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 Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 1:51 pm
The sun was only just rising up over the horizon, suffusing the deep blue sky with tinges of pink and orange. It really was rather pretty, if you liked that sort of thing. Kefilwe did indeed like that sort of thing but he was also very practical. In this case, his interest was focused closer towards the ground. Much closer, in fact. The brown cub stalked through the grass relentlessly, wondering what form breakfast would take today. Yesterday, Rangi had caught a few rabbits. Rabbits! All by herself! So far, the biggest thing Kef had ever managed to catch was a rather large rat. And it was still mostly alive when he brought it back to the others. It was embarrassing! Sure, he was smart, but he felt that strength was handy to have too.
At least he had his imagination though! In his own imagination, he was a powerful hunter, silently stalking through the grass like a shadowy death. Unfortunately, the imagination, while an amazing thing, couldn’t assemble prey from nothing. This meant that the shadowy death ended up stalking, in order, a snail, a small stick, some sort of rock, and what appeared to be some sort of mud. At least his friends hadn’t seen that.
Wait… wait… what was that? Kef lifted his head before he recalled that hunters had to lay down low. Throwing himself back to the ground, he held his breath and waited, hoping to see what he thought he saw. Yes… it was there! Right there! And moving! He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but it looked edible. It was small, black and white, and fluffy. So long as it wasn’t slimy, it was probably edible. That was one of the most important things that Kef had ever learned out here on his own.
Using all of his hunting skills, he lumbered closer to his prey until, finally, he was close enough to strike. Wiggling his butt in the air as preparation for the final lunge, he burst out of the grass and charged at his newest prey.
He tried to roar. He really did. But, it was really difficult to roar when you were tiny and cute.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 1:53 pm
Well, this was a fine place for a nap. In the midst of all the… uhh… rocks and other uncomfortable naturey things, it was nice to see a patch of green in the world. And a small drinking pool as well. It was strange, a place like this being so unoccupied, now that Kayin thought about it… ah well. The cheetah wasn’t worried. If there were others around, he could always pull out his prize-winning violet-eyed stare. It almost always worked. Limping slightly, the cheetah relaxed in the grass and curled up for a quick nap. It was an exhausting life, being a cheetah. You had to look pretty all the time, all elegant and suave. No one really thought about how much work that took. Also, ever since he had stumbled into that young lioness a few days back, his running had been off. That sort of thing could be deadly to a cheetah. Best to rest while he had the chance.
Yep. That was his life now. Rest when you have a chance and if someone puts food in front of you, eat it up quickly before someone else can. If you don’t like it, there are plenty who do. And, chances are, once they’re done eating your dinner, they’ll be after you. Another technique essential to cheetahs everywhere is the ability to fall asleep quickly. When you’ve only got fifteen minutes for a nap, you don’t want to waste ten of those just trying to get to sleep.
His tail uncurled a bit and flopped lazily next to him, having a mind of its own. In some ways, the tail’s mind was slightly superior to Kayin’s own. For one thing, it didn’t want to stay still for long and kept twitching on the ground. In other ways, it was very, very dumb because it wouldn’t stay still, even when it had attracted the attention of a young lion.
Another technique essential to cheetahs is the ability to wake up instantly when something is attacking your tail. And this is exactly what happened to Kayin. His eyes shot open and his tail was suddenly attached to a… a… a… a puffball, it looked like. Rising out of the grass, Kayin glared at the little lion cub, wondering just where all these creatures had come from.
“Just what do you think you’re doing with my tail?” he asked in an icily calm voice.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:00 pm
Hahaa! Victory was his! Kef bit down enthusiastically on his prey and kicked at it with his back feet, just as he had always done before. Except… except… now that he looked at it, whatever his prey was, it was less of a puffball and more like some sort of furry snake. Oh dear… this didn’t look good. Especially when something else rose up in front of him. Kef’s ears pressed back against his skull and he let out a noise best described as a cross between a whimper, a squeal, and a squeak. It took real talent to get all of those noises rolled up into one, but he managed it pretty well, even with a full mouth. It also took real talent to try and run away while holding a tail in your mouth. He tried to do that anyway, and failed dramatically.
Since the tail was still firmly attached to the other cat, all Kef managed to do was flip himself over on his back. Promptly, he let go of the tail and scrambled back to his feet and tried to run away. When in doubt, run away. And he was definitely in doubt now, mostly because he had never encountered a creature like this. It was huge! Big! And black and white and… and big!
An essential life lesson for young lions out on their own was to run away from big black and white things that might have reason to hurt you. And Kef had picked up on that one amazingly quickly. Another life lesson was to be able to run away while stammering apologies. He had picked that one up too, but he hadn’t quite mastered the art of being articulate.
