It didn't matter what they did with Sickle, and yet the child was clearly important.
Perhaps Gale had asked Obscene to steal her as a distraction from something else. Perhaps while they had gone to Tephra, Gale had intended to sweep across the Pampas as a fire-tailed Phoenix and send the flower fields up in smoke. Aela had half-expected that her fraternal sibling would point the Flower Court in one direction while he decimated another.
But the theft of the girl had been quick and easy and quiet.
Maybe Gale had never really wanted this child. Maybe he had needed her out of the way for some reason. Perhaps, she wonders as she thinks of fiery Mazikeen, he had wanted to separate the girl from her mother as Wolfbane had once done with her and Lilliana. Just another way to inflict pain, without having to dig claws into the skin or pointed teeth to pierce it. Her mind considers these reasons, and then Aela smiles slightly glancing down at the yearling.
(She always thanks the Gods that Heartfire had found her. Had she been raised by anyone else, Aela would have always been ordinary.)
Obscene answers the iridescent filly's question, stating that he doesn't know where Malik is or if he is safe. That is something that Aela knows and she shares it, wondering what the reason was that Mazikeen's daughter was in Tephra while her son was in Hyaline. "Your brother was in Hyaline," Aela tells her simply, and gives a careful roll of her gold shoulders. With Gale, but she also adds: "With your father and mother."
Aela knew a little more than that and she wonders if this information might help Sickle decide if she wants to go to Hyaline. If she wanted to leave the "safety" of the Pampas at all. Her guarded face slips and for an Empath as talented as Aela, it isn't hard to project sorrow into herself and the air around the group, to be perceived as the grieving aunt who only wanted to keep this niece safe where she had failed her nephew. "They took my nephew - your... cousin Bolder - and have him there as well."
They doused your soul in water,
but the flames raged higher.
And they called you devil's daughter,
such a pretty liar.
@Wherewolf maybe aela's sorrow can make wolfey feel a little bad about murdering his mother lmfao