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 Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 9:23 pm
It took some getting used to, walking with a vulture balanced on her back, but both she and Ishetenga were getting used to each other - when not sniping back and forth at the other's incompetency. Ishetenga was practicing not digging to deeply into the lioness's skin when she walked, and Tapa was trying to compensate for her limp to stop any unnecessary jolting.
"Where are we even going, you great lug? I thought we were supposed to be practicing our eye-eye coordination, not poncing about to visit other lionesses.
"We're going to see Beru, Ishetenga, and that's that. Just hold on and shut up, your conversation isn't necessary. So hush."
Vultures. Oi.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 1:11 pm
Beru was practicing, too. She was practicing the fine art of not killing people who really deserved it for making a great ruckus on the other side of the rock where she'd been sheltering from the sun. Not that Beru was a naturally violent or aggressive lioness, but lately things just hadn't seemed to go her way in any respect and it was all getting to be a bit much for her. She was tired and short-tempered and really in no mood to listen to people spreading rumours.
She had already snapped at the lionesses involved before and was not going to involve herself again unless specifically asked for an opinion, though her opinion would not have changed from her previous stance: it was not their place to decide. The pride had a hierarchy for a reason. It was what worked. Whenever the pride at large was called upon to make decisions, Beru felt safe in saying, it made the wrong one, and so the only solution she could see was not to involve the pride in decision-making if it could be avoided. It didn't bother her that she would be excluded, too.
Her practice was going very well, but that was largely helped by the fact that she had gotten up and relocated some twenty minutes ago, and thereby removed herself from the offenders' proximity. She wanted to go home.
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Posted: Sat Oct 01, 2011 10:54 pm
It took longer then Tapa had expected to find her friend, and Ishetenga's constant nattering didn't much help. She knew Beru wasn't happy about the pride moving around the way it was, and she just wanted to return to the way things had been in the place were the pride had always been. Tapa had been born a rogue, and wasn't bothered by it - but she did want the drought to break and the sickness that was being passed around to disappear. She didn't think the pride would go home until those things happened.
"Hello, Beru. How are you holding up? I see you've moved your place."
Ishetenga fluttered his wings to keep his balance as Tapa slowed to a stop in front of the grey lioness. She wanted him to learn the names of and to recognize at least some of the other lionesses in the pride, but Ishetenga didn't really see the point. He might as well humor her though.
"Tapa is clearly to occupied to introduce me herself. I'm Ishetenga, the new partner. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Hush, Ishe, and give her a moment to say hello before you start clacking your beak."
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 12:13 pm
Beru was pleased to see Tapa, even though she still had not yet forgiven her for voting in favor of moving. There had been few enough votes to stay, but Beru remembered who had voted which way and held a special bit of prejudice against those who had caused the pride to relocate. It may not have been a big deal to them, but it sure as hell was a big deal to her. She felt uprooted and lost and didn't like it. Tapa's vote had felt like a betrayal at the time, and it still pricked Beru's temper when she thought about it, but she didn like Tapa and she'd missed her.
"Apparently I had set myself up in the midst of yammering idiot territory," Beru replied. "There's a scavenger on your back, by the way."
She had to bite her tongue to keep herself from saying anything more unpleasant. Of course she knew that some lionesses had chosen to pair themselves up with carrion eaters for whatever reason, but it was just one more choice she thought was stupid. There was little enough food to go around as it was, and keeping pets was irresponsible.
"And it talks," she observed after Ishetenga introduced himself. The limited value pairs of vultures and lionesses could represent for hunting did not redeem them for Beru, who tended to think of all no-lions as either prey or enemies, and scavengers like vultures and jackals as in-between things that were nonetheless distasteful. She had no intention of talking to this one.
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Posted: Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:27 pm
"I didn't think you'd like him very much. Then again, I don't think I like him very much. He talks too much, and he's picky about where he sleeps. But I can pretend to be useful with him around."
Tapa knew that Beru was none too happy about the changes in the pride, but she didn't think too much of it. Many of the lionesses had been born in the pride, and were used to things being the way they had been for centuries. If she had grown up in one place with one set of traditions, Tapa probably would have voted to keep things steady as well.
Although immediately after the injury with the crocodile, Tapa wished she could have changed her vote. The injury made the slow exodus from the pride lands more difficult then she was expecting. At least the leg seemed to be healing a bit better now. Who knows, maybe she could get rid of the vulture and be a real huntress again - possibly. Ishetenga had been offended at Beru's ignoring of him and was faking sleep with his head under his wing. She ignored his precarious perch on her back and stretched out on the ground to keep her leg comfortable.
"Do you think this drought is ever going to break?
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 6:09 am
Beru mentally snapped at herself for behaving as she did. No one was going to want to spend time with her if she continued to be so sour. Things hadn't gone her way, but there wasn't much to be done about that anymore. She should take heed of Tapa's example and make the best of a bad situation. It really was admirable that Tapa had found a way to continue to be of use after her injury.
