and when i breathed
my breath was lightning
Leaving Gail behind didn’t bother her. Gail never really wanted to live. She wanted to die at the end of the world, but she hadn’t for them. And so Rhy had continued to live, for Gail. Because Gail gave something up for them, and it would be a waste to throw it away. Nor was she bothered by the sound of the langoliers, though it still haunts her dreams now and again, in the rare moments where the Jungle is mostly quiet. She didn’t even mind the monsters that she fought and killed. The first things she had ever killed. They do not haunt her. No, in some way they made her more alive than ever. Allowed her, for once, to be her. Because she may lead a peace caste, may be against war, but in the end, she is deadly.
What had gotten to Rhy was finding her parents. They were supposed to be alive, off in some other land enjoying one another’s company. They were supposed to come back one day. But instead, they had been in the afterlife. They were gone. And she had to be the one to tell her sister. It had taken her some time to find the courage for that conversation, and when they finally spoke, the words spilled out in a waterfall and something between them finally clicked. And if nothing else, Rhy finally got to know what it’s like to have a sister. Really, truly have one.
They returned to the afterlife to see their parents, and it was Riagan who gave her the message. She comes, though she is not as young as the others. She was not old, but they had been children in that quest. And she cannot imagine what it had done to them. She does not come as a ghost, though she has become comfortable in that second skin. She wears it as often as she wears the electric sparks on her skin.
She comes in the air this time, wings made of solidified electric at her sides, beating against the night sky that is lit both by the moon and her wings. When she had tumbled out of the sky, from one beach to the other, she had discovered that she could solidify electric, could surf through the air on it. Otherwise she would have survived the end of the world afterlife only to hurtle to her death in the real word.
There aren’t many horses out this evening, and she can see a small group gathering. She descending, guessing it must be them, though she cannot make out the details from this far above. When she lands, some distance away from the group, she knows it is them. And she makes her way over, though everything she might have asked has already been said. She wants to know why they have been called together. As best as she can, she has moved on. She lives to serve the Jungle again with a few extra skills, and she isn’t sure she wants to dreg up this experience.
Though she does note Ramiel and his ghost form, and she nods just slightly in his direction. He, more than anyone, could understand what it was like to be both alive and dead. Something she would always contend with. And sometimes, she wondered why she so often preferred being dead.
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
