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 Posted: Mon Jun 14, 2010 12:52 pm
"So," Muscar said, turning at last to look at his twin. "You're still with me, I notice."
The entire walk back he hadn't been sure she was. He'd walked away from their disastrous meeting with her friend Shazidi without looking back, leaving Gliri to choose whether she would follow or stay with Shazidi. He'd been afraid for the whole walk that she wasn't there, since he couldn't hear her footfalls. She had always been soft-footed, but Muscar imagined she was being deliberately silent to make him nervous and punish him. It had worked.
"Does this mean that you've made your choice, and that you'll stay away from him from now on?" he asked her. He hoped her answer would be yes. He had been living with so much worry lately, he couldn't really stand to live in this state much longer.
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 12:33 pm
Gliri had stayed silent for the duration of the walk home. She'd spent the whole time fuming, trying to calm herself down and see things from her brother's point of view. It had always been her gift to be able to see things as others did and understand them. She knew she'd be able to forgive him if she could just look at things as he saw them. That was the way it worked.
She had almost managed to wrap her mind around it by the time they reached their den. He was afraid to lose her to Shazidi. What she had to do was show him that she didn't have to choose between between them, that there was no competition. Muscar was her brother and Shazidi was...her friend. Maybe more. He'd said he would be willing to be more than her friend, and she wouldn't mind that.
Muscar's words put her out of sorts again. He just assumed things! She knew that he needed to be reassured, but she didn't see why she should feel like a criminal. People met new people all the time and formed relationships of all sorts. It was no crime, and it had been unfair of Muscar to come down as he had on Shazidi.
"I'm still with you, Muscar, but I'm not going to stay away from Shazidi."
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:05 pm
Muscar looked sharply at Gliri. He'd seen the softening of her demeanor, the way she seemed ready to make up with him. That was why he'd asked her for her decision. He thought she might be amenable, might be willing to listen to reason. Apparently he had misjudged her. He'd been doing that a lot lately. When had he lost his ability to read her?
"I thought you understood," he said.
He could still hear a hint of pleading in his voice, and it irritated him, but all he could do was plead with her. He'd tried to make her feel guilty, and the result of that had been their idiotic meeting with Shazidi. Now he needed to convince her that it would be for the best for them to leave this place and Shazidi.
"Can't you see that I only want what's best for you and I? I want us to be safe and happy. I want us to be like we were before." Embarrassingly enough, he was close to weeping as he admitted this to Gliri. He wanted so badly for things to be good again.
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Posted: Wed Jun 16, 2010 1:54 pm
"I do understand, Muscar. You don't want to lose me. You won't. It's not as though there's not enough love in me for both you and Shazidi."
It took an effort for Gliri to keep her temper. Whether or not he intended to make her feel guilty, Muscar's appeal had struck a chord and she did feel guilty, nearly sick with it. It was painfully obvious how much they needed each other, and there was no denying it. But the way they were bound together should be by blood and love, not guilt. He didn't need to go through this to keep her with him.
"I love you, and I always have and always will, but what you're doing now is making me not like you very much. I don't appreciate being manipulated, or treated like a child. I'm not a child, you know. I am a grown lioness, even though I get scared easily. Do you understand me?"
She looked at him, catching and holding his gaze as she spoke. Long ago, she'd gotten used to seeing her own eyes looking at her when she and Muscar locked eyes, but most of the time she was also accustomed to seeing an expression similar to hers. Today, they weren't really seeing eye to eye.
"It can't be like it was before, but it doesn't have to be bad the way it is."
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:35 am
Muscar blinked in surprise. She understood, but she didn't. It was impossible to love two people equally, even if you loved them differently. And for that matter, Muscar didn't feel he should be only equal with Shazidi. He and Gliri were twins, for the gods' sakes. There should be no competition.
"I'm not trying to manipulate you," he protested. "I'm just letting you know what I'm thinking, how I feel about all this. I'm discussing the whole thing like adults. I'm not treating you like a child."
He couldn't believe she thought he was treating her like a child. He knew she wasn't a child. Gods, he knew that. She had not been a child for a long time. She had cubs out there somewhere. He knew not where. He had taken them shortly after they were born and given them to the first people he had seen. It had come down to their lives or Gliri's, and there had been no contest.
"I don't see how it can work out the way you think it will, Gliri. And I hate to say this, because I never thought I'd have to say this to you, but I really think you're being selfish. You want everything to go your way and for everyone to just go along with it. That's not how it works."
