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 Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:13 am
Luckily for anyone nearby, that was not the dominant mood with Shaitani tonight. She had glimpsed the moon tonight, fat and full as it peeked through the branches of the canopy where a great old giant had fallen, tearing a hole in the protective 'roof' of her home. It wasn't often she got to see the sky... like most of her kind, she feared the sun with every fiber of her being, even if she might once have wandered under its warm rays. Now, she was a leech, a blood-sucker, beloved of the Goddess, and the sun's touch was pain and death.
Her paws padded lightly over the groundcover, almost dancing with how she placed them down. The moon made her feel so strange... light and heavy, cool and hot all at the same time. How wonderful everything was! She wanted to rub herself against it all, rub the scents that teased her nose into her pelt and leave her own mark on them. She weaved carelessly among the trees and bushes, no purpose or direction to her steps.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:37 am
It was curiosity that had driven him here, and curiosity that still drove him on. This place, he had never set paw in it before, and it intrigued him. He might have preferred to go in daylight beneath the darkness of the trees, but then Chia would have had to go with him, and Ayo did not want to put her in any sort of danger, fiercely protective of his young charge even as she grew from bumbling juvenile to sleek adolescent.
And then, as if all of his senses had not been alert before, they most certainly were now. There was someone...something here...and he could detect it...the presence of another. Lion perhaps...and another hint of something...blood perhaps? But it was not like that of a serious would, different, as though an essence...and curiosity struck him again, and he ventured closer.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:49 am
Shaitani burst from the cover of the bushes and fell forward, her legs crumpling as her chest hit the ground and rattled the bird skulls around her neck. She struggled up the next moment though, looking around with a surprised sort of expression before she shook herself vigorously, dirt flying up in a cloud that she stepped from smoothly.
She gleamed in the darkness, utterly at home in it despite how brightly she shone. It had been a source of mystification to her pride, no doubt, when they so loved the dark reds and blacks. But who could nay say the king, when he chose to take a ghostly lioness as his mistress? The scars that decorated her fur bore testiment to how well the former king had loved her, measuring it in drops of blood and pain. She had taken it all willingly, every bruise and cut, because it had been him, her beloved Drakul, that had given them to her.
A soft, yearning sound drifted from the lioness as she came to a stop, her head swiveling as her ears did to catch any sight or sound around her. Where was she now...? And for that matter, where was her lord and master? It had been so long since she'd seen him last... she ached with missing him.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 1:59 am
Ayo was stunned when the lioness suddenly seemed to appear, breaking into his sight with what wasn't the grandest entrance that the red lion had ever seen. He made a low, inquiring noise when she seemed to appear so terribly lost, and his heart went out to her. A strange creature she was, strange and beautiful and utterly unlike anything that he had ever seen before.
The lion's low voice rumbled softly in the darkness, "Are you all right, Miss?" Inquiring after her welfare seemed the best thing to do, after all. Ayo himself was not unmarked by scars, and he viewed them as both good and bad, testament to the lessons that he had learned in his life.
Ayo'obi, however, still had much to learn about living...and the creatures that walked this world with him. He had never met anyone or anything like Shaitani before...and though she was beautiful, some inkling of common sense told him that she could be dangerous. She was, however, female, and he would give her all the courtesies that he believed she was to be afforded.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 3:10 am
The pale lioness started like a spooked gazelle as the voice called out to her, spinning around to regard him with wide, staring eyes. It was a long moment before she blinked slowly, then again, before her voice came. It was suprisingly child-like for an adult lioness and seemed filled with the threat of tears.
"I can not find my way... I've lost it, lost it in the darkness and I shall never find it again..." She moaned as she swayed as though fatigued, unconciously taking on the mannerisms of what would best sway this stranger. It was always this way with her. She had no personality, it was all just to match the time and place the happened to be in, and always to better her own place in life.
Her eyes focused on him again as she layed her ears back shyly, bone decorations rattling together. "Who are you, sir? I've never met you before... so bright, so red... I would have remembered one such as you, surely." She let a small smile curl over her face as she lowered her head a little, never taking her eyes from him. He was a fine looking lion, even if nothing in comparison to her lord. He looked washed in blood down every inch of him, and it delighted her in a strange way.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 4:31 am
Quite instantly he took a step forward, fearing that she would fall, for for a moment she teetered dangerously. Protective instincts had leapt to the fore much like the knight he had once wished himself to be... It did not matter what sort of lioness this was, for she was of the fairer sex, he reminded himself, and his mother had always taught him that females should be treated with respect.
"No, you've never met me, as I've never met you either. My name is Ayo'obi, and who might you be?" He smiled warmly at her, noting again how very lovely she was, scars and all. He did not know why she was acting this way, but he took it as something of an invitation...she was flirtatious, he could then flirt back. "As I'm sure that I would never forget a lady such as yourself."
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 10:25 pm
The female smiled as she took a step forward, swaying again from paw to paw with every step.
"Ayo'obi..." She cooed, her red eyes wide with a strange gleam to them. "Such a strong name... it fits you so well..." Her smile was a tad predatory and the lioness moved loser, moving to a point that was almost too close for comfort. She had no concept of personal space, obviously, but in a way, it helped her focus to be so close to another.
"My name?" She hummed as she tilted her head, red-tipped tail flicking. "Shaitani. They have always called me Shaitani." She laughed as she lifted her face, staring right into his eyes as her nose hovered meer inches from his as she breathed deeply.
