Aela had been afraid of the world when she had first been brought into it.
Perhaps it was because she remembered the crashing waves, the thundering sound of galloping hooves behind her. Maybe she lost her ability (or want to speak) somewhere along that shoreline, or maybe her mother had used her voice to plead so much, the Gods thought it would be fitting that the daughter should be silent.
She remembers very little about those early days (and that she does remember, Aela has to consider how the memories have been elaborated by others). She can't recall quite where Heartfire had stepped in, or how. She doesn't remember how her spotted milkmother became the familiar one while her birthmother started to fade.
But she remembers Kensley, because he had been so calm.
Because in a world that was roiling with emotion and rife with memories, he had been like finding a quiet copse in the wood or a serene spot by a stream. That world had left her chest so tight with emotions and memories that weren't her own, that almost left her gasping, Kensley had been where she had learned to really breathe.
So she means it, when she says there is no forgetting the man and his cool-hearted soul.
"Not too painful, I hope?" Aela asks, thinking that anyone who troubled him should meet the fury of her flames. He smiles, and the young palomino can feel the edges of her gift stirring, wanting to soften the razor edges in his life. She could help with that, if he wished.
(Would he feel it, if she tried harder? The dulling sensation against the sharp pain?)
"Trying to," she continues on, tilting her head to regard (and admire) the changes in him. The way that his mane curled like fog, the way that his dark eyes churned like coming thunderheads. "But you," she says, "you've become a storm."
They doused your soul in water,
but the flames raged higher.
And they called you devil's daughter,
such a pretty liar.
@kensley