[open] heaven i'll never come home; any

[Aela]

Aela has two mothers - perhaps not uncommon for Beqanna - but there is the woman who gave birth to her and then the woman that raised her. She knows very little about the first, only that if the two mares had ever been in the same proximity, it would have been obvious from their finely sculpted cheekbones to their expressive blue eyes that they were related.
The second - spotted Kota - is the one who taught her to walk quietly along the paths and trails, to move so silently that nobody could hear her approaching.

She sticks to the shadows, like she had been taught. When there is a group of rambunctious yearlings over eager to move and unaccustomed to biting flies, she manages to blend in with their band (which isn't hard, given her diminutive size) and moves from one side of the Field to the other. When they finally disperse, Aela moves towards the edge of the treeline where the gnats weren't quite so dense.

The same thing couldn't be said for some of the few horses in her vicinity. Aela spies what she deems is a broodmare, a woman with a baby still at her hips and by the way that her sides have rounded, another on the way. A few bachelors, all boisterous and loud, and have far too much energy to garner any interest from the lithe mare.

Another mare with a pale mane and tail piques her attention immediately. She's lovely, too; something that Aela rarely admits about anyone else besides herself and Skandar. Every line of her is pleasing to the eye and the striped girl wonders if anybody has taught her how to use that to her advantage, how to turn into something as useful as any kind of magic that exists within Beqanna. With a sweeping step and another, it doesn't take her long to reach the pair. She misses the first part of their conversation but the young stallion (colt, really) blurts out an answer, and some part of Aela wonders if it was the beauty of the other mare that made him do so.

"Well, why are you here?" Aela asks, deferring the question to the male who wondered why the chestnut looked annoyed about standing in the Field. She would be irritated too - the filth, the stench, the rabble. Regardless of what happened to the other woman, she didn't want to be here but she most likely needed a home. A delicate ear flicks towards the other mare, quietly considering her. If she had mettle, there was the possibility that she might fit in at the Pampas. "Perhaps I can help you," she casually offers, speaking the words airily enough that they could be taken as a challenge or an invitation; her choice.