03-19-2022, 07:12 PM
For the first time in months, a warm breeze blows across the open moorlands of Nerine. It is early days yet for spring - especially this far north - but Aela recognizes the stirring for what it is. The slender palomino had been keeping to Nerine the last few weeks, recovering from whatever it was that she and Cheri had done. It wasn’t like the time before her magic had been tampered with; the altercation with Gale that had left her with a small, jagged scar where he had tried to rip her heart out and new, amplified abilities.
It had drained her, whatever they had done.
This is what exhaustion feels like, she learned. Sunlight would come streaming in through the opening of her cave, and Aela would rise to realize that the day had already begun hours before. The journeys she made to Taiga took more energy (and time) than she ever recalled. Her patience grew shorter and shorter and all the restraint that she had prided herself for keeping with Obscene and Cheri became a tightly strung thread that threatened to snap.
So she avoids Taiga and its inhabitants when she finally decides to travel again.
There was still a sense of winter in the cool shade, but once Aela broke free of the Taigan forest, she felt the beginnings of summer in the sun. For the first time in weeks - since the darkest part of winter had set in, when it felt as if all of Beqanna was frozen in place - her mood brightens while she considers the opportunities for the fair day ahead with an inquisitive tilt of her lovely head from where she stands at the edge of the Meadow; there is a vast expanse of open blue sky and sunshine that not even Aela can find a fault with. Not after all the dank, dreary days that she had endured in the North.
@Tumult