"I'm sorry, Tapa. You know how I get when I'm woken before I want to be," she said, offering a tired smile. It was kind of a flimsy excuse, but it was at least partially true that her bad mood was mostly to do with being roused from sleep by a group of lionesses she was coming to believe were all idiots jabbering away about a subject that she would have assumed was closed.
"My apologies to your companion, too. I had heard you'd taken on a new rank, but I have not been spending much time among the pride much lately, so seeing him was something of a surprise." She may have apologized, but she was still talking around the vulture and really didn't intend to address him directly at any point.
She shook her head and shifted into stretches for her fore and aft before settling into a seated position. It was better manners to at least sit up to speak to people, though now that she considered Tapa's position it would be more polite for her to offer to walk, since she couldn't imagine how her friend would sit with a vulture perched on her back. Gods, that was eerie to see though. Vultures were heralds of death. She couldn't believe people would want to associate with them.
"It has to break sometime," Beru said flippantly. "Unless we've unknowingly offended someone and gotten ourselves cursed. Then it probably won't."
She shrugged dismissively. The drought was outside her control, and not actually as upsetting to her as the changes the pride had faced recently.
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Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2011 9:38 pm
Tapa watched Beru's face change a bit as she thought about what she said, but she wasn't too worried. They had been friends since Tapa and her sister came to the pride, and, though they were different, Tapa was sure Beru would be her friend until one or the other of them passed on. Beru was dependable like that. More dependable then anyone she had ever really known.
"Well, the good news is, we aren't cursed. According to the scavenger and his buddies, they think the rains are going to start soon. Apparently there are cloud masses forming. So you might have even more trouble getting some sleep."
Tapa was, in all honesty, more concerned then she probably should have been about the rain coming. After so much dryness, the shifting ground would be more likely to cause mudslides, the river to over swell its banks, the hunting to be difficult in the mud - plus if they turned back to the old lands, what kind of condition would they be in?
"It looks like you lions just can't get a break, can you? Ishetenga piped up.
"You'll hush up if you want to keep eating, Ishetenga, you're stuck with us for now. Rain can't make flying easy for you. Be quiet, the mammals are talking."
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Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 10:25 am
If Beru had known Tapa's thoughts she would have felt horribly guilty about her own, but she also would have been amazed that anyone would call her dependable. In her mind, she didn't see herself as a particularly reliable lioness, particularly given her mixed successes when it came to hunting, and for Beru there was no distinction between reliability and dependability. She would have been flattered to think anyone believed she could be depended upon.
"Not cursed is something, I suppose," Beru replied.
She didn't know how a vulture would have any way of knowing what the weather would be like before it happened, and she wondered about it, but she refused to ask. Asking would surely mean having to address the creature from a position of ignorance and she was a bit too proud to do that. He wasn't even feline.
"It's too bad about the sleep, but I guess the rain is more important. Maybe." Her tail twitched, showing that she was joking about the relative importance of rain. Of course it was more important that they get rain than that she get a good night's sleep. She'd had enough of this drought, though likely she'd soon have the same to say of any eventual deluge.
"Likely that means we'll have to find some more permanent shelter. More searching, scouting, and walking, and this time through mud! I can hardly wait." She wasn't doing very well at being cheerful. All her attempts at humor kept coming out more like complaints. She sighed.
"What do you plan to do with him?" she asked, nodding toward the vulture.
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Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 6:06 pm
"I dunno, it's more of a partnership of convenience. So I suppose I'll keep carrying him around and making sure he's fed as long as he remains useful and he wants too. It seems to be a pretty easy life though, so I think he'll stick around."
Ishetenga clacked his beak in agreement, although he didn't think the other lioness would take any notice of him. It didn't really matter - Tapa was the one that kept him well fed, her friend could go bugger herself for all he cared.
"Have you seen the rogue males hanging around?" Tapa asked Beru, glad to get the topic off her head. She was planning on finding one to hopefully get her with cubs, but she hadn't left the pride group to find said male yet. Beru, suspicious as she could be of anything outside of her home pride, would probably know more if she had noticed them.
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Posted: Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:58 pm
"Probably. I can't really think why a body wouldn't stick around for the promise of free food and protection for minimal work. Really, what can you do with a vulture?" Even eating them went against the grain for Beru, who had grown up with the idea that certain kinds of scavengers weren't even good for eating, vultures among them.
She was still talking around the vulture, but she really wasn't doing it on purpose. It just wasn't in Beru's nature to speak directly to non-lions, since they were innately inferior species anyway, and it was hard enough for her to recognize that they were capable of speech. The idea of eating something that was able to speak and form coherent complaints about being eaten was just a little stomach-churning for Beru, and so she preferred to objectify all forms of preybeasts as well as creatures that could serve as prey in great need.
