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 Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:19 am
 Sar wondered away from the den and his littermates. They were playing some kind of game that Sar didn't want to play or watch. He really didn't want to be the only one to watch them play it. It would be even more boring. So Sar was on a mission.
He was going to do something extremely less boring. He was going to find Maral, one of his big brothers, and hang out with him because Sar thought Maral was awesome and amazing and cool and and and ... well Maral was Maral.
Sar started his search for his bestest big brother, ignoring the bugs crawling and the plants growing and the other small animals scurrying. He had his mission and he was so going to accomplish it. Even if he had to walk all over the Pridelands to do it.
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:45 am
Maral was squinting at lines scratched in the dust. His littermate Musabari used them to represent lions and zebra and said that they indicated how a hunt ought to go. Maral had never been able to understand how lines and circles corresponded to people and prey, but he had been trying since cubhood. He just couldn't make it make sense to him. They were scratchings on the ground, not lions and zebras.
He had hoped to have the afternoon to himself to work on this task before he went out hunting with the others at dusk. Because he was young and not one to put himself forward he was still accompanying older hunters on their hunts and acting more as an assistant and a spotter than a full participant. If he made a killing leap, it was because he'd been allowed to do so. Usually his mentors kept him out of the action, and he was fine with that. Coming home covered in glory wasn't Maral's style. It was more like him to simply provide anonymous assistance.
The pale lion had no idea he was about to be sought out by a little brother.
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 8:57 am
Sar found Maral studying something scratched into the dirt. Sar tilted his head, wondering what it was that had Maral's attention, and held it so aptly. Then he'd dismissed it. It was important, because he'd found Maral. Mission accomplished!
Starting to bound over to Maral, Sar stopped and thought of a game to play. He'd watched the hunters from afar. And now he mimicked them. He sunk low to the ground and edged foward slowly, silently so as not to allow Maral to hear or notice him. Sar smiled as he got closer and froze just to make sure.
Move forward a little bit more. A little bit more. Pounce! Sar landed on Maral's hind leg, having aimed for his head. That was embarrassing. Maybe he should have moved closer. All well.
"Maral! I was looking and looking and looking for you. And now I found you! See, see! I pounced you. I can pounce like you!" Sar looked up at his brother and smiled broadly. And then nuzzled Maral's side before looking at the lines and circles in the dirt. "What's that, Maral? And why are you studying it? Is it important?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 9:15 am
Suddenly under attack, Maral whirled with claws and teeth partially bared. His abrupt movement scuffed up the diagram he'd been studying beyond any sort of usefulness, even if he had been able to understand it, but his attention had been sufficiently diverted that it made no difference to him.
When he saw it was one of his new siblings Maral immediately sheathed his claws and hid his teeth once more behind his lips. This was no real threat to his safety. In truth, Maral had been pleased when this litter had been born to his mother and father because it virtually guaranteed he would never have to worry about bearing his father's uncomfortable regard again.
"You did!" he agreed, grinning at his little brother. "Found me and pounced me, just like a hunter."
Maral wasn't comfortable with the way some younger cubs followed him around, and he didn't understand their interest, but he couldn't bring himself to put them off. The younger lioness Kosoko had been the first, but this one of his younger siblings was equally odd in his interest.
"It's supposed to be plans for a hunt," Maral said after glancing down at the ruined pattern. "But now it's not much of anything, is it, little brother?"
Probably, Maral thought, he should get around to learning his younger siblings' names. He had no idea what he was supposed to call this one. Well, he could think of some things, but none of them were the cub's real name, and it wasn't quite right that an older brother wouldn't know his younger siblings' names.
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 9:32 am
Sar didn't notice the bared teeth or claws. While he was so focus on Maral, at the same time he wasn't at all. "But it just looks like doodlings. And squiggles. Are the squiggles lions?" Sar frowned trying to make sense of the scratches. "What are you hunting? Are they the squiggles?"
Sar squinted at the drawings, getting closer to them, thinking the closer he got, the clearer the plans would get. He was wrong. Sitting down almost on top of Maral, Sar studied the plans. "No it doesn't look like anything." The squiggles and lines and circled didn't look like lions or hyenas or zebras or gazelles or monkeys or rhinos or elephants or anything. They didn't even look like rocks or trees or plants. "Why don't you just draw the plans? Or write them? Does it have to be like this? Is hunting plans their own language?"
Sar looked up at Maral waiting for an explanation. He didn't think Dad used a hunting language. But then Dad was Dad. And it looked like Maral didn't use a hunting language either, if he had been trying to understand it. Was it a new thing? Or so old a custom most forgot about it? Was it in their histories? Did all hunters of the Pridelands once know this hunting language and lost it over time. Sar nuzzled against Maral again in approval. Maybe that's why Maral had been trying to study it so hard. Because it was so old that he didn't want it lost in the future.
