She loves thunderstorms.
(drip, drip, drip — BOOM — drip, drip, drip.)

There is something about the electricity that surrounds them, coating each lungful of air they take in. It’s crackling and white-hot in her lungs and then into her vessels. The entirety of nature knows when a storm is rolling in — the birds settle down before the sun has disappeared, the forests get eerily quiet in preparation, the trees begin to whisper as if encouraging one another — and she becomes nothing more or less than the rest of the forest-life (just another creature preparing for the winds and rain and lightning).

(drip, drip, drip — BOOM — drip, drip, drip.)
(silence.)

He finds her in this silence (she knows he’s coming, hearing his struggles through the aftermath of the thunderstorm), the leader-Prey. She’d slipped away from emerald-Prey’s cavern as the skies had brightened, warm from nestling against decomposing bodies and (though she won’t admit it to anyone at this point in time) his spotted side. There’s content in her chest, warm and rumbling, and not even the leader-Prey will be able to unsettle it.

“Nexu.”

She chitters in response, aware that he has seen her and not entirely caring. Her mood is casual, having ate while the storm raged outside the mouth of the cavern and Partner had crafted water-fawns she had easily splashed through. She drags herself away from the damp undergrowth, mud drying on her inky chest. She attempts their slippery language, though her words are rudimentary and clumsy. “Wha’... wan’... you?” The letter ‘t’ has been more difficult, with the expense of her tongues, while the letter ‘n’ carries an easier skill with the position of the tongue. Nonetheless, her words should be audible and decipherable as she looks at him, two intelligible eyes peering at the leader-King with pinpoint intensity.