How strange to peer up at him and see... nothing at all.
For a child who was born out of everything and nothing, he is something. There is no ripple of pain, no glimmer of heartache, no warmth of laughter, or a shimmer of joy. There is nothing but a void in the middle of the Meadow and to a young child who is susceptible to the feelings and memories of others, he is a balm. A barrier that protects from the feelings that can radiate from other horses like poltergeists. He is a frigid blast of arctic air except there is no bite. No chilling gust that angrily blows past her. Aela, who has had to be so careful almost from birth, can feel the little control that she has come to know over her power slipping in this presence.
(She doesn't know this; how she uses her empathy to protect herself is like how a child might wrap themselves in a blanket against the dark.)
Her blue eyes lock with his - a shade of brown that doesn't unnerve her - and the filly takes another step closer. Aela's golden head tilts slightly, trying to read the expression he wears. One that doesn't look so different from her serious one until a stirring. There is (oddly) no feeling behind it and the motion is so subtle, if the child hadn't been so intently watching him, she might have missed it. For a girl who has never spoken, she has learned to watch others so they might know to watch her. To see that what she is trying to say might be seen in the piercing blue of her eyes, in the few glimpses she might offer through her memories.
The gray stallion lowers his head and she mimics the opposite, raising hers. Her pale nostrils flare and she reaches up, to lightly graze some part of dark nose. Aela's ears come forward when she glances up, hoping to get his attention. Does he see what she does? A trick of the light, perhaps, but maybe he sees a shadowed echo of himself. From a perspective that was not his own, from a memory that he shouldn't have.
And if he lets her touch him, maybe he can feel her curiosity. Maybe he can feel what a comfort he is in a world that has tried to overwhelm her from the beginning. Maybe he sees nothing and knows what a blessing that might be. Maybe he knows it as a comfort, too.
@[kensley]