YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
Aela feels it.
There is a stirring in her soul, an unease that prevents her from enjoying what otherwise would be a pleasant late afternoon. The sun has begun to set, the day had so far been fair. The palomino stills and lifts her refined head, as if the feeling might be found by the finally-blooming Acacia trees. Her blue eyes narrow but nobody is near (at least, nobody she can see on the ground).
It makes her tense. It makes her stop where she is.
There is an emotion surrounding her that is not her own and something in her knows that whatever is, it is supernatural. What she feels does not come from some bystander, from some nameless horse that jumps from shadow to shadow. It comes lightly - as if it wants the awakening to be slow and not yet realized - but she finally moves, leaving the small nook of redstone that she had stood just moments before. The steps are mindless and ambling, unusual for the striped mare who usually walked with confidence and purpose. Wherever Aela traveled, there was a reason for it. She went to the River for a drink; she ventured towards the Common Lands to better hone her abilities and to keep current on Beqanna politics and gossip. The few places she traveled within Pangea - to visit with Beyza, to see how Kensley fared, to check on Kota and her new sibling - were because they were the few horses that she wanted to see.
The thud and backlash of magic - one that she has felt before - come quick and she throws her head back in reply.
Oh, she remembers him. There is no forgetting the buckskin who thought himself so unconquerable that he dared to mettle with Aela. He is one of the few that had retaliated against her and so she remembers him almost instantly. Her pale lips would curl and her delicate ears would have pinned in her fine, light-colored mane if she had control of them. There are a few steps more that come forward but Aela slows them as best she can, not making it easy for the pegasus to force her to move. (It is much as it was before; Aela's soul is a twisted and defiant thing and it writhes in protest, always attempting to escape the power that allows him to control another.)
She's been dragged forward enough that he can hear her. That she can see the glowing ochre of his gaze.
"Miss me, casanova?" she manages to say though her quicksilver voice is strained, struggling against the power he wields. It's at that moment that she tries to confuse him; the memory is simple: daylight. But it is the first dawn after the Eclipse, after nearly a year of living in darkness. Those first few moments of sunlight had been almost blinding to eyes accustomed to seeing in the dark, While it won't last long, Aela hopes to disorient him long enough to drown him in sorrow or despair.
Anything bleak, really.
He looks far too confident - abuses his gift too easily - and Aela doesn't mind reminding exactly who he is messing with. She considers it an act of kindness to remind him.
@[Narcisus]