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:42 am
Gliri gave her brother a skeptical look. He really didn't think he was treating her like a child? He didn't see how he was patronizing her, belittling her feelings by trying to explain them away? Of course he was doing that. He was doing both things, and the more he spoke the worse it got. How could he not see it the way she did?
She would have liked to throw a tantrum, but that would only have proved her brother's point, and so she made herself speak in a reasonable tone of voice. "Muscar, are you listening to yourself? Did you hear yourself back there with Shazidi? You're behaving like a child and you're acting as though everyone else was at the same level as you. What I feel for Shazidi and what I think he feels for me is more than you're making it out to be."
His next statement floored her. She gaped at him for a moment before she got herself together enough to answer him. It took another moment to overcome her outrage and indignation. She was being selfish? There were many things she did that she thought might have earned her the title of selfish, but falling in love had never made it onto the list.
"I'm being selfish. Excuse me, but which one of us is refusing to believe that the other could have fallen in love because it would change his comfortable way of being?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 9:47 am
"I'm not behaving like a child!" Muscar growled. "I'm behaving like someone who has been lied to and hurt and has every right in the world to be angry."
He stepped closer to her, deliberately invading her personal space and asked in a low voice, "Forgive me for asking, but what do you know about love anyway? You're afraid of everything and everyone. You could easily be mistaking liking for love. It's a mistake."
He backed away and regarded Gliri with disgust and frustration. "Fine. You're good at imagining yourself in others' places. Imagine yourself in my place. How would you feel if your twin, the most important person in your life, came to you one day and did and said the things you have?"
Once more he stepped closer, bringing his mouth to Gliri's ear, and whispered, "Besides, if you really love him, why are you here with me, instead of there with him?"
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 10:05 am
"Lied to? I heard you say that before, to Shazidi. He had nothing to do with that. I chose to keep it from you because I had a feeling - and I should have trusted it - that you would react like this. I felt guilty keeping our friendship secret, but now I honestly wish I hadn't told you at all. You were perfectly fine with things when you didn't know. I shouldn't have told you."
Her tail lashed furiously from side to side, the most obviously visible sign of her agitation. Her ears were also back unhappily and the tips of her canines showed just a little even when she wasn't speaking. Everything about her was a warning not to come too close. If Muscar had been anyone else, she probably would have bitten him by now.
"I'm not going to answer that. I don't have to. You don't want to understand me, and so I don't see why I should bother trying to understand you."
She backed away from Muscar, but she couldn't get far enough, fast enough, to avoid hearing his question to her. His stupid, horrible, hateful question. She didn't want to answer that one either. There was only one answer, and it wasn't fair. She had chosen Muscar over Shazidi, of course, but only in the short term. She wanted to work things out in the long term so that she wouldn't have to choose.
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Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 12:51 pm
Muscar didn't want to believe that Gliri had been the source of the secrecy, but if he'd been thinking rationally he really shouldn't have been surprised. Gliri was always one to avoid confrontation if she could manage it. He hadn't thought she would go to the extent of keeping secrets from him, though. They had always told each other everything in the past. When she suspected, more than a year ago, that she was pregnant, she had told him right off. He didn't understand why things had changed.
"I almost wish you hadn't. Things were good before. I don't think it'll ever be the same now. I can't help blaming that on you and your paramour." Mostly he blamed Shazidi, no matter what Gliri told him. She had not been secretive before, and the difference was Shazidi, so it had to be his fault. Perhaps she thought the creamy lion was too delicate and was trying to protect her from him. That didn't speak well of him at all.
"Fine. I can't force you to look at this reasonably, obviously. I'm a little afraid to ask, but how far have you let him go with you. How much of that shy politeness was a show for my benefit? Now that I know you have no qualms about lying to me, I find myself questioning many things."
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Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2010 1:03 pm
"You know, I really don't think I can talk to you right now, Muscar. In fact, I don't think we should talk to each other. We are clearly not in a mood conducive to adult conversation. But for the record, I have not made a habit of keeping things from you, and I wish you wouldn't act as though I'm some sort of compulsive liar."
She turned away from her brother and stalked toward the back of their cave-den. It was a good den. She liked it. She'd liked it from the first moment she saw it, and her fondness for it had only grown in the days following. Once she met Shazidi, she had decided that she was absolutely enamored of the spot. Now she thought the only real problem with it was that there was really no place for her to go to get away from Muscardini if she wanted to.
