and when i breathed
my breath was lightning
Lagertha takes the lead, picking up as General where Rhy leaves off as diplomat. If nothing else, Rhy can’t imagine leaving her friend. Perhaps that’s why she stayed, why she kept serving the Jungle no matter what. They were two pieces to one much better mare then either of them could be alone. Rhy has no skills as a general (though she’s not useless as a warrior simply based on instinct and an arsenal of useful traits), and Lagertha’s diplomatic skills are sorely lacking.
Rhy is content to listen, watching the others interact. A few of them cast their eyes skyward, Lagertha mentioning the ravens as well. “You should assume the ravens are listening, even if you can’t see them.” She says simply. It’s her job to know what’s going on in other kingdoms, after all, and being invisible often makes spying easy. Though she knows her cousin well enough anyway, and she knows the ravens take many different forms. They were not always black or easily spotted. They could made of clouds, for all she knows, hiding in the blue sky above.
Another joins the group, closing the distance between herself and Rhy specifically. Fuzzy she says, and it takes Rhy a minute to figure it out. She’s never spent much time using her empathy. She doesn’t like it, honestly. Not that it doesn’t come in handy at times, and she’ll generally open herself up enough to catch hostile feelings, but mostly she doesn’t use it. Still though, this new mare is somewhat calming, and Rhy figures out what she means. Is it magic? Maybe. Some combination of the traits in her veins, or maybe it’s just a product of being half dead and half alive. Maybe she uses the empathy to shield herself without even knowing.
Honestly, she has no idea. She smiles slightly. “Beats me,” she says honestly, because she’s not sure what makes her fuzzy where others are not. Maybe it’s simply because she doesn’t know her own emotions. How can someone else read her if she can’t even read herself?
She listens to Mast, wondering if he’s underestimating the Chamber. She suspects, though Straia would never dream of telling Rhy any of these details, that the Chamber never really meant to kill the kill. Well, Straia probably did plan to. She probably didn’t care if it happened or not. The Chamber simply wanted to start a war. And they had. They didn’t need to destroy a magical entity to do so (could anyone kill the magic of Beqanna anyway?).
But in this case, none of it really matters. It’s only speculation on Rhy’s part, a guess based on what she does know of her cousin. But her cousin has become a different mare then the girl Rhy once knew. Perhaps she simply wanted to destroy it all. Instead, she sticks to the topic of how to converse, because it’s the thing she’s best at. “I’m an empath. Though you’ll have to teach me that trick.” She says to Witchita.
rhy
the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle
