and when i breathed
my breath was lightning
Rhy is not a warrior. She doesn’t fight for sport, has never wanted to be part of the army. Words and smiles and diplomatic visits have always been her forte. But still, she has fought. She has killed the monsters as the world began to die. She has fought for her life and her freedom. And she is deadly. She is a lioness, she is electric, and she is dead already. There’s very little damage she cannot inflict on a horse without more than a blink of her eye. And there’s also something rather satisfying about digging sharp claws in the flesh of the monsters that tried to kill her, something strangely gratifying about the warm, sticky blood that sprays out from a fatal wound.
But though Rhy is powerful in those ways, she has always sought knowledge. Because that too, is a power. A different form, certainly, but you cannot win a battle if you do not know your enemy. It is also far easier to avoid them in general if you simply know where to step lightly. She keeps up mostly on the politics of other kingdoms, slipping into them as a ghost, unseen and unheard, and then disappearing again. It’s a handy little trait. Far easier than trying to pry information out of other well-trained diplomats.
Rhy did not lose her family in war though. She has no reason to dislike it, other than the fact war is a bloody, horrible waste. But she did lose her family. She was only a year when they left her behind, taking her scared sister far away from the electric in Rhy’s veins. She stumbled into the Jungle that day and tried not to look back. But she dreamed of the day that her parents would return, would find her in the Jungle, grown and successful. Amazing, as Brunhild had called her. No one had ever called her amazing before that.
But instead, she found her parents in the afterlife. Only her sister returned, and still, their relationship was tentative at best. It was growing stronger, Kora’s butterfly heart buried beneath the ice that flowed in her sister’s veins now. But her parents were dead. And she’d never met the brother she supposedly had. Rhy’s family, in so many ways, had always been the Sisters of the Jungle.
Even if Tessla had looked more like Quark, Rhy might not have placed the mare. That had been so long ago, and Rhy had been so young. She remembers the mare, certainly, but she does not trust the picture in her head. It has morphed over the years, becoming fuzzier, without details. Rhy tips her head just slightly at the comment that the mare has been here many years. So has Rhy, and she has made her way through every part of this Jungle. How had no one ever seen this other mare?
“It’s a pleasure, Tessla. But may I ask how you have avoided notice for so long?” It’s not a rude question, but rather a genuine curiosity.
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
