The little green girl had grown up sheltered and undisturbed deep within the heart of the jungle. Its leafy embrace and fair amount of shade blended seamlessly with the peculiar forest green of her coat and she has been able to effectively use her surroundings as camouflage. It was an instinct nurtured by Kagerou for the girl was to remain unseen and out of the clouded leopard mare’s way unless called upon.
She was always simply Girl. A child to fill the hole in Kagerou’s heart, but who always failed to do so – she was a reminder of the red girl who would never take one breath of the jungle-infused air. Why should this abandoned green thing live, while the red girl of her flesh and blood would never know the joys of life? And so the leopard mare couldn’t ever truly love the green girl.
She had never known the true power of names until a grey warrior had seemed so confused with her lack of one. It had never occurred to Girl that that would be so strange a thing. Girl was what she was, but it didn’t define her as an individual. But it had been a strange, yet familiar, sudden voice in her mind which had solved her dilemma. The leopard mare had passed away but she had bestowed the green girl one last gift born of guilt and regret.
Lucetta.
It was a name that Girl would cherish forever.
For it was a name given from the only mother she had ever known.
But with this gift came her last contact with Kagerou and she was left abandoned once more within the vast jungle. All she knew was how to hide and with this she had retreated deeper into the jungle’s embrace. For the most part, she had avoided well-worn paths that had been walked by numerous jungle-women. When she sometimes ventured closer to the outlying border of the jungle, she’d often seen horses crossing to and fro freely.
Some of the more familiar jungle-women consisted of the grey warrior she had briefly met years ago, the golden lioness that found her when she had first rescued Namir, and a strange mare that seemed overly fond of fire (which she found strange since fire was dangerous in a lush forest such as this). But she never approached these jungle-women. She lived isolated from the others – a hidden secret of the jungle. But she remained intrigued by the independent, strong ladies of the jungle. Sometimes she wondered if she would ever get over her fear of approaching them, but she wasn’t completely alone. Namir usually remained close by unless he needed to go out and hunt.
It was during one of his absences that Lucetta had decided to venture closer to a main pathway in an attempt to scavenge some fallen camu-camu that littered the ground. She would occasionally indulge in some of the plentiful fruits if a troupe of monkeys had recently shaken some of the more ripe ones out of the high-lying jungle canopy.