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:24 am
"I'm not hunting anything just now," Maral said as he mustered his patience. Dealing with younger lions wasn't a special skill of his, nor was explaining himself. "This is something Musabari came up with to show how a hunt's supposed to go, but now it's gotten messed up."
It had gotten messed up when Maral turned around and tread on it accidentally. Maral didn't really mourn the destruction, since it hadn't been making any sense to him anyway, but it was certainly indecipherable now, even more than it had been before. He shook his head, having no idea what Sar meant when he talked about drawing or writing the plans. Lions didn't typically bother with such measures, and if Sar knew them he had clearly been bothering some very strange people.
"Don't worry about it," Maral advised, just in case his little brother took it into his little head to think he was to blame. He was, but it wasn't something Maral much cared about. It was just scratchings in the dust in the end, and verbal instructions worked perfectly well for Maral in any case.
"Um. Was there something you wanted?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 10:43 am
Sar looked at the mess. Extened a call and started to fix the picture. He wrote down the different parties. Well, not really wrote, but still it represented zebra. A picture of a zebra's fat body with stick legs and lines going across the body like a zebra's colors and under it he drew what he thought zebra sounded like, basically a hard slash that wen side to side a few times with a curl at the end. Zebra. There. That made more sense.
Then he fixed the lions, making their bodies and heads and legs bulker than the zebra's with manes surrounding their heads and proceeded to write lion under each. Which turned out to be a straight vertical line with teeth. There. Much better. "Is that better, Maral? Not as silly with squiggles and all?"
Sar shrugged and leaned against his best big brother. "No. I wanted to find you and I did."
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 6:45 am
Maral watched his little sibling drawing in the dirt. It didn't bother him that Sar - he thought this one was named Sar - had messed up the plan, since he had already done a fine job of that on his own, and so he wasn't upset by his brother's additions and alterations.
"Ah. They do look more like lions and zebras," Maral allowed. The finished product undeniably looked more like a zebra than the circles and crosses Musa used, but he was even less capable of seeing a hunting plan now that it was just a picture of a lion.
"I'm not sure that's really what Musa intended, but I can always ask him to explain it to me again later." Musa was very patient about that. In his own way, he was a lot like Maral, though the pale adolescent knew his brother was far more intelligent than he was. After all, he had conceived of this whole method of depicting a hunting plan, and that was pretty brilliant, even if it didn't make any sense to Maral.
Maral couldn't imagine why Sar would want to find him, but perhaps it was some sort of stalking game. He knew that his tendency to absent himself would make him a fairly rare find for his younger siblings. He still came to visit his mother pretty regularly, but most of the time he was not to be found in the den. It was just too crowded, and even though crowds meant he was more likely to be overlooked, which he preferred, he didn't deal with them very well.
"I see. Er." He didn't know what else to say.
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:02 am
Sar tilted his head at the improvement to the plans. Yep, they definitely looked like zebra and lion now, not those silly circles, lines, and squigglies. Sar wondered if he could commit the hunting plan to memory, for later, just in case Maral ever needed it again. He could draw it for him again. Sar stared hard at the plans, the placement of the zebras and the lions. But he was still confused on the nature of the plan.
"Maral? How does the plan work? I mean the zebra isn't going to be in that location or position every time you go hunting for them. How is the plan suppose to work if the zebra's facing in a different direction? Or surrounded by elephants or something?" Sar asked as he stared hard at the plans, missing the uncomfortableness that Maral was feeling after Sar's admission to looking for him. He was a great big brother after all.
Once he'd done as much as he could to memorize the plans, Sar looked up at his brother and sat down on his haunches. "And what if it's a gazelle that you're hunting? Or a group of monkeys starts raising a ruckus? Or maybe the elephants see a mouse and get frighten and stampede?"
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 7:29 am
This was why Maral didn't ever, ever want to lead a hunting party. People asked questions. And looked at him. And expected him to have answers. Preferably correct ones. Inside he was making a very dismayed face and wanted to retreat, but he couldn't think of a single good excuse for fleeing from a little sibling.
"Er. Musa says that plans work because you have more than one and you can look at what you think you're going to be dealing with before you actually attack. So, er, if the zebra are in a position to see you, you'd move so that they can't before starting to put the plan into action. Er."
He never had any difficulty understanding what the plans meant when they were explained to him. What he'd been doing earlier was trying to reconcile the explanation he'd heard to the markings on the ground, since they were describing the same plan, theoretically.
"If you were hunting gazelles you'd use a different plan. Same for if there were elephants. Er. Your hunt leader should be able to tell you what to do if something happened to change the plan. That's why they're in charge."
At least there was one easy question out of the ones Sar asked. One Maral definitely knew the answer to: "If there's a stampede, a real one, get out of there."
