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Morning. Aesir woke slowly, as was his habit by preference, taking time to observe his surroundings first with his ears and nose and even his fur before opening his eyes. Since his cubs had been born, it was more rare that he was allowed to wake as slowly as he would have liked. Most days it seemed he woke up by being bounced or pounced on, or with very sharp and small teeth clamped around some part of his anatomy. The fact that he hadn't woken that way was a good omen, he decided. And while he was thinking about omens, he opened his eyes and looked around to see if Morrigan was around or if she'd gone out to do something responsible. Maybe she'd taken the cubs with her to allow him to take the time to enjoy a lazy morning? He glanced down and sighed, his sides moving like great bellows when he saw that the cubs were still there, which meant he really couldn't go too far away. Someone had to watch them. They were too small to be able to defend themselves. Particularly not when they were asleep.

In her dreams Kazul was a warrior. She was grown up, and larger and faster than almost all the other lionesses in the pride, and several of the lions, too, and she stood alone against a mighty foe with enormous clawed wings and a scaled underbelly and teeth like a crocodile. In its eyes burned an evil green flame, and it spoke in a hiss as it threatened to destroy the stronghold and all who lived there. In her dream, Kazul felt a shiver go down her spine and blamed it on cooling sweat rather than fear, and then she snarled at the monster, unimpressed by its threats and unwilling to back down, even against this unbeatable opponent. She leapt forward and was incinerated by green flame that came from the monster's mouth. The imagined pain woke her abruptly and she looked around to find herself safe in the den, surrounded by her siblings and with her father's brilliant eyes glowing in the darkness nearby. She had nothing to fear.

Aesir thought his daughter's reply seemed a little reluctant, and he couldn't really blame her. Like most Stormborn, Aesir wasn't afraid of death, but that didn't mean he was anxiously looking forward to dying. And if he wasn't going to die gloriously and in battle, he wasn't interested in dying at all. He supposed Kazul might feel the same way. She hadn't even lived as long as he had, so she had less experience of death and the glory of battle. He really thought he should start training the girls to fight, too. He'd already begun a little with Hroarr, just to see how it would go. He wasn't accustomed to training others to fight. Most of the lions he fought with already knew how to fight, and they were just practicing their skills on each other. But in response to his daughter's question, "We can do that. But I think we're meant to stay close to the den until your ma returns and lets us know what the plan for the rest of the day is." For those who lived in the den, it was pointless to pretend that Aesir was the complete master.

Kazul nodded, assuming her da would see her eyes changing position in the darkness and guess at her response. Then she began the careful process of standing up and gathering all her various body parts to herself, which meant reclaiming her tail from Arik's paws and carefully allowing Badb to slide off her hindquarters and onto the ground. That last one worried her, but she managed it without waking her sister, so all was well. When at last she had wormed free, Kazul began moving toward the light outside. It was inviting-looking, even if it didn't seem particularly warm. Nothing ever seemed warm at this hour of the morning, or at night, though she hadn't enough experience of the world to know that there were other places that were much warmer, even if she knew there were other lions who weren't as tough as those in her pride. Outside she sat down on top of a still-chilly rock and immediately sprang to her feet again as her bottom protested the sudden cold. She turned around to wait for her da.

Bad dreams, like he'd thought. Well, Aesir had those, too, but he tended to keep them to himself. With a wife who could interpret dreams he often found it was less unsettling not to know what his dreams could mean, and to just dismiss them all as figments of his imagination. Not that he truly believed that. He did believe that dreams, at least most of them, held some hint of prophecy, but he didn't think that in this instance it would be easy for Kazul to hear that. She spent as much time with her mother as he did, and probably more. She had undoubtedly heard Morrigan on the subject of dreams. What she wanted, he guessed, was reassurance, and not religion. Which was fine. Aesir wasn't wise in the ways of the gods and spirits, though he tried to serve them well. "There's no cowardice in feeling fear, only in letting it master you. And I think you have little to worry about with your dream, because no lizard monster is ever going to kill me, and if it wants to burn you up, it's going to have to kill me first. And it'll have to kill your mother, too, because you know she'd never let anything like that happen to you. We would kill the lizard monster very dead and then the whole family would wear its skin and its teeth, jah?"

Kazul smiled, and it was almost more like a baring of her teeth than an actual smile. Her father's confidence in his ability and her ma's ability to take on her fire-breathing lizard monster was incredibly reassuring, and when she thought about it, she didn't doubt that her da would tear the stupid thing to shreds if it came anywhere near the pride. And her ma would curse it into being a mouse or something. She liked the idea of wearing the monster's skin, too. Her da wore pelts, and she would like to do the same when she was big enough to kill their original owners for herself. She didn't want to be gifted with pelts and pretties. She wanted to buy them with blood and battle, like a proper Reaver. "Jah," she agreed with her da. "Thanks. I knew that, I think, but I wanted to make sure you wouldn't think I was a coward or anything. There's iron in my blood, not flowers."