Lee watched his niece descend effortlessly to the cloud beneath her as though it were an everyday occurrence; and it began dawning on him that perhaps, for her, it was. Even as she gestured for him to do the same next to her, he realized that she must have been the one to call the sudden halt to the storm. Yet while the idea intrigued him, there were other matters at hand that must take precedence over his curiosity regarding her apparent abilities.
Glancing down with some trepidation, the overo brought himself to a hover above the summoned accumulation and stilled his wings to alight gingerly upon it. If it weren't for the understandably sobering circumstances of their meeting, he might have grinned then - after all, he'd never stood upon a cloud before - but as it was, he simply folded his wings and lowered himself down so that they were once again at eye level.
He waited in quiet, a kind understanding in his eyes as he watched Rae's mind race. Her expression was measured, but he could almost see the questions she had flicking like shadows just behind her gaze. Finally, she asked, "How do you know who I am?" Shifting a little upon his cloud, Leander reflected on everything that had happened to bring him here to this point. "It's a long story," he admitted.
Then he began.
He explained the circumstances of his childhood outside of Beqanna. How he'd grown up without knowing his sisters. How his parents had always intended to return so that they could be a family again. He spoke of Rayelle and Riagan with fondness, feeling the old familiar pang in his chest when he came to their passing. He touched on the years he'd spent searching for their homeland in the hopes of reuniting with his sisters. He told of the elation he'd felt to have finally found Beqanna and described all that led to his meeting Kora, only to learn that Rhy was gone. How he'd gotten sick and nearly died of the plague. How the tension between he and Kora had culminated in his crash upon the Mountain.
And, finally, how he came to encounter Rhy in the world beyond.
Leander did his best not to spare any details in the narrative, especially when it came to Rae's mother and their meeting. He could only guess how hungry she must be for answers - for much of his own life, he'd known the same hunger - and so he described it all to her at length. From everything they'd spoken of to the ease he'd felt around her, from the undercurrents of energy she carried to the way she'd talked of her children - and how she'd sounded so proud when she'd finally told him of Rae.
"She wanted me to find you," he said. His voice faded to a murmur. "She's been watching over you, Rae. She hasn't missed a moment." After a beat, he added, "She loves you." It had been so apparent. Though their time together on this earth had been cut woefully short, the love that Rhy had for her children shone from her eyes, more brightly than any of the electric sparks therein.
"I know it's a lot," he conceded quietly, "And you've only just met me." Lee paused then, suddenly nervous. The reality was that not everyone was as desirous for familial relationship as he was. Everything that had gone wrong with Kora seemed proof enough of that. Still, if there was even a chance that Rae felt differently than his icy sister did on the subject, he had to go on. "I guess my hope is that we could maybe get to know each other... and that eventually, we could count one another as family." He brought a gentle smile to his mouth as he finished, finally falling silent while the wind ebbed and flowed around them, as though the sky were softly breathing.
