It shouldn't feel good to make the pretty red mare sad, but there is a sick sort of satisfaction in the knowledge that her words had weight. It doesn't make her happy, but it cuts some of the sadness like lancing a wound that had been festering deep inside.

As if simply refusing to engage in the same happy-go-lucky mood that Tefnut had arrived in had broken some sort of dam, words came pouring out so fast and thick that Rethe could do little more than stand before them in silence, bracing herself for whatever revelation came next.

The first lie hurts the worst. Not just because Tefnut has scored a hit (though she has), but because she doesn't seem to understand they are playing at all. Rethe does not believe for a single moment that Tefnut wanted her to meet Aadrika first. Nor does she believe that Tefnut cares for her opinion above all else one single whit. After all, Rethe had not been the only one to come back with her from the Dunes, nor had she been the one to be approached first.

The name of Apex does not cause any recognition in the dark mare until Tefnut explains who he is, and then her face tightens and her eyes go darker. A brother of hers that bore no connection to this land. To her family. A son that her father had sired with someone who didn't even matter.

One practical and one perfect stranger to rule at her sides then. Though Rethe would have loathed to admit it, she'd been stung that she hadn't even been in the running. What the hell had she been thinking? The Commons had been no place for her any more than the Dunes had been. She should have just struck out for the mainland after her father had disappeared and quit pretending she was going to find a scrap of happiness here. But she had made her bed. She had picked this one, and no matter how lumpy, how hot, how stiff it was, she had chosen it.

"Don't lie to me, Tef." She grates out, staring hard-eyed at the crashing waves. "Save those bullshit lines for someone who believes them. If my opinion had mattered at all you would have asked me, not handed my family's homeland to a sister you barely know and a "brother" I've never met."

None of this is fair to put on Tefnut. It's a culmination of Rethe's own bitterness surrounding her family's absence, the things she'd had to endure as a girl, and her own uncertainty in feeling like she was being replaced. But Tefnut is the closest thing to "safe" that she has right now, apart from her mother.

And her mother isn't here.

"You claimed the territory because you wanted to. You promoted Aadrika because you wanted to. You accepted a random stallion as a sublead that you know nothing about because you wanted to." Her gaze was sharp as she brought it back to Tefnut. "Stop pretending like it was anything more than that. I'm a footnote. I was when you claimed me and ran off with Caine, again and again, and I am now. This land doesn't mean anything to you," she accused, eyes flashing. As if Tefnut was supposed to know these things with no one to tell her. "But it means everything to me."

Her tail lashed - a physical embodiment of the storm raging in her breast and she shifted her weight back, her tumultuous emotions hard to keep contained. "And it's fine. I chose this for myself." Whether those words were for Tefnut or for herself was hard to say. "You don't have to waste your energy trying to explain it to me."