So. That had been a complete and unmitigated disaster in Ilyas' eyes. The young pesar who was soon to be a pad was still more than a little dizzy and he thought he might be bleeding in a few places, too. He knew he'd felt a few claws find his flesh. Shaking his head slowly to try to clear it, the blue swirled lion made his way to the shade of a tree with a fat trunk and twisted branches reaching upward. He gave a few moments' thought to actually ascending and climbing up into the tree, but then he dismissed it. His head hurt too much to attempt that sort of thing.
So what ended up happening was that the inexperienced young male flopped down on his stomach and let his chin come to rest on his forepaws. No sooner had his legs folded, then he closed his bright, sky blue eyes with a deep sigh that seemed to come from the very depths of his being. Even his tail held still, such was the depth of his weariness. He really didn't understand how things could have gone so very badly wrong when they'd started out with such promise.
With his eyes closed Ilyas turned his thoughts back to the past two days and tried to figure out exactly where things had gone wrong, and how he could keep them from going similarly wrong in the future. He had never thought he would find himself being driven away with tooth and claw by a pair of angry lionesses. It was humiliating and humbling, and further more he was angry. But mostly he was glad to have gotten away with as little harm as he had. They seemed about ready, and more than willing, to kill him. And for nothing.
Two days ago Ilyas had been wandering in the dusty lands far beyond the territory controlled by the Ukuucha'Wafalme. He had not had anything to drink for more than three days, having wandered away from the stream he had been following previously in order to go hunting. The hunt had been successful, but he had lost his sense of direction and just set off in a random direction, certain that by doing so he would sooner or later make his way back to the stream.
His calculations had been wrong. Dead wrong. Thus, for three days he had nothing to drink and he was approaching the edge of delirium and he was beginning to hallucinate. It was at that point that he began to speak to himself, and apparently it was the sound of his monologue which drew the attention of a lioness approximately his own age, maybe a little older. At first he thought that he had imagined her, even after she touched him and helped to guide him out of the sun and to a shady grove which she shared with her sister.
Her sister was from the same litter, but she behaved as though she was several years older than the lioness who had found him. She directed her sister to find some water to bring to Ilyas, and then she stood guard over him. He did not remember very much of that day, or the night that followed, but he was forced to assume that he spent most of it unconscious and lapping up water in the waking periods between slumber. It probably was not during that period that he had done whatever it was that gave offense.
When he woke it was still dark and he was being stared at by two pairs of eyes. Because of the darkness he could not really make out the color of their eyes or their pelts, but he could make out their figures, and they were both fine and fit. It was obvious that they were managing to provide for themselves perfectly well. Even his recovering mind wondered if it could really be this easy. Maybe he could just ask them to come back to the pride with him and that would be that.
But it could not be that simple. And so he waited, speaking to them in a low voice as the sun came up. He got to know them, learned their names and a little bit of how they had come to live together and yet alone. Ayala was the one with the darker coat who acted older, and Umiya was the lighter and younger seeming of the two. They had been raised in nearly total isolation aside from their mother, who had apparently told them all about the dangers of the world and showed them how to survive without protection.
When the sun came up it was Ilyas' turn to tell them about himself, but he did not think the time was quite right, so he stalled, asking if they could show him where their water had come from, because he was thirsty still. Once he had drunk his fill, Ilyas still did not feel he had learned enough about the pair to feel comfortable offering them a place in his pride. He did not know how they would get along with Afsar, and she was foremost in his thoughts when it came to finding a banu. He needed someone who would not try to challenge her.
Eventually he could stall no more and so he began trying to paint a picture of the Ukuucha as a place which was safe and welcoming, a place where lionesses were protected by lions. While he spoke they said nothing, but they did not seem as interested or as enthusiastic about the pride as he had expected they might. He thought, perhaps, that his mistake might have been when he began to talk about Afsar, because the sisters seemed confused by the idea of a lion having more than one lioness.
The more he explained over the course of the day, the less they seemed to understand. They kept twisting his words so that it sounded as though the lionesses in his pride were enslaved, captured and taken from their own lives and then held against their wills. By the end of the second day Ilyas was certain that the pair would not make suitable additions to his harem, being entirely too opposed to the idea. They might even turn out to be kajira, and he didn't want any of those in his harem.
He offered to leave when the sun began to set, not wishing to impose his company on them any further. He was grateful, he said, for their assistance, but he had to continue his quest. They had asked him, then, how he planned to repay them for the care they had given him while he was weak. He didn't know, and said as much, so they suggested perhaps he would be interested in giving them cubs to raise together as a family.
It took him a moment to realize what they were asking, and then he began to remember other small things that had taken place in the time he'd spent with them. The small, affectionate gestures they'd shared, the looks that passed between them. They weren't sisterly at all, but more like the way a pad and his beybanu were. Something in his reaction to this realization must have angered them, he decided, for when he refused - as politely as he could, too - they grew angry. They called him all sorts of names and insulted his manhood, and when he still refused they chased him off in a fury.
Ilyas had fled, still hungry but at least not dehydrated. And now he rested beneath a baobob tree and decided to stay away from lionesses in groups outside of civilized lands. So far the only lands he counted as civilized were the Ukuucha'Wafalme lands.