As far as the rogue males went, Beru had not seen them, but it was not for lack of trying. The wind carried their scents to her and even though she was a traditionalist and had no personal interest in getting to know these males who were not of the pride, she had not been able to deny her curiosity for very long. She'd gone to take a look at them, surreptitiously, but discovered there was no way for her to get close enough to get a good look at them without her surveillance becoming obvious.
"Not up close. Don't tell me you've been talking to them?" Or doing other things with them. If she had been, Beru really didn't want to know.
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Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 1:49 pm
"Well, not yet. I know you think it's a bad idea, but I think new blood is going to be good for the pride. If the only males that father the cubs are the same few over and over again, the blood will corrupt. Besides . . . I don't want to share a male with some of these females."
That idea creeped Tapa out. What if she and her sister had a litter by the same male, and their children with siblings and cousins? No thank you - she'd prefer a male all to herself, even if she never saw him after he left her with cubs.
"Do you really want to have cubs by a male with four or five litters already in the pride? Really?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:02 pm
"We're in a period of rogue swap," Beru said. It wasn't a non-sequiter, but it also wasn't clear whether she was reminding herself of this fact or whether she intended it as some sort of reassurance for Tapa. Sometimes Tapa's foreign ways and thoughts just astounded Beru.
"So I guess now would be the time to...meet new people." Beru really wasn't interested. It wasn't that she was so thrilled with the idea of having her cubs related to everyone else in the pride through intricate ties that made it difficult to find non-relatives. She could see the dangers inherent in that easily enough. She just though rogues should be vetted before they were allowed to contribute to the pride's gene pool willy-nilly.
She paused to scratch at an itch between her shoulder and neck which she was certain came from looking at Tapa and her vulture and subconsciously imagining that she was carrying a louse-ridden bird in that spot. She didn't know how Tapa could stand it, but she was making an effort not to be quarrelsome. She did get tired of fighting from time to time.
"I'm just not sure...But you know me: I'm not really as adventurous as you are. I mean, I've never even. You know."
She hadn't wanted to, just in case the Abaholi compared her to someone else and she didn't measure up favorably. She was a proud little lioness after all, and could only stand to have so many obvious flaws. She was not the best huntress. That was her obvious flaw. Well, that and her inflexibility and bad temper. She didn't need to have added to it that she wasn't good at having sex.
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Posted: Wed Oct 12, 2011 2:43 pm
Tapa smiled bemusedly. Beru was very amusing sometimes, particularly when there was something she had to talk about that she didn't really want to talk about. Like sex. Tapa hadn't born cubs before either, but she had mated a male or two in her wandering days.
"Well, if you want to choose which 'new people' you're going to be 'meeting' you might want to pick them out first before that time of the year comes around and you just go for whatever male is closest. That can be really unpleasant."
Ishetenga laughed a clacking vulture laugh at the idea of the sour grey lioness going after whatever male passed closest. It would be even funnier if it happened to be a leopard or a cheetah - he would pay to see that. He quieted down quickly though, and edged down Tapa's back to be farther away from Beru.
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Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 10:55 am
It took Beru a moment to realize that Tapa was referring to the predicament a lioness could find herself in when she went into heat unexpectedly, or in less than ideal company. That wasn't something Beru had to worry about, actually. She had only gone into heat once before, and never again since. She figured she might actually have slipped something past the gods on that one.
"I believe it," she said. "But that's one of the better things about the way this pride is set up. You don't find yourself with a complete stranger should that happen."
She shot the clacking vulture a glance. Beru didn't know enough about avian expressions to say for certain that she was being laughed at, but she had more than a slight suspicion that the carrion-eater was amused. She had almost managed to forget he was there when he wasn't making rude noises or remarks, which was why she'd let the conversation take the turn it had.
"I believe your vulture may be choking," she observed dryly. "Perhaps it would be a good idea to find it something to drink before it expires."
Which also conveniently changed the topic before it could stray any farther into uncomfortable territory. Beru would not have ordinarily been particularly uncomfortable discussing sex with Tapa, but admitting to being completely inexperienced had not been on the day's agenda, and she certainly hadn't intended to do it in front of a vulture who might not have any idea of discretion. If word got out Beru would eat him, even if he was Tapa's companion.
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Posted: Thu Oct 13, 2011 11:41 am
Tapa looked at the vulture edging away. She, at least, knew he was laughing, even if Beru didn't. She stood up abruptly, causing Ishetenga to fall off.
"If you can't be polite, Ishetenga, I'm not going to bring you around to see nice people anymore. Why don't you flutter off and stretch your wings?"
Once Ishetenga had gone off with a wounded expression, Tapa settled back down.
"Well, if you're comfortable sharing, I'm not going to give you grief about it. It isn't my call. Just don't expect me to be able to tell your cubs from the other fifty or so running around when it eventually happens to you."
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