and when i breathed - scorch

[Rhy]

and when I breathed, my breath was lightning

She had found Lagertha first, not because one was more important than the other, but because she needed to see for herself that Lagertha was okay. Scorch had not been in space, had not traveled to the end of the world, and most importantly, had not disappeared in the mouths of the langoliers. So Rhy found Lagertha first. Well no, that’s not entirely accurate. Rhy found Kratos first. She went to the Tundra, before anywhere else. For the first time in her life, the Jungle did not come first.

Finally, after she’s assured herself that Lagertha is alive and as well as could be expected after she was eaten at the end of the world, Rhy goes to find Scorch. They had never finished their last conversation. Rhy had been torn away by the call of their Dark God, but she wanted to find her Queen now. Wanted to tell her the words that had been on the tip of her lips as Scorch admitted forgetting, as she had started to cover the world in darkness.

Also, she had a few new tricks to show her Khalessi.

Eventually, she finds the fiery mare (truthfully, it is not that hard, Scorch is noticeable). She doesn’t even know where to begin. There is so much to say. So much that has changed, and happened.

So she simply dives in.

“I had forgotten what my mother looked like,” she says, so very aware of the past tense in this sentence. Only weeks ago it would have been I have forgotten what my mother looks like. But not anymore. “I saw the realm of the dead, and my parents were there.” She had told Kratos, but it hadn’t felt entirely real then. It feels far more real now. “She looked like the sun. I don’t know how I forgot that.”

“I can go back there, too.” She’s not entirely sure how she knows this, but she does. She shifts, not to a lion, but to a very transparent form of herself, her coat dotted with gray in this form. Remnants of her near death in the afterlife. But now, she was both dead and alive. “I think maybe I could find her. The gimp.” And she chuckles, recalling that conversation and that story, letting Scorch know that she had heard every word.

There’s more, of course. There’s the end of the world and her understanding of her relationship with Kora and Kratos and who the hell she is now. But these aren’t the things she says, because how do you even find those words? Instead, she sticks to this. Rayelle is gone. But Rhy can get to them, Rayelle and Kagerou both.

rhy

the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle

character reference here  | character info here

[Scorch]

Ah, how she remembers her trapezes through the land of Quests. Skirmishes with the tricksters seemed to be her strong-suit, though fire, dragons, and evil versions of herself have all played parts. A chimera, a booby trapped cave, and a portal into Other Worlds resurfaced to memory, too. She hadn't always been this... Decked out. For the first five years of her life, Scorch had been as regular as regular gets, a Plain Jane, even, bay roan and hardy. If only the ones who begrudged her knew this, that at one point in time, Scorch wasn't what she is now.

Though how greatly she resents them for not knowing, Scorch cannot describe.

Rhy approaches the fire-painted woman all at once, abrupt in a way Scorch does not expect. Immediately she perks her ears, eyes turning bright green with curiosity. Silently she listens, allowing Rhy to speak freely, pausing and rushing forward as she wishes. Her words cause goosebumps to sweep across the woman's body, hairless though she may be; and at her final words, she feels as though her fire has turned to ice.

"Kag..." Her best friend's name catches in her throat, swelling in her chest until the rest is spoken in tears. They swim in the depths of her yellow-green eyes, never falling, never failing. For a long minute, Scorch is frozen in memory, caught in a tidal wave of emotion. Leopard spots flicker before her eyes, the heavy scent of purebred Arabian swarming her nostrils. For one long minute, it's as though she doesn't need Rhy to bring her back. She's already reunited with her gimp.

And then she falls, falls, falls, until she is once again alone.

"Rhy, I would forever be in your debt," Throaty is the voice she speaks in, drenched in genuineness and gratitude. "Please, tell me more about what happened. I shouldn't be trusted with speech in this moment anyhow." Big girls don't cry.

[Rhy]

and when I breathed, my breath was lightning

Is it true that big girls don’t cry? Perhaps. But she couldn’t imagine not crying at the moment she found her parents in the afterlife. First, because she was so happy to see them again that she didn’t even think of the implications. And then, because only moments later, she understood what finding them there meant. In a strange way though, she understands that having them dead means she can see them now. She knows where they are. She knows they are together and happy and alright. They are gone, but they aren’t really gone.

Well, they are less gone than they had been when she simply didn’t know where they were.

It doesn’t entirely make sense, honestly. All of it. She’s happy and sad all at once, still not entirely sure any of it happened. She can understand how Scorch and Kagerou might have felt like their quest was only a dream. Maybe it all was a dream. But still, she knows that she nearly died. She knows, without a doubt, that she has the ability to turn into a ghost now.

