Sometimes the heart can lead you astray [any]

[Aela]

Aela doesn't move.

The smile on her pale lips barely lifts.

"Has the monster finally left your woods?" Aela asks and while her tone is warm, it is not kind. She had grown up under that myth. She had been stifled by shadows and borders and had never understood why Kota hadn't taken them both out of Taiga. Why they had stayed for so long in the damp and the fog. Even as a young filly, Aela had little patience or belief in superstitions like the ones that floated through the Redwoods. "Or have they finally stopped telling that fairy tale?"

It isn't missed on her that there is a familiarity here. Her blue eyes glance momentarily on the flaxen mane. Chestnut was a common color in Taiga.

How the girl uses the Echoes, well, that is certainly familiar. For Aela, it had been how she communicated until she found her voice. If there is something she understands and knows, it is an intimate knowledge of the gift that glimmers in the darkness between them.

When the Taigan stranger laughs, Aela can feel her brow rise but she doesn't join in. She simply watches and waits to see if the horned girl might elaborate. They have been everywhere, this traveler proclaims and then Aela does laugh. "Not here," she says. "You're the first I've seen in years." The last had been a young stallion and Aela studies the growing horns, remembering his and the golden star he had worn.

That had been the day that Straia had been swallowed.
Back when the sun still shone.

Narrowing her blue eyes on the younger filly, she asks: "For all my ignorance, I'm not the one wandering into the place that razed Taiga." A mischievous spark gleams in her gaze and in case the younger girl had forgotten, Aela reminds her. A bright, vivid memory of the Redwoods comes blazing to life as they burn.

A moment of light in an otherwise dark existence.