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Uhura had seen some weird shit in her life on the mainland. She’d seen black cats as big as her; little barbed urchins with poisonous flesh; brightly-hued schools of birds that darkened the sky with their sheer numbers and filled the air with rainbows and the flutter of feathered wings. She’d seen tall horses, small horses, horses with spots and brindled stripes and chestnuts the color of blood. She’d lived with all sorts, including a brief stint under a lead pair that ended up being secretly related. Thieves, vagabonds, do-gooders, saints and sinners and misfits and elite, she’d rubbed elbows with each one at some point in her travels, and though she had yet to learn about the world, she thought she’d seen it all as far as her own species was concerned.

That said, the mare that approached her in this new land was unlike anything she’d ever experienced. The stranger lacked any sort of hair, but her bare fleshed danced with vibrant flames. When Uhura’s blue eyes met her grey ones, she noticed distinctly reptilian pupils. Even her name - Scorch - was unique. She returned the mare’s smile with a small one of her own, ears perked forward, and when she replied, her voice came easy and true.

“Nowhere here, that’s for sure.” The paint wondered if she still smelled of faraway places, of the sea and the sand and the foreign air. Or maybe everyone here had no hair and flames on their bodies and she stuck out like a sore thumb. “Tell me, Scorch, where is this Jungle? I’ve been here for a few days, but I’ve been travelling South and have yet to see anything vaguely jungle-like.” Her gaze swept the horizon, almost skeptical, as if there couldn’t be a place so different in climate within any feasible range of the winter wonderland they stood in. After a pause, she looked back. “My name’s Uhura, by the way.”