[PRP] Checking In

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Between her own children - thankfully now adults - and her apprentices, Lailah was certain that Shaman was a bigger job now than it had ever been before. Of course part of that was her own fault, after all, no Shaman in living memory had actually had children...

So it was a nice breather to be able to dismiss the Apprentices for a few moon-widths to run errands and generally get out of her fur. However, it seemed that the white lioness wasn't going to be quite alone in that stretch of time. The dark-furred lioness approaching her made that perfectly clear.

Shaman she might be, but she couldn't simply refuse to see the Queen.

"Good evening, my lady," she offered to the other female.  

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"An entire night? Never!" the older lioness replied with a laugh. "A mere portion of the evening is all I can claim, else who knows what my Apprentices will decide to do without me?" It wasn't that she didn't trust her students, but she knew well how much of a pawful she'd been for Stellaluna.

And Stellaluna had only had one Apprentice.

"What brings you over here?" To be honest, Parisa was far from her favorite pridemember. One of Firaga's children, it wasn't entirely surprising Shangyue had chosen her for his Queen. In fact, the best thing Lailah could say about the other lioness was that she was nowhere near as destructive as the King, her father, or Tyfu and her family.  

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"Antara?" Lailah couldn't say that she was surprised by the Queen's choice of focus. The lioness was the Heir-Presumptive given Parisa's own lack of children. Of course, she had reservations of her own given the circumstances.

"She's a good Apprentice overall," the white lioness replied. "But she tends to be quiet and keeps to herself. I try not to press her too hard. After all, I'm her teacher, not her mother." Unspoken - that Kamia or Parisa should be the one to try and wriggle out whatever troubled the young female.

Of course, if Lailah had any say in her successor, which she rather hoped to but couldn't guarantee as long as Shangyue was in charge, it wouldn't be Antara. Not until she was able to get into her Apprentice's head better than she could now.  

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"It's hard to say when children are involved," Lailah reflected. "They're surprisingly resilient, though still vulnerable in the ways you least expect." She didn't know the other lioness that well, so she couldn't accurately judge what kind of mother Parisa would be.

And if she didn't oppose Shangyue, she was no sycophant to fawn over the monarchs.

So she fastened on the Queen's query happily.

"Alkina? She's doing quite well! Really, I'm quite glad to have two Apprentices, and not simply because of how...vulnerable...my position has been in the past." Stellaluna might still be alive, but the Shaman and Apprentice before her had both gone missing, presumed dead.

"If either of them were here, I'd attempt to get them to talk to you, but even if you aren't a mother, you might remember how adolescents love to talk to adults they don't know." The sarcasm was thick in Lailah's voice as she smiled. She too remembered that age.  

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The small smile on on Lailah's face faded as Parisa turned the subject to more...serious ground. Sure, there was one former Shaman, herself, and her two Apprentices now, but no one had ever determined what had become of her and Stellaluna's predecessors. And as for the living monarchs and former monarchs as opposed to the deceased ones...well, Parisa may have been a baby but Lailah had been a full adult when Shangyue took over.

"I suppose..." the white lioness replied. "The Shaman and Apprentice before myself and Stellaluna vanished so long ago now, and I doubt we'll ever know what happened." It had been just before she was born, making Lailah, as the first lioness born to the high class afterwards, the new Apprentice by default.

She didn't even know their names. How awful was that?  

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"Of course," Lailah replied with a graceful nod as Parisa took her leave. The new Queen was...interesting. And not necessarily in a good way. There was much the King had done that the Shaman supported, but some stains would never wash away. And Firaga, Parisa's father, had been at Shangyue's right paw the whole way. The white lioness could never be completely certain what the black lion had taught his children.

But as long as Parisa was civil and polite, so would Lailah be and keep her doubts to herself.

Fin.