[PRP] It Must be a Sister Thing

[MoonRazor]

"Doo-de-doo-de-doo, it's a wonderful world," The little cub hummed to herself as she pranced along, caught up, as always, in the here-and-now and revelling in the absolute joy of being who she was, where she was, and how she was. Certainly, the cheerful weather did nothing but boost her joyful attitude, but Raziela supposed that even if it had been pouring rain, she would have felt bright and happy anyway.

It was a certain attitude she held toward everything she did. Her philosophy regarding life allowed - almost dictated - her optimism; if everything had already been written by Fate, hiding far away above the clouds, then why should she, Raziela Liron, attempt to fight it? If there was no escaping what had already been determined for her, why should she try? And why not, then, make the most of what she had and simply enjoy?

So she frolicked, and she played, and she sang without a care in the world.

The cub paused a moment, breaking off her song as a small butterfly fluttered into view. "Hello there!" She greeted it brightly, though she knew it could neither understand nor pay her any heed, and spoke more for the sake of brightening her own day than anything.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur stretched, delighted with the sunny day. She was so tired of being cooped up inside that she had been tempted on several occasions to let loose with a very un-ladylike scream which would have horrified her mother and sent her siblings into peals of laughter. Pur had resisted the urge by reminding herself of those two potential unpleasant consequences. Instead she had occupied herself with practicing some of the niceties of nobility. She could genuflect beautifully now and she could walk with perfect noble carriage without tripping over anything or running into anything. Her mother had praised her efforts.

But now, today, she wasn't particularly focused on being the perfect little noble she was known for being. She was thoroughly preoccupied with soaking in as much sunlight as she could before the weather turned nasty again, as she had no doubt it would. This lovely day was probably just meant to lull her into a false sense of security. Well, she'd show them. She'd enjoy it to its fullest and expect rain the next day, too!

As she made her dancing, prancing way from the den Pur's eyes fell on her sister talking to...a butterfly. Raziela was a strange creature, but she was also one of Pur's favorite siblings. Her happy outlook, while a trifle naive, was at least not particularly critical of Pur's desire to be a perfect courtier. Pur's tail swished as she watched her sister for a few more moments before speaking, adopting a higher, squeakier voice to be the butterfly's.

"Hello! You have very big eyes. Are you going to eat me?"  

[MoonRazor]

The little insect fluttered toward the ground, and clung delicately to a tall stalk of grass, shifting its wings to keep its balance. The pattern of the creature's wings were delightful - to match the fine day, Raziela supposed, and sent thanks up to the clouds for coloring up the world with the butterfly's hints of oranges and pinks.

She was so engrossed in studying the insect's painted wings that she failed to notice her sister looming closer.

The voice startled her and small squeak of surprise found its way unbidden from her muzzle as her jade-green eyes widened in shock. Leaning closer to the butterfly, she sniffed it. Had it really just... talked to her?

The idea that a butterfly could carry an intelligent conversation shocked her so that she couldn't help but vehemently shake her head and deny the accusation. "Of course not!" She insisted. "I would never eat a butterfly!" Although honestly, she doubted if she had what it took to catch the butterfly in the first place.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur blinked hard when she realized her sister hadn't actually noticed her presence. The young lioness didn't like to be ignored, but she knew that wasn't the case with Raziela. Her sister had simply, somehow, managed not to notice her and come to the baffling conclusion that the butterfly was talking to her. Which struck Pur as being borderline moronic, but then she reminded herself that there were some non-leonine animals whose speech could be understood. She didn't think butterflies were among them, but that might explain Raziela's odd conclusion.

Almost as amazing to Pur as her sister's gullibility was the fact that the butterfly hadn't immediately taken flight when she sniffed at it. In her limited experience with insects, Pur had found that they tended to want to get away from her, even though she, like Raziela, had absolutely no interest in eating them, or even killing them. It would be a lot of uselessly expended energy and if she did manage to kill one, she knew it would be messy. She'd seen dead things before, including dead bugs, and the smeary-squishy texture didn't appeal to her delicate sensibilities.

She decided to play along with the talking butterfly idea. After all, it did no harm and it wasn't a bad way to spend time, pretending to be a butterfly. Adopting her squeaky voice again, she said, "Are you sure? You have very sharp teeth, you know, and could eat me in a single bite. Half a bite, even."

