The filly is studying Heartfire so intensely that it unsettles Aletta. While the gray mare hadn't been permitted to come any closer than within a walking stride, the girl has turned her head around and watches the blue roan mare with endlessly blue eyes. Aletta's dark-eyed gaze moves from the approacher to the foal, waiting. While the girl doesn't do anything more, the filly is regarding Heartfire with what appears to be... familiarity?
Aletta frowns slightly, moving her attention back to newcomer. It's the wrong shade of blue, she tells herself for the second time. (And perhaps that's the problem with looking - you see what hope for in every face you encounter.)
Her gaze hardens but she refrains from snorting. (The name distracts her from the temper that isn't as iron-clad as it once had been.) "Aela," Aletta murmurs softly. The girl - Aela she corrects herself - looks back and lifts her head. Her dainty ears prick forward but the pale mare doesn't say anything more. What she was going to say - something demanding, more answers perhaps - gets lost in the lump of her throat. Messenger? she thinks. There are coincidences found everywhere, she reminds herself. They are littered through life and nature. They stream across it like shooting stars in the heavens.
But the girl has a name that shares a language (hers, from those damned mountains, from her sire) and meaning with Aletta's firstborn. Malachi has been gone for years, she reminds herself.
Heartfire is attempting cordiality, a slight smile that curves above her tell-all blue eyes. Aletta can't find a smile. Not when she feels as though she has been dealt a physical blow. "I do," she replies, more severe than intended. She should be returning to Nerine. Scorch would no doubt be looking for her. The tattooed mare seemed to find Aletta's disregard for kingdom borders amusing though slightly worrisome. She moves as though she turns to go and the girl has moved closer to Heartfire, giving Aletta the visual proof she needed that Aela belonged with the roan mare. She angles herself away from them but then the setting sun glints of the iridescent blue sheen of the filly's markings and catches her eye. Aletta stops and turns to look at them both again.
Looking at Aela makes her grief - something she has kept at bay since Brynn died - darken her eyes and hoarsen her voice: "You both have somewhere to go?" She asks brusquely before settling her attention on the supernatural eyes of @[Heartfire].
we turned our back on ordinary from the start
photo credit to charlie---x