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 Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:17 pm
It turned out being in this pride wasn't much different from her first one. They fought, they ate, they bossed around the more mild-mannered and went to sleep only to repeat the same chain of events the next day. The only real difference was the order of them would sometimes switch around. That, and the lions were different. The faces were different.
She had managed to tunnel out a hare earlier, and after she'd eaten the front half, left the back end of her victory carcass on the ground near the lake. Blood from it's veins were smeared across her paws and face, creating a look alike mask. One like Xi had. One like her siblings had. The lioness stared at her reflection with ears drooping. Her stick-to-the-present theory had worked fine until the visions kept coming back. Nym dying - again. The same one as before on repeat.
She hated allowing herself to feel this way, and she had tried not to.
Splash!
Zilly dunked her face into the pool, held it there for a short while, then pulled back and violently shook her head. The red outline had been washed away. She abandoned her watery clone and allowed the sky to take hold of her vision on her way back to the den. Taraxa's den, technically, but she had held up there for days now.
She saw stars. What had that one male said about them? That you could wish on them? Stupid. That's what it was.
...But she still silently wished for Nym to rise from the grave.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:33 pm
Taraxa's head was still throbbing from his duel earlier in the day. His tongue was sore and a bit swollen and that made talking somewhat difficult. He wasn't unintelligible just.. sounded like he had a rock in his mouth and he was forced to talk around it.
He also hadn't cleaned the blood off of his face. He'd been a little hesitant to step too close to the water just in case he thought he saw another log drowning feebly in the middle of the lake, and so the blood was now somewhat crusty and lent his coat a coppery color.
At the moment he was cleaning the blood up in front of his den. Ulrika had been shaken at the sight of that much blood, and though Taraxa had tried to soothe her, he still figured it might be a wise idea to rough up the dirt in front of his den so the bloody ground was mixed in. It made it harder to see.
At least Taraxa thought so.
Taraxa leaned back and eyed his handiwork.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:41 pm
It could be said Zilly would never be her mother's perfect little minion because it was not the real reason she'd been put on the Earth. That reason, more likely, was to be the ultimate moment killer.
"Is all this blood from you?" she asked, stopping before the red-tinted dirt that separated one lion from the other.
Looking at him, she got her answer. He was ugly, Zilly thought, which in her limited and specific dialect was the equivalent of saying someone looked beat up or ill. Saying so out loud probably wasn't going to help, and she probably could have tried to sound worried instead of curious.
"You look ugly. Who beat you up like that?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 7:48 pm
Taraxa grunted and eyed Zilly. He would never admit it to anyone, not even if threatened by the most painful and worst death ever imagined by anyone ever... but he was kind of beginning to enjoy having Zilly around.
Kind of. Almost.
"Yesh," he grunted, feeling as if his tongue flopped worthlessly around in his mouth. Talking hurt. He watched the dark lioness with a wary eye and sent a prayer to the Gods that there would be no more head-cracking. Taraxa didn't think he could handle another assault on his poor and tender headbone.
He snorted when she called him ugly and set about using a large paw to try and even out the colors of the dirt he'd been working on. "Zsharia. We shparred. She head-cracked me!" He said it so indignantly and with such passion, as if he couldn't believe that she'd done that.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:02 pm
"Zsharia. We shparred. She head-cracked me!"
Zilly's cheeks puffed out on both sides, but her muzzle remained firmly closed. As an added effort to conceal the fit of giggles, she brought a paw up to her face and kept it there.
Him being hurt was by no means funny, but the voice... There was a reason the saying 'it's the way you said it' existed.
When she was (mostly) sure she could control herself, all four paws were on the ground again. "Oh. Maybe you should get some kind of shield for your head. You sound like you stuck your face in some scratchy plants."
The reference was to an incident involving poisonous plants and her siblings, but she wasn't inclined to go into detail. She tended to just assume other lions knew exactly what she was talking about for whatever reason.
Zilly walked around the tainted dirt as if it were lava. Once she was in reach, she was already grooming his face. Without permission. Without any warning.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:10 pm
He knew she was trying not to laugh. He knew it. He merely scowled at her while she collected herself. He scowled. Frowned. Glared. Just when his stink eye couldn't get any stinkier, she stopped. For the most part, anyway.
"Shcratchy plantsh?" That didn't even make any sense. What kind of idiot would walk around putting their face in scratchy plants? Certainly not Taraxa, that was for sure. He eyed her warily as she drew closer, not trusting her to behave herself. Some habits died hard.
When she started grooming him, though, he sat in shock. He allowed it for a few blissful moments (even going so far as to purr) before he came to his senses and planted a paw on her chest and pushed her away.
He didn't really want to.
But the others might think they were an item.
"Shtop it," he muttered, glancing around nervously, "I'm trying to clean up thish blood."
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:19 pm
Zilly found her footing quickly after he'd shoved her. Not until she was under threat of being pushed or bumped into or headbutted or otherwise injured again could she really comprehend how lazy being alone all this time had made her. Being around other lions - other violence-happy lions - had her physical senses back in top notch. Including her sense of balance.
Common sense, however...
"Yeah, but you're doing a bad job and I'm doing a good job, so you should let me finish first," she offered in her defense.