"What's your name, big thing?"  

[MoonRazor]

That the butterfly hadn't fluttered away had yet to register in Raziela's mind, though it could hardly have been expected of a young cub who firmly believed an insect was making conversation with her. In any case, if the butterfly was, indeed, attempting to hold a conversation, it only made sense that it remained where it was.

"Oh, certainly," she reassured the creature. "I suppose, however, that never may be too strong a word. There is no way for me to forsee what might be written for me tomorrow, or the day after, but today, at least, I can assure you that I will not be eating any butterflies." The skies had their ways, ones which Raziela could not even begin to fathom, and so she left the dealings of fate and destiny alone. There was no point, in any case.

"My name is Raziela Liron," she introduced herself at the butterfly's request. "It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, indeed, ...?" The cub's words trailed off expectantly, awaiting the insect's own introduction.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur was finding herself drawn into this charade. A part of her was very aware that if Raziela discovered what she was doing her sister might be angry, and justifiably so. Pur would be furious if someone did the same thing to her, even if it was only meant to be fun, as Pur meant it to be. Pur would have felt that she looked foolish. But then, Pur also wasn't the sort to talk to butterflies anyway, so the situation probably would never have arisen had the sisters' roles been reversed.

"We don't taste good," Pur warned in her butterfly voice. "Very bitter."

It didn't occur to her that a butterfly probably shouldn't know how its own species tasted. Pur didn't know how they tasted either, but she didn't think they'd taste good. Not based on how they looked squished. Her sister's next words presented her with a bit of a quandary, however. Now she was being asked to supply a name for the butterfly, and Pur was absolutely stuck.

"I'm called Flutterflit," she said.

This was going far enough. She didn't want to have to make up lots more butterfly culture. Keeping very low to the ground, Pur removed herself a short distance so that it would appear she'd just arrived and then came bounding into the grasses, beaming with an enthusiasm she didn't quite feel, but could fake reasonably well.

"Hello," she greeted her sister cheerily, pleased to be using her own voice now.  

[MoonRazor]

"Do you now?" The cub considered the butterfly's words. Bitter? Ew. And yet, it was difficult for Raziela to imagine that anything quite so pretty could taste bitter. "I suppose that simply keeps predators away," she mused, more to herself than to the butterfly. "I don't believe you taste quite as terrible as you think." She added, now addressing the insect that had once again settled into the grass.

"Flutterflit!" Raziela echoed, grinning. "What a wonderful name. It reminds me of the groundlings that live in the forest. I suppose your life is rather like theirs, free to do what you like." Not that she was complaining about her own life. She was alright with being a Noble if that was what she had in store for her. And if not, then the time woudl come when she would discover who she truly was.

At the sound of Pur's voice, the butterfly lifted hastily into the air and flitted out of reach, continuing on its way and leaving the two cubs. "Oh," Raziela drew back at the insect's sudden flight, watching as it disappeared. "Good bye!

"Pur! You will never guess what just happened to me!" She exclaimed, spinning to greet her sister.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"I probably won't," Pur agreed, smiling.

The fact that she knew what had happened wasn't important. Had she not been around and orchestrating the event, Pur knew she would never think to guess at her sister's conversation with the butterfly. Of course, if she hadn't been around to play the role of the butterfly, the conversation probably would not have taken place anyway.

"Why don't you tell me? I haven't had anything interesting happen to me all day."

She settled down, sitting primly with her tail wrapped around her body and her forepaws neatly lined up so that they just barely touched. It was a position she had been practicing along with her curtsies and walk. She wanted to be every inch the perfect courtier, and that included her physical attitudes. Because she was with her sister, she didn't adopt the regal, somewhat condescending lift of her chin which would perfect the position.  

[MoonRazor]

For a moment Raziela couldn't help but admire Pur's perfect posture. The cub had yet to develop any sort of critical eye for such things, but the fact that her sister had an exceptionally noble image was not lost on Raziela. She carried herself in a distinctive way, more the result of the fact that she had watched her parents all her life and had unconsciously learned to hold herself much the same way than anything, but she had not the patience and dedication that Pur seemed to have to perfecting every nuance of her walk, seat, curtsy, or otherwise.