“I’msorrysorrysorrysorry!” was about as much as he was able to get out.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:11 pm
Ok… now it was running away. Kayin told himself that the smart thing to do would be to just let the little runt run off. It wasn’t like lions were edible anyway (at least, Kayin didn’t think they were; he had never before tried to eat lions, although he knew for a fact that they generally tasted terrible). And, even if they were edible, it wasn’t like there was a whole lot of this one to eat. He was absolutely titchy! Hell, Kayin couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. At that age, they all sounded the same anyway.
But, right now, he was feeling more curious than intelligent. A few loping strides and he placed himself directly between the cub and the cub’s escape route. It wasn’t exactly a brilliant trap, but it hardly needed to be brilliant right now. He was simply curious where the cub’s parents were. Oh, and why he had attacked his tail. That was sort of important too, being as it was HIS tail.
“Look, I’m not gonna… where do you think you’re going? Stop running away!” Another few easy strides once again placed Kayin in a perfect place to block the cub. “I’m not gonna…” he sighed and, once again, had to run after the cub to block him off. “Are you ever going to get tired of this? I know I am. Look, I can catc…”
…
Wow, this cub really was determined. Eventually, Kayin simply flipped the cub over onto his back, a laughably easy thing to do. It wasn’t often that a cheetah could overpower a lion, but it was easy in this case.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:15 pm
It was madness! No matter where Kef tried to run, he found his pathway blocked by a lattice of long legs. It was only quick reflexes that saved him from careening into those legs. But how could anything be that fast? He would barely choose a new path before finding his way blocked once more. He was vaguely aware that the other feline was trying to say something, but fear blocked his brain path to anything more involved than that. Right now, his brain wanted very much to be in a body that wasn’t dead and in a ditch.
Well, it got half of its wish. Kef felt a paw hook under his stomach and flip him over onto his back. So, he was in a ditch, but not dead. Fifty percent wasn’t really that bad, but Kef had never been good at that philosophy. He got to his feet quickly and tried to run off, but a paw stepped on his tail, preventing that.
“No!” he said, not really sure what he was denying. When in doubt, all good kids would automatically deny anything and everything.
This was probably another survival trait.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:19 pm
And yet the little bugger was still trying to run away! Kayin felt as though he should have felt something, like pride perhaps. Or… or maybe delight. Or something positive anyway. Something about the cub fighting against the odds with all of his might, no matter how often he was struck down. But, instead, all the cheetah felt was exasperation. Eventually, he simply stepped on the cub’s tail to stop him from moving. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to do much. Sure, it made the cub stop running around, but now all the little guy would say was ‘NO!’.
All of it was giving Kayin a headache and a profound delight that he had escaped having cubs. If they were all insufferable like this, then yes, it was a good thing. “No what?” he asked, curious as ever. “You can’t just say ‘No’. You have to be responding to something. What, do you want me to eat you or something?” Now this was a proper baffling case, it really was. Most creatures Kayin encountered didn’t want to be eaten (although there was that case of the perpetually depressed zebra who, by all accounts, recovered dramatically the moment that he realized that he was being chased by lions). It was amazing how a good suicidal feeling could be cured by actually confronting death.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:26 pm
Instinct took over. Although it had been a good long while since he had been around any adults of any species (to a child’s mind, anything over a week was a ‘good long while’. Indeed, a month would be ‘forever plus infinity-billion’, even to Kef), the brown lion cub still had a keen idea of how to handle adults. “NO!” he repeated, in his loudest voice, denying everything and anything that Kayin could possibly think of.
Except, perhaps, for tail stalking. Even Kef couldn’t deny that since he had been caught in the act and everything. “No, I dun wanna be eaten!” Once again, he managed to make that squeal/squeak/whimper hybrid and curled up into a little ball. Come on, who could eat a lion cub! They were cute! And fluffy! How could you eat something cute and fluffy? Actually… now that he thought about it, Kef had eaten a few cute and fluffy things in his life. Like little mice and whatnot. Still, those were mice! And he wasn’t a mouse.
“NO!” he said, not even listening to the next question before flopping down on his side. When in doubt, general denial always worked. And, if it didn’t, then it would at least exasperate the adult in question.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:32 pm
It was certainly working on Kayin. Already the cheetah was feeling exasperated and eternally grateful that he had managed to escape Ishi. Admittedly, the lioness had said ‘you don’t have to help me raise the cubs, but I want your cubs anyway’, but Kayin still liked to think that he had escaped the very jaws of death there. Or the jaws of life, when you think about it, being as cubs were alive and… well, he was overthinking this.