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Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2011 8:43 pm
Sar tilted his head. That made sense. At least to Sar's logic it did. Especial the stampede part. You didn't want to be squished under an elephant's foot. That would make any lion little better than a bug. "But Maral, what if the zebra is in a circle of elephants? And its the only prey around? Besides the herd of elephants? And how does the plans in the ground show the plans in motion? They drawings don't move like prey or like the hunters, like you. They stay in one place. Maral you don't stay in one place." Sar rubbed his head against his older brother. "Who's your hunt leader, Maral? Is it Dad? Do you hunt with anyone in the family? Did you want to be a hunter when you were my age? What's your favorite prey? How did you get so good at hunting?"
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Posted: Thu Dec 01, 2011 11:54 am
At this point Maral actually did cringe. There were entirely too many what ifs in his little brother's speech, and he didn't have answers for them.
"That's not very likely, is it?" he finally said. "A lone zebra surrounded by elephants."
He would have loved to explain how the plans on the ground showed the plans in motion, but that was the problem he had with the things. Musa promised that the squigglies were meant to show motion, and the interrupted squigglies showed alternate paths a hunter could take, but those were all gone now and Maral couldn't recreate them. Gods, he couldn't even figure out how they were supposed to work. There was no way he could explain it to Sar.
He lowered his head to sniff at Sar's ear as the youngster rubbed up against him. "You'd do better to ask Musabari how they work. He's the one who came up with this way of showing plans. He understands them loads better than I do."
Maral didn't exactly like to admit that he didn't know things, but he preferred to do that rather than have people assume he could do things he couldn't and then be disappointed when he didn't do them. He was a very reliable hunter when given specific directions and actions to perform which were within his abilities, but he wouldn't have called himself a good hunter. Sar's questions about hunting sort of bewildered him.
"Rei's not my hunt leader, no. That's usually Hasa Diga. Sometimes I hunt with Kam and Musa. Er." He had to pause to try to remember the rest of the questions. "I'm not that good at hunting, I've just been practicing since I was your age. What else did you ask?"
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Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 2:30 pm
Sar nodded. It did seem kind of silly, but not impossible. But if Maral said it was unlikely to happen, then Sar believed him. "What's your favorite prey? Do you hunt at night or during the day? Which would you prefer? Have you been outside the pridelands? I wonder whats out there. I don't think it could be as good as it is here with you and dad and mom and Dayo and the others. But why don't the rogue lions realize it and join our pride? Have you seen a hyena? What are they like? Do they try and steal your hunts? Are they scary? Is Musa going to be a hunt leader one day? Is dad a hunt leader? Did you always want to be a hunter? I don't know if I want to be just a hunter. Maybe I could be a hunter and something else. What do you think, Maral? Could I be two things at once?
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 7:15 am
Ah, right. The bit about favorite prey Maral remembered now. But Sar had definitely cheated by adding more questions as he recited the ones Maral had failed to answer on the last go around. Before answering the next batch Maral looked around hopefully: perhaps someone would come by and rescue him.
After a moment's hesitation and searching proved that he was not likely to be rescued any time soon Maral supposed he might as well answer Sar's questions. Surely the cub would run out of things to ask eventually. Maral obviously didn't remember what it was like to be that age, and how every answer only served to spark further questions.
"I like hunting gazelles best because they're not very bright but they're also exciting because their horns can be dangerous, and usually we hunt them at dawn or in the early morning because lions see better in half light than prey beasts do." At least that was what Maral had been told and since he had no way of saying whether it was true or not he saw no reason not to believe it.
"I've never been outside the pridelands or seen a hyena, but I know a lioness whose sister was kidnapped by hyenas before you and your siblings were born when a pack of the filthy things attacked the Pridelands. I bet Rei and mom could tell you some really interesting stories about that time." Here he paused in the hope that Sar would decide those stories would be more interesting and run off in search of their parents.
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Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2011 10:23 am
Sar opened his mouth in shock. She'd been cubkapped? "Is she okay? Did they hurt her? Did she make her way back? Why would they do that, Maral? Doen't they have their own pups to kap or play with or care for?" Sar raced on, pushing closer to Maral.
As his questions raced out of his mouth, thoughts, ideas and nightmares raced around his mind. "Are there still hyenas out there? Would they attack us? Did we run all of them out?" He pressed himself into Maral's side, fear starting to build inside of him. "What if they're hiding and waiting for when we're weak and they can pounce again and cubnap all cubs? Would they hide in the tall grasses? Or behind the rocks and trees and things? Would the prey animals know the hyenas were three? Would they warn us by fleeing?"
He was going to have to go back to the den. And now he was going to see hyenas everywhere. "Would - would you walk me back to the den, Maral?" Sar asked looking up at him with big round eyes.
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