotions as she is breathing - feels hesitation trickling down their bond and the girl frowns. Has she upset her grandmother? The question itself had been innocent (and Aela had considered her assumption practically fact at this point.) When the sabino shares her next thought, Aela feels her disappointment much closer than the distantly that Heartfire mentions. She feels it rather keenly.
(She has always assumed that the Dark God would be closer in relation. Aela is rather vain about her pedigree and though she rarely claims it, she is proud to call herself granddaughter to the former Nerinian Queen and fabled Seer.)
"I am not an ant," she stiffly thinks. Aela scoffs at the thought all way from red-dusted Pangea. (She refuses to acknowledge that she is less than an ant to anyone, even one as omnipotent as Carnage.)
If this had been anyone other than her grandmother, the striped filly would have happily supplied a few memories of the ants and other insects she had easily trampled beneath her small hooves. But this is not anyone. This her grandmother and Heartfire commands respect, regardless of where she is.
Breathing out some of her frustration, she closes her eyes again and tries to imagine Nerine instead.
"Don't you get tired of your shadows, Glamma?" she wonders.