Kensley laughs and Aela joins him.
She prefers the sound of it to the sideways smile that he gives, where grief lingers at its edges. She is an Empath and isn't immune to feeling the weight in his soul; it wears her down as well. The flames beneath her skin flickering, begging to be set free so that might turn those emotions to ash.
But this is Kensley's grief - not hers - and so she quells her fire.
Aela lets him keep him out, as well his insistence that he wasn't meant for greater things. (They all are; her World will be for the Great Ones but she won't argue with the man who had been the spark that started everything.) She comes closer to him, and much like she had done as a girl, reaches out to lightly touch him on his dark muzzle. The palomino isn't entirely sure how to explain the journey that had started in Pangea - first with Straia and then continued on by Beyza - but she offers him a few glimpses into her past.
(There is the former Dominus telling Aela that her voice was within. Heartfire had said the same thing, and there had been countless hours spent between their shared bond as the young filly struggled to vocalize it. And then there had been pale Beyza, helping her to perfect it.)
Pulling away slowly, Aela glances up to the older stallion. He had been in Pangea, just as the White Magician had been.
"Do you know Beyza?"
They doused your soul in water,
but the flames raged higher.
And they called you devil's daughter,
such a pretty liar.
@kensley