and when i breathed
my breath was lightning
She never doubted that she was loved. It’s a strange thing, to be left by those that love you the most. Though she knows too that some of it was on her shoulders. Her father had offered to stay, but she couldn’t make. She wanted to so badly, wanted him with her. He had helped her learn to control the electric in her veins as a child, had taken more shocks and burns that anyone ought to. She did not, of everyone, want to lose her father.
But how could she ask him to stay? How could she ask him to wallow away in the Jungle, where he did not belong, when he could be beside Rayelle? He belonged with her. And Rayelle had to take Kora away. At the time, she simply blamed Kora. But as she grew up, she learned to stop blaming any of them. Kora couldn’t help the fear – fear of the electric that had shocked and hurt her when they shared a womb. Rayelle had to help the daughter that could not help herself. And Riagan? Riagan had been too good to force misery upon him for her own benefit.
So that is love. It had just left her terribly alone. Until she found the Sisters, Scorch, and Lagertha. At the end of the day, she always has Lagertha. Who may not be much of a shoulder to cry on, but she’d punch whoever made you cry. Which was sort of better.
Lagertha chimes in, and Joscelin agrees to the plan. So off they go. Rhy settles into step with them, starting it off but not getting too far ahead. The move off to the right some, their path a bit diagonal through the trees and the vines. Monkeys chatter and screech above them. The cats are likely lurking in the shadows somewhere, but they do not see any. She turns her attention some to Joscelin at the mare’s question, though her eyes bounce back and forth between where they are going and the other mare. Should could cheat, and turn herself dead and just float through all the obstacles, but that doesn’t seem like the way to learn the Jungle.
“God, how old am I?” she laughs, because she has begun to lose track. “Fourteen years, or around that. I came here when I was a yearling, and never left. Was born in the Dale, but I was just a little too much for the residents there, and the kingdom never did hold my heart, as lovely as it is. Besides, the Sisters seemed rather content to have an electric girl in their midst.” At the time, she had only been electric. But it had been more than enough. It was all she could do not to burn the Amazons down by mistake some days. How far she had come.
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