“Carnage called to us, to find Gail. Apparently he’s capable of love.” This too still baffles her a bit. She doesn’t expect him to be capable of anything but destruction, truthfully. But clearly there’s so much more to him than they will ever really know. He was young once, a king once, lived like Eight and Cam live now. She supposes she shouldn’t be surprised he had a life one. But still, it’s hard to wrap her mind around all of it.

“He sent us to space, and Lagertha came, and we made it through space into a wormhole. After that, I don’t know where we were. Somewhere in the future, when the world was being destroyed by gods or monsters or both. There were so many monsters, but Lagertha and I found the wormhole there too. I couldn’t see her then. I don’t know what she faced.” She turns slightly and nods to the ice cold burn mark on her haunch. It was hard to burn her, but ice seemed to do the trick. “One of the three creatures I encountered.”

She doesn’t mention the one that morphed into Kora. She’s still not sure if that was a monster at all, or just her own mind at that point reeling with everything they had been though. “Then we found Gail. At the end of the world. I’ve seen the end of the world. Heard the monsters that destroy it. I didn’t see them, but Lagertha might have. She never made it back from there. I don’t know how Carnage got her home. But when the rest of us got back with Gail, Beqanna wouldn’t let her back. I guess because she was already dead, really. We were all thrown into the realm of the dead.”

It’s real. They are all there. Echion and Kagerou and Vanquish and her parents. Kora. The first Kora. Not her sister, but the girl that never lived at all. “Vanquish got me home. Sent me flying through a rip in the realms. The world’s funniest sight, because I couldn’t shift into a lion. Do you know how awkward it is being flown around by someone in horse form?”

She laughs. She can’t help it. That part of the ordeal had been hilarious, despite the fact she was nearly dead at that point. “I guess some of that realm came with me. I’m half dead, half alive. Well, capable of shifting between the two, anyway. You know I’ll take you back. Wouldn’t have told you if I wasn’t going to.”

rhy

the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle

character reference here  | character info here

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

No, it is absolutely not true that big girls don’t cry. On too many occasions tears have streaked Scorch’s wide cheeks before drying, or on the darkest days, dripped on to the earth below. Echion’s death, Rain’s lifelessness, Kagerou’s death, and Hestoni’s enslavement all come to mind. Alas, in these moments, as she listens with baited breath, Scorch denies her tears access to her skin. During the beginning of Rhy’s retelling, her puce-green eyes swim and sparkle; as time passes, however, they dry, solidify.

She speaks not, listening instead to the tale which to others may surely appear tall. To Scorch, however, each word vibrates with an undeniable truth. Her mind wanders briefly to the dragon dream, and to the horror-nightmare; perhaps these events are not as uncommon as she once believed. Watching Rhy, Scorch subconsciously twines threads of light through her cream mane. Shadows simply do not suit the Avthillar.

Minutes later, as Rhy’s words halt, Scorch allows a grin to crack her expression. Though a plethora of differences lies between them, she simply cannot deny the friendship which the two have built from the ground up. She stills remembers Rhy stumbling upon the scene of Simeon’s birth, and the subsequent kindling of their amicability. How they have both grown.

“Damn, girl. You got a helluva story in your pocket for scaring your kids to sleep now. The ghost-shifting will definitely add to the imagery.” Her bellowing laugh ricochets off of the surrounding greenery, echoing Rhy’s lighter laugh. “But really. Thank you. I’ll definitely take you up on that offer one day.” Her eyes soften slightly, and though she does not verbally explain, her eyes show that she must wait until the crown passes. Seeing Kagerou again – and Echion and Rain – would surely break her for some months, and letting down the Jungle is not one of her responsibilities. Not even for dreams which have suddenly become reality.

“Quite frankly, I’m surprised you didn’t fall off of the fellow. Your balance must be on point, for a diplomat.” The scoundrel winks, allowing herself to ease back into the comfort of their friendship after the shock of what happened. “Clearly you’ve been taking lessons from Lagertha though, if you fought monster-gods and time-eaters. Quite an impressive scar as proof, too.” She leans to the side, craning her neck to gaze upon the wound once more.

Straightening, her grin turns grim. “And Rhy, however much I fucking loath Carnage, I’m glad he got you and Lagertha – and Wrynn and Nihlus – back safely.” Her yellow-green gaze clouds over with specks of flint and angry red, teeth grinding beneath her skin. Swallowing, she relaxes her jaw, wiggling it slowly until she can manage on last phrase. “But he is not capable of love.”

Scorch

Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

[Rhy]

and when I breathed, my breath was lightning

She understands what Scorch means about the offer one day. She hadn’t seen Kagerou in the other realm, and she wasn’t ready to go back looking either. There were so many questions the golden girl had for her grandmother. So many years to make up for, years that they never got to spend together. Rhy wants to understand the legacy that her grandmother left behind. She’d never heard much from her mother and she knows now that she never will. To find her mother again probably means to find Kagerou as well. And she isn’t entirely ready for that.

