YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Perhaps she shouldn't have sounded so surprised.
There were plenty who were still afraid of the dark after the Eternal Night. Aela sometimes stumbled across the memories of nightmares, things that other horses tried to stifle down as the sun rose. If it wasn't those traces she found, there was always the stale scent of sweat in the air to find where a troubled soul had tried to rest.
She hadn't thought that Gale would be that kind of sort. Not when his advantage gave him a leverage that others did not have. For any trouble that a shadow creature might have tried to give the iridescent stallion, @[Gale] could have made himself bigger, stronger, faster. Given himself a sharper bite and a longer claw. And if none of those abilities had worked, perhaps he might have made himself appear as something else through the ability that he shared with Heartfire. Perhaps, thinks Aela as she looks over to her half-sibling.
Even with Gale, Aela is prodding for weaknesses. That ever-curious side to her when it comes to Magicks wants to know what his are. What are the limitations to shifting, where does his Sight start to dim?
It seems like a compromise to ask about Loess.
But Gale doesn't want to talk about it and that does make Aela curious. She isn't used to being denied something she wants. Her childhood with Kota had given the palomino anything (within reason) that she asked for. Visits with their blue roan ancestor always Revealed some delight or another, making Aela eager to join the broader realm outside the isolated North that she had been raised in. She had always been indulged and acquiesced to.
"It still bothers you," Aela replies lightly to Gale's flat tone. His parents had died there. That had been where the fires that he had spoken of happened. She can't mourn the absence of a parent (but could she call Wolfbane that?) that Aela had never known. It makes her pause, though, because she thinks of Kota and Heartfire. She imagines the latter with a memory from Pangea, when their (great)-grandmother had told the young mare that she was leaving for Beyond. If there is something that could tighten Aela's chest (which is usually so full of ambition), it would be that memory.
She'll ask after Loess another time.
"Would you like to hear something fanatical about the stars?" she asks and Aela dims her glowing stripes so that they might see them better.
