and when i breathed
my breath was lightning
Rhy never really got the chance to know Quark, though she wishes she had. The electric mare was a foal still when Quark ruled, and Rhy had stood on the border of the kingdom without anyone coming to find her. She heard the kingdom call and simply decided to go smashing her way through the Jungle. She says smashing because at the time, she could barely walk around here. Now, she moves with only the grace of someone who has spent the majority of their life inside the dark jungle could. But still, she recalls that day of her life all too well.
Quark had called and kingdom meeting, and then handed over the throne to Brunhild within less than a year after Rhy’s first introduction. But she remembers the look on Quark’s face when Rhy mentioned Kagerou. Rhy herself may have been born in the Dale, but her heritage was in the Jungle. She always was Kagerou’s granddaughter, even if she had never had the privilege of meeting her grandmother.
There were so many horses in Rhy’s family that she barely knew, or never met. Her parents left when she was only a year to take her sister away. Kora, so afraid of the electric in Rhy’s veins. Kora, who strangely had become the only real family in Rhy’s life now. She never knew Kagerou. She barely knew Quark. She didn’t really know her family on her Dad’s side, and they were all gone now as well. Scorch was the only real tie she had to Kagerou at all.
Rhy just simply kept going though. She threw herself into service of the Jungle, and the Sisters became her sisters. The Jungle became her family. She looks back, certainly. Wonders what her life might have been, if things had turned out differently. But in the end, this is her life. This is how it’s been, how it will be. And so she moved on.
Rhy senses the mare moving through the Jungle and the jaguar as well. The mare is new to Rhy, though there’s no fear. Still, Rhy goes invisible and finds the mare and the jaguar. The cat seems content to let the mare watch, and so Rhy doesn’t worry too much. The hunt is long, but the death is swift, and Rhy doesn’t think much of it. She’s seen this a thousand times now. One rare occasions, she has participated in the hunt itself (though she does not eat, and the Jungle cats do not seem to mind the aid of the strange lion in their midst).
The mare moves away quickly when the hunt is over, and Rhy follows, though she switches back to her normal, visible self. She nickers slightly, not trying to startle the girl. She simply chose to be invisible because she wouldn’t scare away the jaguar’s meal that way. “I’m Rhy,” she offers, when she catches up to the other. “You seem well versed in the ways of the Jungle.”
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