She can’t blame Scorch for not being ready either. An entire kingdom rested on her shoulders. There was no time for sorrow, for personal space, for quiet. Rhy barely found any of that herself, and she wasn’t the Queen. So instead she simply laughs at the first comment, the ghost shifting and scaring her children. But her children would be half Amazonian, half Tundra Brother. Half Rhy, half Kratos. She didn’t think they were going to be children likely to be scared. Whenever she actually had some, that is. She wasn’t in a rush.

“I’m going with sheer luck. Also, Vanquish is massive. There’s a lot of room to slip and not fall.” She chuckles slightly, but there’s something sad in that laugh and her eyes. So many lives lost over time. It was normal, natural, certainly and she knows this. But still, to be the one to tell your boyfriend his dead father saved her. Yea, that was fun. “Claws and sharp teeth and predator instincts helped too.” She’d spent enough time around Lagertha though that Rhy wasn’t entirely useful. She’s no trained warrior, but between the electric and the lion and now this whole ghost thing – well, she was useful, at any rate.

Her last comment strikes her though. If it hadn’t been for the whole journey she just undertook, if she hadn’t faced the end of the world and in doing so, been forced to grapple with all the various loves in her life, she might have agreed. But there were so many ways to love. She understood that now. She believed he was capable of it. Not the kind of love Rhy or Scorch may be more familiar with. But something. And if he thought it was love, then it was. Even in his twisted, strange way.

After all, Gail loved him back. She’d seem them together on the beach. Despite leaving her at the end of the world, Gail still loved Carnage. He’d done something right.

But she doesn’t argue, because that’s not the point here. Because she doesn’t care enough about Carnage and his past to sit here and defend him. This was their time, not his anymore, and she’d rather live for them. “Oh, I met with Errant as well. He’d like to have an alliance. Normal terms, plus we encourage our sons to live in the Tundra and they will encourage their daughters to live in the Amazons. Nothing forced, just recommended.”

rhy

the electric lioness of riagan and rayelle

character reference here | character info here

[Scorch]

WATCH THE FLAMES CLIMB HIGH INTO THE NIGHT

The image of – seemingly – delicate Rhy atop the great – in size – Vanquish brings heavy chuckles to Scorch’s charred lips. After such a shock as this (it’s not every day your close friend travels to the afterlife and offers to bring you back), Rhy’s description of the passed Desert’s King eases her mind nicely. Although she must admit that imagining him dead didn’t exactly comfort her. After all, that may be her, and sooner than later.

“No need to be so catty,” Scorch quipped at Rhy’s mention of her lioness features. A largely pained grin consumes her expression at the terrible pun, along with a couple apologetic chuckles. At least now, if anyone cared to ask, I could say that Scorch has a sense of humour. An absolutely atrocious one, but one must make the best of the worst – most shocking – situation.

In an alternate universe, Rhy chooses to argue on Carnage’s behalf, and the scene unravels from that point. Scorch reveals Hestoni’s decade of enslavement to the man Scorch refers to as the Devil. Perhaps this does not faze Rhy; she saw Gail and Carnage on the beach. She saw the window to a Beqanna perhaps not tormented by the dark god, where Carnage slipped into a permanent lull. But she did not see Scorch’s suffering, nor the way they were separated at all times. She did not see the way Carnage laughed in the face of their love, their union, and their family.

In that alternate universe, however, Rhy is not wise; in reality, she is more so than perhaps she knows.

“That bodes well with me. The Brothers are growing strong. I’ll let the Sisters know at the next meeting about the foal exchange; I’ve nothing against it, besides the fact that it has largely failed in the past. Still, no harm done in the effort.” Her voice has slipped back into her more authoritative one, though she hasn’t forgotten their easy friendly banter. Her mind whirls with thoughts, possibilities, and multiple futures which lay in her hand. For the moment, however, she speaks not on the subject.

“I ought to find Sarkis, though – the latest of my brood. She’s as adventurous as Shahrizai, as danger-prone as Simeon, and as stubborn as Kaida. A combination which makes even myself nervous, which is saying something.” Smiling warmly, the hairless rat brushes her maw to Rhy’s mid-neck before turning and vanishing into the vast Jungle underbrush, senses tuned to the search for her brazen little daughter and princess.

Scorch

Khaleesi of the Amazon Jungle

Hope you don't mind I'm trying to finish some threads, and I'm positively pleased with this one. I love Rhy so much. I love all your characters, like for realsies. <3