She made her way into the darkness at the very back of the cave, where she rarely ventured because she had no reason to go there. Sometimes she would hide there, and there was a back way out through there, but she wasn't sure she wanted to take that option just yet. If Muscar would just leave her alone to seethe and eventually calm down, things would be fine. Things had to be fine.
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:27 am
Muscar was a good lion at heart, and he was usually very perceptive, but sometimes he just didn't have much sense. He followed his sister toward the back of the cave, continuing to speak, trying to convince her to see things his way. He knew he was right, and everything else would be just fine if she would only consent to listen to reason. He didn't put it in quite those words, of course. He wasn't that much of an idiot. But following her was probably stupid, all things considered.
"I don't think you're a compulsive liar, Gliri. I'm sorry I implied that you were. But I have been lied to and I would seriously like you to think about how you would feel if I'd been hiding a relationship from you that was like the one you have with Shazidi?"
He pressed on, heedless of the warning she had given him and the obvious bad sense of following her into a part of the den that only she made use of after she'd told him not to talk to her. As he reasoned, she hadn't actually forbidden him to talk to her. She'd said she didn't think they should talk. He happened to disagree.
"I mean, really. What if I told you I was going hunting, and then went off to meet with some girl you've never met to get up to gods only know what and then come back and tell you some story about missing my kill? How would you like it?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:00 am
Gliri heard her brother's paws padding along behind her even before he began to talk and she exhaled a long breath, positively seething with anger. Could he not even follow simple suggestions now? She whirled and hissed at him, completely ignoring anything he had to say in the way of apology. Her feelings had been hurt, belittled, and generally abused all evening, and she didn't want to deal with her abuser for the time being. It shouldn't have been so difficult for her brother to grasp.
"Muscar. Get it through your head. I don't want to talk to you. Go ahead and leave. Have a fling. Have a hundred. Tell me about them or keep them secret. I don't care."
Her voice was an uncharacteristic growl as she spoke. Sibilants came out as furious hisses which matched her posture and body language very well. If he didn't leave her alone after this display she would have no recourse except to bite him. A part of her almost hoped he would give her an excuse to commit violence. She thought it might make her feel better, though she had never before felt the urge to hurt another.
"Please, Muscar," she begged. "Leave me alone. Please."
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:17 am
Instinct saved Muscardini from blundering further and provoking a physical attack from his affronted sister. Her his caused him to scramble backward, expecting it to be followed by a swipe of the paw. He might have questioned his reaction at another time, given his sister's peaceable nature, but in this situation it didn't seem terrifically out of character for her to strike him.
He was hurt by her reaction just the same, even though she'd done him no physical harm. He couldn't remember her ever hissing at him when she'd known it was him she addressed. She'd hissed in startlement before, when she hadn't realized it was only her twin and not a potential threat, but this was different. It made him feel sick to his stomach, and more than that it made him angry.
"Fine. I'm leaving," he announced, his own tone taking on a growl. Coming from him it was nearly as uncharacteristic as it was from Gliri. Muscar was rarely roused to any sort of wrath. This whole matter with Shazidi would probably use up his life's supply of the feeling.
"I'm going hunting," he hissed. "I'll be back when I'm back. When I return, we are leaving."
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 8:41 am
Gliri watched her brother leave and her heart ached. For a moment she wanted to run after him and tell him she was sorry and ask him to stay and help her make this work. But then she remembered that she had already made that offer several times and he was neither interested in staying or making this work. He didn't want to share her and he would take her away when he returned. He had said as much.
It crossed her mind that she didn't have to go with him when he left. He spoke in the first-person plural, but that didn't mean she had to accompany him when he left. They were two separate entities, even though they were twins and often acted as if they were two halves of a greater whole. In this, it would seem their usual way of life could not prevail. But she knew that it would, and that she would go with Muscar whenever he returned and decided to move on. For all she knew he was scouting out an appropriate den. She very much doubted he was hunting.
Through the slight gap which was the only way to find the hidden exit to their den Gliri recognized the light of sunset. It would soon be night, and she'd asked Shazidi to meet her. She could not miss that meeting, and Muscar had made it unexpectedly easy for her to go. She knew that she would have to go meet him and tell him all this. It would not be a happy meeting. But she was going. In no time, she had wriggled out of the hidden exit and was on her way toward Shazidi. Her heart felt like it was breaking.
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