YOU'RE ONLY AS SICK AS YOUR SECRETS
If Obscene had been absent from the Pampas, Aela hardly noticed.
The Guardian of Taiga had been missing, and she had been utilizing that opportunity to travel through the Northern Forest more often. She usually did anyway, on her way to visit with Reave. But the trail she took was often on the edges of the wood, where the fog was thinnest and a horse could hear the River running nearby. Now, she walked through the heart of Taiga and there was nothing beating in it anymore.
Yanhua and his herd was gone. The woods were still. She traveled through the haze of the mist to Nerine and back through without being stopped once. It seemed like the Forest of Giants really had turned to one of ghosts. All those plans that Aela had for Taiga - the revenge she was going to take for the North forcing her to remain there so long - vanished like so many of its inhabitants had.
Her brother seems to be full of news. He mentions that Nashua is nearly distraught over the theft of his son. And then it gets more interesting: Gale had been the one to steal his nephew. (While Aela is still unsure of what her half-brother has done to her, stealing Nash’s youngest boy is something she finds amusing.) Aela had mentioned to him of her own thefts, Enoch from Ischia and Islay from Islandres. Nothing had come from Tephra; no warnings, no threats.
But then, there had been the visit to the Den and her precious discovery of Fyr.
She had been meeting with Islay, the girl finally settled enough that Aela had managed to garner a few answers from the painted mare. A few more days' time - and perhaps a little… unwinding from the Pampas poppies - and the former Chieftain might finally be receptive to Aela’s deeper questions about her magic. It makes the fire in her veins spark at the thought, at the chance to pivot shadow against flame and she wonders about the discoveries that might be made there.
Aela feels his apprehension long before he speaks. The emotion wafts through the air; something stronger than the usual floral scents of the Pampas. Lifting her refined head, the golden female watches Obscene approach with a careful stare. How had he been spending his spare time? It certainly hadn’t been with her.
More leisure? More inebriation? More women?
"Obscene,” she replies evenly, with her lovely brow raised slightly as his memories of Cheri and Gale and Reave swirl between them. "I see you’ve been busy.”
@Obscene