Another moment slain.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:25 pm
Taraxa sighed. "I mean," he drew out the word 'mean' so that it sounded like 'meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeean' -- almost a whine, but not quite. That wouldn't be very manly, "that I'm trying to clean up the blood on the ground." Taraxa spoke slowly as if that would help her understand. He gave her an insufferable sigh, then dipped his head. Females were so difficult to talk to sometimes. If they weren't getting offended by each and every word that you said, they were being bossy and sassing you around left and right. Bugger the lot of them.
"Hurry up," he muttered in defeat. A broken lion. Whipped into submission.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:33 pm
Zilly appeared confounded by his words, and tried to explain herself: "I know what you meeeeeeeeean. I'm saying you're doing a bad job. I can still see it." She paused. "Why are you doing that?" the lioness would prod right before she went back to tidying him up.
Before he could answer, she informed him he really did need to make sure it was gone, and went on to tell him why. "It makes me feel sick looking at."
Her feeling was 'sick' the same as Taraxa was 'ugly', though.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:41 pm
She was still talking. And talking. Sometimes he wondered if she would ever stop. He rolled his eyes in disgust, setting his mouth in a frown.
"It bothered Ulrika. She watched the shpar." He gave her a meaningful look. "Zsharia doeshn't hold back when she fightsh." That much was true, no matter how garbled it came out. He stuck his tongue out at Zilly, clearly showing the piece of tongue that was missing. It wasn't a big piece -- in fact, it was small enough that she probably wouldn't know why he was sticking his tongue out in the first place.
"That'sh why I'm trying to clean it up," he grumbled, wishing she would just groom him and go away.
Besides, it felt nice when she did it, not that Taraxa would ever admit to such a thing.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:46 pm
Whether she did or she didn't, Zilly barely bothered to glance at the tongue he presented. She was too fixated on her chore by then. Giving her attention to much else was asking a lot.
Only when she was satisfied with her work did she move; Taraxa was left soaking wet with saliva, but at least looked like he'd bathed in a river of water as opposed to one of blood.
"It bothered Ulrika."
She had managed to catch the first sentence. So many names to learn.
"Which one is that?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 8:51 pm
Taraxa grunted. He was too busy focusing on how nice it felt when Zilly groomed him, and also focusing on not purring. He didn't want her to know how nice it felt to have someone who took care of him and even seemed to like taking care of him.
But he grumbled the whole time. It helped stop the purrs from rumbling up from his throat.
"The littlesht one. Mishmashed eyesh." He hoped she could understand. All this talking wasn't helping his tongue at all. And even though he was sopping wet, he was clean. It was nice.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 9:03 pm
Mishmashed... Mishmashed?
Zilly wrinkled her nose and did herself a favor: she focused on the second word. Once 'eyes' was determined, it was easy to figure the rest out. "Her eyes don't match," the lioness concluded. "Oh, that one. I like that one. I think that one is my favorite."
And she was for no other reason than she had a striking appearance. Zilly had never seen such a thing and it wasn't as if she were a shut in.
Moving away from his work space, she sat and began to ponder things that needed pondering. Everyone could always tell when she was thinking hard. Mostly because she stopped doing everything else, but the way her eyes always stayed skyward was another give away.
Ulrika was upset over the blood, but blood was part of a pride like this. Was it because she was so small her discomfort had been so easily excused by Taraxa? Should she be worried about him? She had to think about it a while.
No... No, that was silly. It wasn't as if he had died. When he'd gone to the lake, it was different; she knew he was destined to drown. This was just a fight. A fight he'd lost, but a fight none the less. He was still alive. No reason to worry.
"That's silly," she finally said, completely oblivious to the fact nearly five minutes had gone by since the last time she'd spoken.
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Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 6:32 am
"She'sh a good girl," Taraxa nodded, going back to the duty at hand. Large paws swept back and forth, and he settled into a kind of trance once Zilly fell silent. This was a bit... domestic, he supposed, and it wasn't something he was used to. It wasn't a place he'd ever seen himself.
Especially not with a lioness like Zilly.
She was strange, she was odd, she had skewed outlooks on life itself, but Taraxa had to admit she wasn't half-bad. He kind of liked being babied, and maybe Gunnar had the right idea. Maybe there was something to be said for females that catered to your needs. Not just the more.. primal ones, because Zilly had certainly not done that. Perhaps there was simply a part in every male that kind of enjoyed being treated like a little man-child.
When she spoke after a long while -- without him having said anything recently to provoke her -- Taraxa merely sent her a long glance before smugly speaking.
"If you keep talking to yourself people are going to think things."
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Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 2:51 pm
Zilly snorted. She didn't try to understand the joke (or if it even was a joke), just said, "I'm talking to you. It shouldn't bother her because you're not dead."
This was something she knew nothing about - something she had no right to comment on. She adored her mother, no one would dare deny that. Xi just wasn't the kind to go out and fight glamorous, bloody battles, though. She was more of the puppet master, and she'd sooner cut the strings of all her 'followers' than risk her own being nicked.
Therefore, what could Zilly really know about watching your parent bleed? Nothing. She couldn't picture hers that way.
"Isn't she going to have to fight, too? Won't she get killed if she acts like that?"
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