08-24-2016, 01:57 AM
i don't love you;
but i always will.
The Jungle accepts her, but it does not recognize her blood as having lain thick upon the loam at any point in time. Riva doesn’t know much of her bloodline in all honesty, or how she is a distant relation to the very Queen that leads them. She knows enough, to know that the Tundra and Dale are more like to claim her but she shuns both kingdoms for reasons all her own. Blood is not always thicker than water, and Riva was always more like an oil slick than anything else.
She has taken the oath; sworn herself to land and sisterhood alike.
They are her bloodline now, mothers as much as daughters, sisters and aunts of a kind.
Lexa is fond of the capybaras that move through the Jungle.
The rest are enamored of the monkeys and the birds.
Riva likes the snakes and the crocodiles, even though she is not cold-blooded like that.
There is a mare, isn’t there always? That the bay tovero comes across in the midst of her daily travels; she cannot claim they are patrols, she is not looking for intrusions beyond those made by the more familiar predators. But the paint mare catches her eye right away - paints seem to like the Jungle, maybe they adapt better to the heat and humidity that sucks the moisture right out of the marrow in their bones and slicks it across their necks and chests in a rich lather. She is tobiano to Riva’s tovero, and smokey black to her bay.
She seems to be experiencing a moment of indecision, or perhaps she is being blocked from further ingress by the Jungle and Riva finds that odd. What does the Jungle see that she doesn’t? The mare seems smooth in her actions, her recognition of the land apparent in the way her body is taut and fairly signing of its desire to be fully immersed in the Jungle’s embrace. Will it only take but a welcome from Riva to break this mare free? “You look eager to be amongst Her again.” It is evident who “Her” is as the bay tovero falls in line with the smokey black tobiano, and offers her a quick sisterly nudge of her nose. Riva is in a rare friendly mood apparently, or maybe she sympathizes with the stranger’s desire to give to the Jungle’s compulsion.
Riva