If she was being honest with herself, Aleta wasn't truly upset that her mother had another family.  After all, she had not been raised to believe in that fabled true love that seemed to leave other girls her age sighing and longing for their white knight to come and save them.  No, the little lightning girl had been blessed with parents who were merely friends - an oddity, given the outcome of their little tryst - and who had raised her together, each loving the other in an entirely aromantic, but no less passionate, way.  That Sohalia had lived and loved before and after Kaj and Aleta was not particularly surprising.

But the Transcended had abandoned them, and that was the part that stung.

It was not a question of Kaj's ability to fill the void left by an absent mother, for he was all that she could imagine a father being and then some.  To Aleta, Kaj was the sun and the moon, the stars that guided her through the darkest night.  But Sohalia had been a soothing presence, the cooling balm to the burning prickles that assaulted the girl with the slightest breeze.

Sometimes, a girl just wanted her mother.

Her sobs began to subside to sniffles as the Aurelight began to speak, coaxing her out of her heartbreak to stand once more on solid (logical) ground.  The girl could tell that the stallion wanted desperately to embrace her, to shield her from all the hurt that the world could possibly throw at her, to steal away her pain and hide her somewhere it could never find her again.  However much she might appreciate the thought, she loved him all the more for allowing her the space she needed to stay comfortable.  Though her affliction appeared to be fading with age, she still didn't want to be touched any more than necessary.

"You didn't know either?" she sniffed, her tear-filled eyes turning up to his.  The little lightning girl didn't know if her father's surprise made it better or worse - at least she wasn't alone, but wouldn't Sohalia's betrayal of Kaj be worse, somehow, for all that the two of them had shared?  The anger the girl had felt began to ebb, giving way to a bone-deep exhaustion that threatened to consume her.  Kaj's words had the desired effect; Aleta's tears finally dried, and life began to flicker once more within her bicolored eyes.  The lightning that flickered angrily along her neck dimmed and lessened until only the faintest of sparks remained.

"Talk."