YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
If Islay had thought the approaching stallion might help her, the idea vanishes as her navy blue eyes drop to the ground and the lava streams that flow behind him. The sparks that Aela had planted behind them dissipate beneath the magma that the approacher controls. The blue-and-white mare starts to pull her shadows against herself, tries to draw them in and create those wings that Mariner had onced showed her.
But between the sun overhead, and the heat surrounding her, there are only small fissures of darkness against her two-toned sides.
”Please,” Islay says in a quiet voice. ”Please, you could just… let me go.” The young mare looks to the stranger first, because he looks at her and there is a chance that he might be kind. Kinder than her captor. But the Islandres herd leader turns her head back to Aela, thinking that there still could be a chance to change her mind. The shore wasn’t far; it wouldn’t take her long to return back to her tropical paradise and they could all pretend this never happened.
It could be a nightmare, something tucked in the furthest recesses of her mind like the Eclipse.
Aela, though, had made up her mind on Islandres. Whatever little Islay was was clearly powerful and the palomino means to bring her back to the Pampas.
Her golden face remains impassive to the pleas of the younger mare. She almost wished that the painted woman would have fought harder or twisted her powers again to draw the night closer, just so Aela could burn it out of her. There was no going back to the little island, but feeling her own concentration slipping, Aela knew that there would be no completing this journey on her own. Her options were to take a risk and use the last of her waning gifts to coax Islay into coming to the Pampas; flashing images of the flower fields and shimmering sunshine while flooding her senses with a longing for a place she had never been.
The other option was to try and do whatever it was she had done that scared Islay enough to succumb to Aela’s demands in the first place.
Both ran the risk of backfiring and if Islay returned to Islandres, she could alert the Western Kingdom of the attempted theft.
When Erupt arrives, it seems almost too fortuitous but Aela never misses an opportunity. He surrounds them all of them with his twining rivers of lava and her brow quirks slightly, rather intrigued. He says nothing but he also doesn’t condemn Aela - or offer to help Islay - so the mulberry stallion gets another mark in his favor. To better set the mood, the slender Empath adds a few more flames to the magma surrounding them; something that takes little effort and as she can’t control where her fires blaze, it makes the moment all the more thrilling to her. Islay makes a sound that gets trapped in the back of her throat (aided by the fear she projects) and Aela turns her head back to their silent companion, curious as to what he made of the flames and the woman wielding them.
@Erupt