"Well, I was simply walking along, enjoying the beautiful weather, when all of a sudden, I saw a butterfly." She began. "I was in perfectly wonderful spirits, so naturally, I said hello to it, not expecting it to understand or anything, of course. Then, out of nowhere, it turns to me and says, 'Hello! You have big eyes. Are you going to eat me?' And of course, I said no." It would have been awfully rude to tell a creature it was about to be eaten to its face, in any case. "And it started to talk to me! It even told me its name - Flutterflit, it said. Isn't that a wonderful name? And whoever has heard of a talking butterfly!"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur listened to her sister relate the tale of her experience with the butterfly and smiled. Her smile wasn't condescending, but rather pleased. This was her sister, and she did not yet feel that she was in any sort of competition with her, though that might change as she grew up, given how many females there were in her generation and how few males there were of appropriately high birth. For the time being, Pur was pleased that her little game had served the dual purpose of amusing her and delighting her sister.

"Flutterflit?" Pur asked, giggling. Her giggle was mostly because she had generated the butterfly's name herself. "What an odd name! You can't even tell from that name whether the butterfly was a boy or a girl."

She tilted her head to one side and considered her sister's question before quickly reaching the conclusion that she had never heard of a talking butterfly.

"Maybe the players have? Perhaps there's some play that has talking butterflies in it. But I've never heard of such a thing." As she spoke her tail lazily curled and uncurled, acting completely of its own volition. When she noticed the motion she stilled it. It was difficult to be a proper noble some days. There were times when there was so much energy in her body that she could hardly contain it.

"If I was a butterfly, what do you think my name would be?" she mused, returning to the subject of butterfly names.  

[MoonRazor]

"That's true," Raziela agreed. "It sounded rather like a girl, but now that I think about it, perhaps butterflies have much, much higher voices on account of their being so very small?" She paused to consider the thought. "I still suppose it was a girl though," she said finally. "It was much too pretty to be a boy."

The mention of the players drew a gleam into the cub's jade green eyes. Her love of the plays that were put on by the players was a well-known fact, and she rarely missed a show if she could help it. The idea of being able to inhabit an altogether different persona fascinated the cub, as if being on stage allowed the players to take control of their destinies, even if just for a little while. In Raziela's world, there existed no way for her to have such control over her fate.

"Oh, if I knew some of the players, I could ask them," she mused, although she knew none. She recognized most of them by sight, having seen their productions so often, but never had she had the courage to approach them and make conversation. Her mother, certainly, would not have approved of such behavior. Perhaps one day, though, it would be written in the heavens for her to befriend a player. "And if it turned out that there wasn't, I could suggest for such a play to be created. If they happened to need such a story, that is."

She glanced back at Pur, having realized that her gaze had shifted to focus on nothing in particular with her thoughts. "If you were a butterfly?" She echoed, a soft smile creeping across her face. "Dreamflight, perhaps," the cub suggested, thinking of Pur's perfect posture.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"That could be it. Our father's voice is deeper than our brother's, and Zamba's much smaller. But...I don't know." She'd decided to use a higher, squeaky voice for the butterfly because she thought it less likely her sister would recognize her voice if she distorted it enough and she didn't have enough of a low register for that to be convincing at all. Besides, she had a difficult time imagining a butterfly with a low voice.

"All butterflies are pretty, though. So wouldn't they all be girls? Or maybe they are all girls, and moths are all boys? That's too bad for the butterflies, to have to take such plain mates." She had not yet considered that if she found herself in a political marriage, unlikely though it was, she might not have the luxury of being attracted to her future mate. After all, she was only a cub and not given much to that sort of realistic contemplation of her future. It was still all princes happy endings for her.

Pur's pleased smile faded just a little when Raziela mentioned that she might ask some players about the matter. Of course, her sister had just said that she didn't know any, but it had been very clear that she would have liked to know some, and though players might be entertaining in their professional capacity, they weren't really appropriate companions for noble daughters like Raziela and herself.

"Silly," she said, twitching her tail at her sister playfully. "If you suggested it, they should have to make a play whether or not they needed such a story. We're important people. Well. Father is, and mother, too. And we will be, when we've grown up."

Her smile returned with her sister's name for her. Dreamflight was a good name, and she liked it a great deal. And then she had a brilliant idea.