“No what?” he repeated, only to get the same ardent ‘NO’ in response. Well, fine then. If the cub was going to be all spoiled, then so was Kayin. The cheetah flumped down on the ground, still keeping one paw on the tail of the cub until he felt like talking. He wasn’t the only one who could act like a spoiled brat! “Look, I’m not going to eat you, alright? Lions aren’t edible and, even if you were, lions generally don’t taste very good. Don’t ask me how I know that. And also don’t ask me how I know about the edibility of lions in general. I’m a Seer, so I know stuff. For example, I know that YOU don’t have any parents.” Clearly, that had to be the case. No parent would let their cub wander this far away from home and, if they did, then they weren’t real parents.
Besides, the cub was covered with dust. Mothers, as Kayin recalled, were amazingly fastidious when it came to their cubs. It probably had something to do with motherly instincts or something, he vaguely decided.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:41 pm
A Seer? Kef perked up at that and looked dubiously at the feline, trying to imagine him as a Seer. He was a little vague on what Seers actually looked like, so he supposed he could give the stranger the benefit of the doubt. Well, almost. He frowned a little and put on his Serious Face, which just involved frowning a lot and looking really, really concerned about something. He almost had it mastered. Once he managed to get rid of the overtones of hemorrhoid sufferer, he would have it down perfectly.
“It doesn’t take a Seer to know that,” he said, abandoning his usual technique of complete denial. “I’m a lone lion cub out far away from any other prides. And my family hasn’t come to the rescue. And my coat is all dusty. And I was desperate enough for food that I attacked someone else’s tail. I think all you do is catch onto little clues and claim that it’s a vision.”
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:46 pm
Kayin’s eyes opened wide for a moment as the little lion cub announced the absolute truth. Well, wasn’t it said somewhere that the truth came from the mouths of infants? Prior to this moment, Kayin was of the opinion that the only thing that came from the mouths of infants was copious amounts of vomit, but now… well, now he was a little unclear. Very sharp little bratling, this was. Very slowly, he removed his paw from the tail, now that he felt certain that the cub wasn’t going to run away, at least not immediately. How strange… Kayin had managed to pull the whole ‘I’m a Seer’ trick on many an adult and none of them had ever caught onto it, but this little cub had caught it perfectly… if Kayin was the type to believe in Seers, then he would have assumed that the cub himself was one.
But, he wasn’t. “You’re pretty sharp,” he said, looking down at Kef critically. “Very sharp indeed... so, where are the others? I’m assuming you don’t live alone.” And if he did live alone… well, Kayin wasn’t sure what he was going to do. Probably just leave him here, actually.
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 2:54 pm
Kef kept up his Serious Face and licked a paw once he was released. It was very obvious to him. Seers, by and large, were probably just a group of charlatans. And all they really promised was to tell you ‘something only you could know’, which was just stupid. Why would someone go to someone else to hear something that they already knew? But, now that it was clear that he wasn’t going to be eaten, at least he could stop running away. He had to save his energy for the hunt, when, once again, the silent shadow of death would stalk the hapless preybeasts and he would be victorious!!
That is, until Kayin asked him about his friends. Again, Kef managed to make that squeal/squeak/whimper cross. “NO! I’m not gonna tell you! And don’t try and pretend that you knew I had friends out here just because you’re a Seer. You know that I can’t be on my own because it’s clear that I don’t have parents. And, since that’s clear, I can’t be on my own. A lion cub cannot survive on his own. Me and Rangi know that, and we stick together with our friends. And I’m not telling you where they are!”
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:04 pm
Well, that was the strangest ramble of brilliance and stupidity that Kayin had ever heard. On one hand, the rant was perfectly logical, well-thought out and completely correct. But, on the other, it was coming from a little cub and therefore impossible to take seriously. Also, the cub just kept on giving information out, such as the name of his friend. Not that Kayin had any interest in making life difficult for any of them. Hey, it wasn’t any of his business and he was happy to keep it that way. All he wanted to know was that the cub wasn’t wandering around on his own. While he would have left the cub alone anyway, at least this way his conscience would be perfectly clear.
Actually, it would have been clear anyway, with time. It simply would have twinged him every now and then. “Yeah, well, go on. Get out of here. Before I do decide to eat you.”
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:09 pm
Kef’s big yellow eyes went wide at the threat and he hit the road. Quite literally, actually. The lion cub struggled to his feet, tripped over some invisible nothing, and then struggled to his feet once more before running. He probably tripped up a few more times, but he was too scared to bother looking back and seeing if the cheetah was still there or, worse, laughing at him. All he wanted to do was get back to his friends! Maybe they had caught something and they’d be willing to share… and he had a great story for them, at least! The story of a… a… a really, really weird-looking cat who came around claiming to be a Seer but really wasn’t, and, man, was he funny-looking!
Alright, so it wasn’t exactly on par with a dramatic escape from a collapsing tunnel or, perhaps, being chased by a giant rock ball, but it was about as close as Kef would get. At least, until he was a little older.
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