Well... Yes and no? They're four-legged animals with horns and protective powers, and inspired by foreign contact, but one's a rhino while one's a lion-dog. I can see where you're coming from though.
And so.
Some days later, Sanae and Nazrin met the rhino at the lake. She was a sacred beast with limbs like a cow, sharp horns on her nose and forehead, and a shell on her back. Until a moment ago, she had looked like a girl with horns on her forehead, but now she had shown her true form and was soaking her legs in the lake.
"Oh, I see... This is what they call a rhino around here," Nazrin recalled something she'd totally forgotten. A suisai.
Four legs. Tough hide. Horns. When bits and pieces of information about the actual rhinoceros were passed forward into East Asia, people's imaginations gave birth to this fantastic beast. From the fact that it lived near water, they believed it held divine protection against fire. Nazrin had seen its shape in sculptures at temples and shrines.
"Well, I don't have the power to protect far away places or anything. If I happen to come across a fire, all I can do is throw water to put it out," the suisai explained with a smile.
"Amazing... So this is a rhino..."
Not the familiar rhino from picture books and so on, a rhino of Gensokyo. Looking over the suisai, deep in emotion, brought her back to the excitement of the other day's expedition. She never could've seen it on the Outside, but here was a mysterious world where it was just walking around naturally. Sanae realized once again what a wonderful decision she had made by coming to Gensokyo.
