[private] I’m falling under again | Aela

[Aela]

After the Sinking, Aela had first thought about seeking out Reave.

His power would be the most obvious, and the most straightforward, for the answers that she had been seeking. Even if he didn’t share a bond with the horses that she was searching for, he had the ability to see the future (or atleast, versions of the future; he had explained it to her once as something always changing and there was never any one straight path forward).

She had been making her way towards the North, but a journey on hooves took much longer than one on wings, or those born with that fortunate power to teleport. Aela had always prided herself on not being the malingering kind, on always being able to look ahead and formulate plans and schemes, and yet even as she knew that she should go North, maternal instinct had (surprisingly) overridden that perfectly logical plan.

Aela kept going back to the Ruins instead of Nerine, searching for a sign of her missing son and any of the others that had been lost with the Pampas.

It was that instinct that pushed her into such a forward pace. Cheri and her fragile state began to fade in her restless mind, her thoughts coming almost as fast as her careful steps. The other woman’s voice finally broke her stride, and Aela tried not to huff her indignation at being slowed down. Her golden ears flicked back when the palomino stopped and Aela listened as Yanhua’s daughter continued to speak of clairvoyants, fighting her own disappointment when the appaloosa admitted that she didn’t know of any.

Her mind is still on the journey ahead, the amount of time that it will take to get to Taiga while Cheri was still so weak, and the prospect of facing the redwoods themselves that what the other mare says almost surprises her. It turns her disappointment into something else: curiosity. What the once-Loessian Queen was proposing was something that had always intrigued Aela, and what she had once hoped might transpire in the Pampas.

Acquiring powers from the Mountain, or inheriting them, was all well and good. But what Cheri was speaking of was what Aela considered an untapped power source. The possibilities of what happened when magic was pooled together from multiple sources seemed endless.

Turning her head, she regarded Cheri carefully.

What an Empath and whatever the other woman was (something powerful enough that her powers evaded Aela’s) could be interesting. At the very least, the combination of their powers might hasten their journey North.

”Alright,” Aela acquiesced, fully turning around to face Cheri. The appaloosa had spoken about a puff of smoke; a few small literal fires began to kindle around the pair and the Empath could feel it then - the power that allowed her to fully feel everything around her and adapt to her surroundings - rippling beneath the luster of her golden coat, ready to channel itself into the other mare.