"If you were a butterfly, I think your name would be...Skyjewel. We should pretend to be butterflies and only introduce ourselves by our butterfly names and do...butterfly things." Her brilliant idea began to seem a little less lustrous when Pur realized she had no idea what butterflies did. But she liked the idea of having another name and she wanted an excuse to use it.  

[MoonRazor]

"That is unfortunate," Raziela agreed, nodding her head thoughtfully. The idea made her unspeakably glad that she was a lion and not a butterfly. She would never have to worry about spending her life with a plain, rather boring-looking lion - at least not nearly as boring as a moth, and at any rate, anything with purple couldnt be dull-looking in the least.

"I suppose you're right." It was true, what Pur had said. The mere fact that they had been born to Noble parents assured that they had a certain influence within their pride's society, and though Raziela had wondered what she had ever done to deserve such power, she realized that she simply had it and could use it to gain whatever she so wanted. Such as a play about talking butterflies. There would be one someday, she decided, but perhaps she would wait until she had befriended some of the players like she had originally hoped.

"What do you suppose it will be like, being important?" She wondered aloud. She hadn't spent nearly enough time observing her parents to have truly formed any sort of lasting impression as to what being a Noble actually entailed.

"Skyjewel," The cub echoed the name with a grin. Such a beautiful name. She wondered why they didn't all have such dreamy names - they certainly made everything seem more exciting. "That's a wonderful idea, Pur." She agreed enthusiastically, as eager as her sister was to make use of her new name.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Maybe it doesn't have to be. Maybe the moths are actually the ones who think they're getting the bad end of the deal because the butterflies are all so pretty, but I bet they aren't very smart. Moths seem kind of sneaky to me, so they're probably smarter than butterflies." She couldn't think of any real-life examples wherein one half of a mated pair was significantly more intelligent than their more attractive mate, but she supposed it had to happen occasionally. There were plays about such people, and the idea had to come from somewhere, didn't it?

"Or maybe the butterflies are happy to have the moths be smart enough for both of them and the moths are happy to have the butterflies be so pretty." She liked that idea much better, because then everything worked out well for everyone. That was the best kind of ending. And that was about the extent of her thoughts on the matter, for it made her brain hurt to try to put herself in someone else's place. Empathy was not one of her gifts.

"Oh, I don't know. Probably marvelous. I mean, we'll have a responsibility to those of lower classes. We'll have to set a good example and make sure that our decisions are good. That's why we're supposed to practice being good when we're younger, I think." And Pur certainly did practice. All the time. She wanted to be the best noble there was.

"And of course the lower classes will admire us and be only to happy to serve us. If we seem to be good at what we do, they'll be honored to do so." At least that was something like how her reasoning went, though she usually demonstrated far less concern for how lower classes perceived her. They were lower for a reason.

With a grin, Pur quickly changed the topic, correcting good-naturedly, "Dreamflight, you mean! What should we do, Skyjewel? You're the one who's talked to butterflies. You probably have a better idea of what they're like than I have."  

[MoonRazor]

"Oh, that would be the best," Raziela grinned, glad that they had found a way to make both butterflies and moths happy. "It's a much nicer story when they both get what they want." And, of course, that was all that mattered - the happy ending. It wasn't often that one of those happened in real life, as the cub would come to realize as she grew, and it was always smart to enjoy the little victories when they deemed fit to appear.

"Responsibility?" The idea was rather foreign to so young a lion, and the little cub could hardly imagine having anything resembling responsibility. That her parents had responsibilities, she knew, but the notion that she would someday have to shoulder those same responsibilities had never before occurred to her. But of course, Pur would think of such things. There was not a shadow of a doubt in Raziela's mind that her sister would grow up to bethe perfect noble she was always trying to be.

"I should hope that I don't let anybody down, then," she murmured. Suppose she wasn't good at what she was supposed to do? Would that make her a disappointment both to her parents and to the lions of the lower classes? All of a sudden, the weight of the world seemed to press down on the cub as she envisioned life as a failure in the eyes of all those above and below her in society.

But as quickly as it came, the weight disappeared as Pur changed the topic, and the day once more became fun and games. "Well, Dreamflight!" She beamed, eager to transform into the beautiful butterfly her new name promised she would be. "I think we should hunt flowers. That's what butterflies eat, and before we do much more, we should energize ourselves."