Aela and Obscene still meet to talk about the Pampas.

Though their conversations are no longer as enlivening as they once were, they mull over ideas and Aela mentions the new arrivals. The beautiful Aloy - a green-eyed beauty who should fit in nicely with other ethereal creatures, like herself and Enoch. Wherewolf seems to be playing some kind of perverse game with his mother, having her trapped in the body of a child. Sickle remains in the Pampas and for now, it still seems like the best option.

Skandar prowls through their Flower Country, taking a shape usually more unexplained than the last. (It makes her smile, the thought that he could pretend to be a Pampas butterfly and then with a flutter of lovely wings, become something far more lethal.) Islay doesn't fight against the terms of her imprisonment and in a rare moment, the two-toned female had even shown Aela a little of the way that she could craft starlight, and warp darkness.

Their Pampas was thriving.

And then there was Fyr, who had continued to thrive alongside the Flower Court since Aela had brought him back from the Den. Obscene had seemed to keep his space from the boy, but every so often, the Seneschal would glimpse the pair talking or walking through the flowers. Her initial worry that Fyr would take a liking to the nectar that Obscene could heavily favor at times started to fade, learning that the little buckskin was more likely to burn the petals than drink from them.

There is more to the spotted colt than his flames (like his mother), but Aela can never see the souls that he summons. She knows they exist though, having the wisps of shadows linger near her adopted son. She assumes that Obscene knows this as well, and something in her freezes when Fyr asks that she not tell him. The palomino fights the ice in her breast and gives her boy a reassuring touch on his shoulder as his molten eyes look to the ground.

(We never apologize.)

"It can be our little secret," Aela says, smiling in hopes to put Fyr at ease. There is nothing but empty air around them, the chill blowing in on the wind and through the now-frozen fields. But just because Aela sees nothing doesn't mean that it is so. She nudges her son again, "What are they saying today?"

@Fyr

Aela no longer lingers in the inbetween.

Things either are or they aren't.

This is what her son still seems to struggle with, and as his golden mother tries to settle his unruly mane like she tries to settle his unruly emotions, Aela tries to think of the best way to help him. Her son will not grow up weak. He will not grow up wanting. This world will learn to yield to him or burn for it.

It's the other world that gives her a pause of concern, because she is unsure how to master both.

But they are worries for another time. She listens as Fyr describes his newest companion, a girl who had died before she had ever breathed. (A pity, perhaps. Or a blessing, given that so many would live only to have their hearts and throats ripped out.) This child is young, like her son. She had wanted to see the world that she was never given the chance to see.

A departed soul would have been normally been given little thought with Aela, but she's captured her young son's attention and is worth atleast that much.

There is more she misses. A brother, and her mother. The mention of Obscene surprises her, but Aela manages to conceal it beneath the tender expression she reserves for Fyr. An expression she manages to keep even as a frozen flower floats forward on the Pampas wind, urged on it seemed by the summoning magic of her son. The Seneschal moves away slightly, allowing the ghost the room to place her gift in his dark forelock.

"Help them how?" Aela asks the child, not necessarily interested in the reasoning but rather Fyr's want. "You give them a voice in a place where they otherwise aren't heard." She tries to cajoling him, wanting him to see his gift for the powerful ability it was. But perhaps he was right, she thinks.

What if he could do more than merely summon souls?

What if he could command them?

Eventually, Fyr would come across something to be afraid of.

It was part of coming of age. He is still younger than she would have liked; there were still lessons she had to teach him. But he was a powerful child and that meant there would be consequences that came from those gifts. The loss of his innocence would eventually come, and as she listened to the sad story of the dead girl, Aela suspected that his had started before she came into his life.

She stands over him, and her neck covers his in a protective stance. It will do nothing against the monsters that she can't see — nor do very little against others like her Mad Magician brother —  but it gives her some peace to be close to him now.

"Don't let them scare you," Aela tells her son, glancing to the open space where his newest playmate supposedly lingered. "You are the one summoning them," she continues on, trying to instill some confidence in Fyr. "And don't be afraid to remind them that you can send them back to wherever they came from." That particular skill might take some more harnessing, but Aela didn't doubt that he could learn it. He'd been an apt pupil from the beginning, just as she thought.

Aela suppresses the urge to tell the young buckskin that Obscene was never apparently happy about anything - he had one of the most powerful territories with some of the most gifted horses in Beqanna - and yet, she still caught him glancing towards Loess with an expression that looked like misery.

Her thoughts don't dwell on the Prince long, and she looks sharply down at the boy when he mentions meeting a stallion that looked like him. That had offered to help teach him how to use his powers and suspicion comes creeping Aela's slender spine while it colors her careful expression.

"What did he want in return?"

"Can I tell you a secret?" his mother asks him.

Aela still lingers over him, and though she keeps watch over the empty spaces surrounding them, her chest brushes against the side of the buckskin colt. The stance she takes over him is protective, and though she knows that one day he will have to learn to fight his own battles, that day hasn't come yet.

She would turn the Pampas to nothing but ash, if one were to harm him while Fyr was still so young.

The palomino arches her neck, and then moves it to smooth out his golden coat. She can sense his tension where it concerns Obscene and she gently pushes out a small feeling of comfort, just in case. It would seem her boy wouldn't have them at odds, and she smiles softly at the thought. Skandar would have no qualms about murdering the Pampas Prince, but the tenderness that Fyr feels for the onyx-and-gold stallion placates Aela enough that she'll continue to let him live while her son feels this way.

"It's why I practice against the best I can find," she reveals to the young colt. "Because what can the weak do for us?" The Untraited - or those with smaller Magicks - have never done anything for Aela (besides providing small amusement). In a world that measures by the power they wield, they have no use in her Pampas.

"So keep practicing against the best you can find, and it will always show you where you stand."

Eventually, she thinks gently into his mind, you will be better than them.

Who this Firion is still doesn't settle with her. Why does a strange stallion take interest in a young colt? Unless...

"Or he could be your father," Aela says, still standing protectively over Fyr.

It had surprised Aela, the profound feeling of love that Fyr inspired. That emotion had always been the one she had been most careful of, the one she almost always refused to project or replicate; it was a strong emotion, but it was volatile as well. For every situation that she might wield in her favor, there was always the risk that it would backfire and implode everything she was working towards.

Love, she knew, was intricately tied to hate.

But the feeling that blossoms in her slender chest is genuine, and the emotion that radiates back to her is as well. She smoothes the dark mane of the young colt, and basks in his baby scent of burning flowers and lost souls. "Start with whoever you can find," Aela councils her son, "and even if they show you your own weaknesses, at least you know where to start." Fyr doesn't want to appear weak, but the golden Seneschal decides to show him how she had once been. It's a short memory: it is a young palomino filly, trembling against the spotted side of her dam.

Aela hadn't even been able to speak then.

She has traveled quite the path since those days, and the Seneschal doesn't doubt that Fyr will grow to become something greater than he is now.

"Just be careful where it regards him, Fyr." She sighs, and her flaxen tail brushes against her striped legs. She could feel the boy's uncertainty where it regarded this strange stallion - and the way it increases when Aela had mentioned the possibility of him being his sire - and that was good. The colt had been left at the Den, and Aela felt that any man who couldn't concern himself with his trysts would hardly concern himself with the outcome of them.

Like Obscene, who had seemed surprised to have not one but two children.

"And know that the things you can do are your own."

@Fyr