Ota was sleeping peacefully, not far from her den and under no cover, laying comfortably in the grass under the pale moonlight. If she had her way, she would be snuggled into her den and there to stay for the night.. but that wasn't the way it was anymore and she was having a great deal of trouble adjusting to it. Naturally, she tried to stay up late and sleep through the day but it was harder than she thought it was going to be. Tonight, she had barely made it past sunset before her tired body gave up on her.
And she was perfectly happy to be sleeping, dreaming happy dreams, not realizing she had anywhere she was supposed to be.
Completely opposite of Ota was Kamia. She was enjoying every second of the new ruling that made all major pride activities occur over the night. Like much of the pride, she had always favored the night and now that it was mandatory it made her life that much easier. Except when it came to keeping up with one friend in particular, Ota.
Before Shangyue's coup and the subsequent change to the order of things around here, their positions would have been switched. Kamia had always insisted on keeping a partially diurnal schedule for herself, since for the most part the pride was diurnal despite the significant portion that preferred the night. It would be dramatic to say she was chronically late and always slept through important parts of the day.. but she'd needed wake up calls more than once and Ota never did.
Tonight was different.
"Ota!" she cried with a laugh when she spotted the bright white form of her sleeping friend from a distance, picking up the pace and concluding the hunt for her absent friend before it even really began, "Wake up, sleepy-head!"
She heard her name but it wasn't enough to pull Ota back to consciousness and away from her happy dream. She'd spent more than a few nights awake, just like she was supposed to, and now she happily surrendered to a routine that was proving much harder to break than expected. The second call from Kamia was enough to merit rolling over and finding a new, more comfortable position.. wakefulness was creeping back up on her but she still resisted.
Kamia was now standing over the white lioness, smiling. It was obvious she was awake, just not getting up. She gave a loud, audible sigh as her only warning and then gave Ota a good shove.
"Wake up, I said!"
"Whoa!"
Ota rolled away from Kamia, helped by the momentum offered from the shove, and finally opened her eyes so she could glare at her friend. She didn't want to get up, she didn't exactly stay up all day but she hadn't exactly been able to rest either.
"I don't want to get up," she whined, rolling back onto her belly and covering her eyes with her paws, "I'd start the rebellion right now if it meant I could just go back to sleeping at night."
"Ota!"
Kamia's smile immediately disappeared at the mention of a rebellion and her eyes wandered around them. She didn't think there was anybody else around but she hadn't been watching so carefully that she was certain this kind of talk was safe. This was no longer fun, Ota was being downright dangerous now.
"Don't talk like that," she hissed.
The change in Kamia's tone finally got through to the lazy lioness. She frowned and lifted a paw off of her face and frowned back at her friend. She didn't mean it but Kamia was right, she ought to be more careful than that. Silently, she lifted her head and looked around. Nobody else was around, not that she could see.
"Sorry, Kamia," she said in a hushed voice.
"You have to be careful, we all do," Kamia responded, still with a slight hiss to her voice, "I know you meant that as a joke but we don't want to cause any trouble."
In fact she knew it wasn't entirely a joke, she only hoped if there were any ears around that ought not to have heard such foolish declarations they didn't pick up on the use of 'the' over 'a'.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, louder this time and definitely awake now. She pushed herself up to her feet, frowning and shaking the first from her clean white fur. They had all agreed to stay out of this whole messy takeover business, it didn't truly matter who the ruler was as long as the pride as a whole did not suffer and there was some small hope Shangyue's reign would smooth out once this whole weird paranoid guard phase ended.
"I must be late for a hunt, am I?" she asked, glancing up at the sky and trying to remember where the moon ought to be when they were supposed to meet to hunt.
"Not yet," Kamia responded, her tone softening as the subject changed, "I came to make sure you weren't late for it, actually. You know Hyousa is working really hard to make this work, you should be a little more respectful and dedicated."
She smiled.
Ota rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at Kamia. Of course she was taking complete advantage of being the one who was on time and well prepared for the hunt tonight, it never happened. Ota was the responsible one, Kamia was friendly and out-going but she wasn't always the most reliable either.
"Yes, I'll try harder," she said, sighing.
"OK, come on," Kamia said, circling around Ota and facing back the way she came from, "Let's get a move on, maybe we won't be the last ones to the hunt."
With a nudge, she started them off towards the designated meeting place for tonight's hunters.
"You looked peaceful," she said, "No unusual dreams tonight?"
Ota followed along as Kamia led their little walk toward the hunt, keeping up but still clearly not entirely on board with spending her night doing this. She would be lucky not to cause a scene when she got there. Bright white fur and tired, she'd probably trip over a prey beast and send them all running before anybody could do anything.
She glanced over to Kamia when asked about her dreams, wondering why her friend would steer them back to a conversation she'd just scolded her over.
"Maybe, it's hard to tell when you're woken so violently," she said bitterly, but she smiled and continued in a more sincere tone, "But no, I don't really think so."
Kamia only shook her head at the remark blaming her for any loss of valuable insight the dreamworld might have offered Ota if she had only been allowed to sleep, still smiling.
"So nothing new," she murmured thoughtfully.
They were both seers but Ota seemed to be better at it. Or had better visions, anyway. Whatever she saw for the future of the pride, though, she'd only told Kamia because of this shared talent and they had agreed to keep it a secret for now. But it was hard, not everybody was having as easy a time just letting things go.
"Are you sure we shouldn't say anything?" she asked, lowering her voice, "I bet your uncle would really like to hear something optimistic."
Ota stopped walking, shaking her head. They'd discussed everything quietly and the biggest thing that the white lioness was sure of was that it wasn't their story to tell, really, not yet. She did see how it was unfortunate they couldn't spread a message of optimism around but that would certainly affect the future in a way Ota didn't think would help. Never mind that living gods and seers were respectively ignored and not understood by the pride. Why would anybody bother believing them?
"No, this isn't really ours," she said firmly, "I doubt we'd be able to keep anybody else out of trouble, let alone ourselves, if we started blabbing."
Kamia stopped a few steps ahead of Ota, frowning.
"Now's not the time," she said, sighing, "I know."
Ota frowned back, nodding. It had to be enough for them to be able to be optimistic about the future, there wasn't anything else for them to do. Knowing what was coming was difficult, tricky.. so many variables affect the future and Ota absolutely could not convince herself that seeing a vision of the future could be the catalyst that brought about that future. Besides, the whole story lacked so much detail, just about anything could happen.. and still she was sure it wasn't about either herself or Kamia.
"Let's get a move on," Kamia said, decidedly changing the subject back to the hunt, "We've got to hurry or we're going to be late and that just means you have to be more energetic even later tonight."
She smiled again.
"Alright, alright," she said, snapping back to the task at hand. She didn't think she could maintain enough energy for effective hunting too late into the night, she might get a second wind but those tended to be early and short lived.. that could be how she was so alert now, even.
"Let's go!"
And with that she took off, getting ahead of Kamia and leading the way.
Fin!