He smelled like... sunlight. She drew back and sneezed delicately, her face contorting in a strangely cute and bemused expression.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:20 pm
"Shaitani..." He echoed, "Tis a lovely name, Miss..." He said quietly, not backing away from her, as he felt that would probably be viewed as exceptionally rude by anyone's standards. Her odd, predatory behavior didn't frighten him, he wasn't worried by it...this to him was a game in which the rules could change at any moment, subject to the whims of a female.
"Bless you..." He said politely, leaning nose to nose with her after she sneezed. "Are you quite sure that you're all right?" The female had seemed wondrously disoriented when she had first appeared after all, and so Ayo, ever the gentleman, thought to look after her welfare.
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:47 pm
Shaitani giggled and dismissed his question with a flick of her tail, her head tilting to the side as her ears perked forward again.
"I'm fine now that you are here." She giggled lightly, stepping the the side to pace around him. Her eyes never left his face, even as she circled him. Her slender form hovered inches from his, never quite touching, but never stepping to far away either. He was such a nice little toy... so eager to make sure she was okay and so willing to over look her little oddities. It amused her.
"What brings you so far into the night jungle, Ayo?" She purred as she came back to his front, her neck arching prettily and her tail swaying behind her. "I don't find many handsome lions out here."
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Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 11:59 pm
He let her look, after all...who was he to stop her? There was nothing about him that he was ashamed of...he'd learned long ago not to despise his red coat...or fear it, as his father once had feared his own pelt, and now, as many females had confirmed it, Ayo thought himself rather handsome, and his green eyes followed her and her silken movements. "Ah, that is good then..."
He made a purring sound of his own, canting head to one side to watch her, "Curiosity, I suppose, the wish to know what this place holds, and you flatter me, Shaitani, but I suppose I could say I did not expect to find a beauty like you beneath these trees either."
An altogether pleasing surprise, in his opinion, at least this female had been cordial, and not abrupt with him, as others had.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:19 am
She giggled at the compliment, wiggling gently.
"You flatter me, Red-one!" Shai grinned as she lightly bumped her shoulder against his, looking at him with what could be called adoring eyes. "And curiosity, was it? Then I take it you don't believe the saying, "Curiosity killed the serval"? You're very brave to come this far into the jungle, especially at night... dangerous, unclean things wander the night, you know. Things that would find you a most delectable morsal..."
A soft laugh slipped from her as she suddenly danced away from him, bouncing a few steps back the way she'd come before turning to look back at him. A trick of the light, surely, but it seemed for a moment as though her eyes glowed out of the darkness, the white of her pelt almost glowing.
"I could show you what you seek to see, Ayo..." She purred, staring unblinkingly at him. "I am one with the night, with the jungle..."
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:35 am
Ayo chuckled in soft delight, mesmerized by her patterns of speech and the way she spoke of danger like a second nature to her. It was dangerous here he knew, and she was peril, but perchance that was why he was so very drawn to her. "Oh they might be dangerous..." He replied easily, "But I would not so easily make of myself a delectable morsel...I would be a very hard-won meal, were anyone to attempt it..."
She seemed to him a nymph, a forbidden thing, and something that might be withheld is all the more tempting to one seeking the prize. Following after her, he inclined his head in assent, "Then show me, Shaitani...that I might sate my curiosity..." He feared neither the darkness or the shadows of the jungle, hesitance overridden.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 12:53 am
He was like a moth to a flame and Shai did shine so brightly in the jungle night... She wove a spell over him and drew him deeper with the promise of dark secrets.
"Come with me... Come with me!" The pale lioness sang as she danced into the darkness, turning often to look behind her for him. "Into the darkness, into the night! Follow me, Follow me!" Her laughter rang out as she lept up onto a fallen behemoth, a tree probably as old as the jungle itself that had finally given up it's battle with gravity.
She moved fluidly, like a moon-shadow over the ground. Perhaps she had some sense of his willingness to be ensared and it egged her on, or perhaps she had no clue and only acted on impulse... either way, she sang as she led him deeper into the jungle along paths only she knew, drawing him farther and farther away from the safety of the open spaces. Or the danger of them, if you were like Shaitani and her pride.
The lioness lept lightly from the fallen tree, soaring through the air to land on her paws on the ground. It was a surprising contrast to when she had first apeared and she had landed on her face.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:19 pm
He followed her call with a reckless grin on his face, throwing caution to the winds as he dashed after her, a streak of blood-red against the jungle floor, following the pale, ghostly form of the lioness, as though she were some siren, and he the only one who could hear her song.
Ayo knew that he wouldn't lose her easily, for he himself was in top condition, and scrambling over the fallen tree was an easy feat, to alight gracefully on the ground. Heaving a great sigh, his green eyes followed her, marveling at her movements.
What an odd creature was she, and yet perilously beautiful. This would be quite unlike anything that he had ever done before, he could feel it in his bones.
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Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:20 pm
Shaitani laughed as she glanced back to catch him following her, her interest perking at how well he moved. Graceful and powerful... it stirred something inside her befuddled mind. Her lord had moved like that, power in every step he took... this younger one didn't have that mystic to him, but he did echo the lion she saw only in her mind now.
"Come with me, Little one..." She sang as she moved like a wraith between the trees. "Into the darkness, into the night... the Children are dancing, hunting the weak... Sing with me, Stranger, come out of the light..." Her laughter rolled out darkly as she slipped behind a tree, disappearing from his sight for a moment.
Siren she was, and just like the sirens of legend, she would lead to him to ruin with the promise of her voice and sleek form. He took his life in his hands following this phantasm, but so far it looked like she was enjoying this game as much as he was.
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