[PRP] Nail Biter, Tail Pouncer (Kianira x Nagua)

[mouselet]

The perch in question was above what Nagua had taken to thinking of as "his" mud pool. Every day, around this time, he slipped out of his mother's den to come and play in it. He'd push it around, mound it up and splat it down and generally become utterly filthy in a surprisingly short amount of time.

This was always good when he made it back home, because then he could share the mud with his siblings. Especially Zerrin and Laanfa, whose light colored fur was just screaming for some darkness.

The cub was surprised to see that there was another lion already at his mud hole when he arrived, though the big purple adult was on top of a nearby log, rather than in the mud itself.

"Oh! Hi!"  

[mouselet]

"Playing in the mud," Nagua answered the older lion with a grin. She seemed like a nice lady, though he'd never seen anyone quite so purple before. Then again, sometimes it was hard to tell he and his brothers and sisters were related, they looked so little like each other.

"Did you want to play with me?" he asked, not really noticing how the adult had carefully perched on the clean moss of the log, not even her tailtip touching the mud below.  

[mouselet]

Nagua cocked his head up at the older lioness. She wanted to know what games he played? Didn't want to just dive right in? That seemed odd to him, but whatever, grownups did what they wanted and it wasn't always easy for cubs to understand them.

"Well, sometimes there's treasure and you have to dig for it," the boy told her. "And sometimes you want to build a mountain of it...but then the spirits get angry and you have to knock it down. And other times it's a blanket that you wrap up in!" He liked the last one the best. Sometimes between the water and the filtered sunlight of the swamps, Nagua got cold, and mud kept out some of that. For a while, at least.  

[mouselet]

Nagua gave the grownup lioness a confused look as she mentioned frogs. He knew what they were of course, little hoppy things that lived in the muddy water. But why would he hunt them?

"I come here to play with the mud, not the frogs," he told her solemly. But the cub's whole expression brightened as the purple lioness slipped off her log into the mud.

"So what game do you want to play?" he asked eagerly.  

[mouselet]

"Okay!" Nagua agreed readily. It wasn't actually a game he'd played before and it didn't really have anything to do with mud, but it was something different and he had someone to play it with! Not to mention that he got to play it with an adult, which made it a grownup game!

The cub was so excited that his first pounce went completely wide and he landed facefirst in the mud. That was okay though. He got up again and readied himself to try again.

Grownup games were the best, he was certain of it.