Almost as soon as the storm crossed the pretty tobiano mare's face, it seemed to recede and Arael relaxed into the conversation. As a filly, the pale golden girl had been social and friendly with her herd, seeking out the company of others to fill the quiet hours of the day. As she had aged, however, and her life somersaulted with the addition of a daughter she was unprepared for and the loss of Deimos, Arael had retreated into herself. Re-learning how to be social again was a slow process, but she found that she enjoyed her painted Queen's company, even if the power divide between them meant that there would always be some sort of distance to separate them.

The petite mare shakes her head in denial of Medusa's self-recrimination, but does not interrupt her again. She listens quietly as she begins to speak again, and finds herself acutely aware that this intimacy represents a shift in their dynamic, one that Arael welcomes with open arms. It has been so long since she has anyone that she can truly call a friend that the possibility of getting close to Medusa - Queenship aside - is tantalizing.

I was betrothed to him as a yearling, she explains, and Arael nods in encouragement. Medusa had told her as much, the first time they had met, and she remembered her own confusion. Such a practice was not common in her family, although she had heard of it in other lands. The closest that was practiced in her home herd was when a girl was given a sign from Etheria as to who she should be betrothed to; sometimes these 'signs' were delivered from priests, which Arael supposed was something akin to having one's father assign them a beloved.

As she continues, Arael finds more similarities between Medusa and Velahrn, which makes her heart echo dully for the daughter that she had failed. The longer that she spent here among the heather, the more certain that Arael became that Velahrn had not been her child, not truly, but an instrument to teach the petite gray mare a lesson in dutifulness. Velahrn belonged to someone else, not to her.

Perhaps most shocking, however, was the final note that Queen Medusa ended on, and Arael knew her eyes had gone wide with shock. "Queen Xiomara and our King Ironclad?" Immediately her brow furrowed in concern as her past interactions with them were lifted into a new light in her mind's eye. A part of her began to wonder if his challenge for her claim had had anything to do with her at all, but she quickly stuffed this doubt down farther. It was not her place to question her King's motives, even if the reality of the likely answer made her heart thud heavily.

"Perhaps once they were," Arael says, comforting herself as much as Medusa. She was not present for the interaction between King Ironclad and Queen Xiomara, but she cannot imagine that they are terribly close. Their personalities seem so contradictory that she cannot imagine them growing close enough to form an attachment. In the same breath, she scolds herself for even speculating on her king's relationship.

"But she is not who he lays his head next to at night, nor the one that stands at his shoulder to protect the legacy that he is building. Queen Xiomara might have been important in the past my Queen," she says gently, her gaze brightening as the words seem to lift themselves directly from her heart. "But you are his future."

Arael lets the silence stretch between them for a moment before a gentle smile twitches at the edges of her lips. "Maybe our King isn't aware that you want more from him than just respect. Maybe you should give him a nudge in the right direction?"