so we come to a place of no return

[Aela]

They are all, in some way, ghosts. 

There a few exceptions but when Aela comes too close, she becomes haunted. She becomes like them - a ghost. The yearling keeps to the outskirts of Taiga with her mother, afraid to come too close to the other horses who call it home. They carry memories and with them comes the tidal waves of emotions attached to them. 

Sometimes, it isn’t just the ghosts that bring the memories.
Sometimes, it’s the land that remembers.

It doesn’t matter the source; they all come crashing together. 

On a warm spring afternoon, the yearling strays from Taiga. She leaves her mother, the eerie Redwoods and its fog behind her. She follows the River, slinks through the mountains of Hyaline (she doesn’t know any better) until they fall at her back. There are many peaks that she sees but there is only one that is singing: the one ahead of her. 

Aela doesn’t know it’s Magic. Aela doesn’t know what pulses below the stone. All she knows is that this is like her ghosts but something infinitely stronger. Infinitely different. Something lovely.

Her blue eyes grow rounder as it swims in her vision. It had already been an impressive feature of this range from a distance but as she comes closer, it is prouder. It is bolder. It is almost noble (if she had any notion of nobility) in its stance. There is no sound - save from the occasional cry of a bird, the stirring of a branch overhead - and Aela immediately knows she has stumbled across something sacred. 

A feeling in her chest awakens and her heart beats, louder (stronger). Like many before her, the youth starts at the base of the Mountain. She climbs, one careful step after another. There is the occasional stone that is the casualty of her steps as she goes, clamoring down the peak. It echoes but there is no louder singing than the one she feels within her. 

She doesn’t quite reach the top. Aela lifts her head, craning it up to try and breach the final distance between her and the pinnacle of Beqanna. Can you hear me? she wonders, could I sing like you?

AELA

i saw you late last night, come to harm
i saw you dance in the devil's arms

html by castlegraphics; art by KHARTHIAN

hello! Aela would "like" to quest/swap her light healing for empathy (3 space for 3 space). i'd like to use my auto quest from the holiday raffle. and i don't know if it matters but just in case, she's mute. thank you! <3

[Wysteria Fairy]

We can always hear you, child. The voice comes to her in her mind alone, the white and purple fairy appearing before her. A tiny thing, smaller still than the child, wings fluttering as she hovers in the air. She could be large, if she chose, though she does not. Truthfully, this form is nothing to her but a shape, a way to give the mortals something concrete to understand. The faeries are more than they could truly understand.

A curious thing, aren’t you? Perhaps you would like an adventure with the promise of a reward? Maybe Wysteria is playing slightly, or maybe she cares a bit for the child with no voice. Perhaps it is a bit of both. Go and learn from others of their strongest emotions, of the moments that elicited such. Learn what it is like to live, and come back and tell me about it. And with that, she disappears.

***
You have received a quest. Have 3 threads with other horses about moments in their life that elicited strong emotions and come back to tell Wysteria about it.

[Aela]

Aela returns to the Mountain when their world has descended into darkness.

Her glow is gone. There is a halo in the sky - the only source of light - and as she climbs up the Mountain, she laments the loss of that particular gift.  The never-ending night has made the climb that much more perilous and Aela has to rely on her senses more than she ever has before; each step has to be calculated, her ears dance in directions listening for the way that wind howls and moans through the rising peaks, her head lifts and Aela has to wait, using her echoes to make sure that nothing is lingering in the shadows.

The trek up the Moutain is already a perilous journey.

It is already a journey that takes days, that should have some modicum of preparation if one intends to summon the Faeries. Aela does not let anything go to waste; when the eclipse comes and the monsters start to creep, she decides that this is the time to go. If there is ever a time to find answers, to gain any kind of understanding (and knowledge is power), it would be now. Pangea falls away into obscurity, devoured by the dark that has encompassed every corner of Beqanna. The near-palomino climbs towards the peak, bracing herself against the ice and cold that chills her down to the very marrow.

She thinks it's the top. It seems like the entire world drops away and if Magic were tangible, she thinks it would freeze. Aela can't see the way her breath comes smoke-like from her nostrils because she is looking up, looking for physical shape or sense of presence besides the bitter cold. I was young when I last made this trip, she thinks. She had wanted a voice. There have been lessons since that day and she has since found it, her own way of talking.

It sounds like the kind of moral the faeries would approve of. Finding a voice while in pursuit of Magic, learning how to meld it in such a way that made the user unique. There are flashes of the moments in her mind - of Living as the Fairy called it - that come: clinging to the soft, spotted side of Kota. Adoration colors her emotions as she glances at her grandmother, Heartfire. Unfreezing Kensley's heart. Meeting Beyza. The fight with Wherewolf. Discovering her own abilities and ambitions when the Pangeans came to Nerine.

It's dark now, the little mare explains (with as much reverence as one like Aela can manage). Many horses are struggling to adapt their senses to match the strange happenings. She is no different. I'd still like to be heard. To have some clarity in these troubling times.

---

The three threads:
Aela learns about Kensley's frozen heart and helps him unfreeze it
Aela learns that Wherewolf is sensitive about his once-broken wing and uses that it instigate an argument
Aela meets Skandar and helps him learn about ambition

@[Wysteria Fairy]

[Wysteria Fairy]

Wysteria does not come, but then again, she does not need it. The magic flows easily from the mountain, glittering purple tendrils of it that reach into Aela's soul, peeling away one ability it and replacing it with another, a sort of voice for the girl to use as she continues living. Life is not about magic, after all, but it can be enhanced by its use.

***
Your quest has been successful; please post in Updates to have Light Healing removed and Empathy added.