|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Tue Dec 25, 2012 8:15 pm
Thunder rolled overhead and dark clouds hung heavy in the western sky, but still the storm held. For a little while, anyways. She could smell the storm on the wind, tangy and wet, sharp like the smell of blood. Already the wind was picking up, blowing dirt and sand into her eyes and across the dry ground in eddies. Nava prayed that it wouldn't break. Not yet.
Her tawny ears were laid flat against her head, pupils dilated to catch the fast-fading afternoon light. Her belly rubbed against the cracked earth as she crept forward, inch by painful inch. Paws roughened by miles and years pressed carefully into dust. The hare that hunched in front of her quivered and twitched its nose, but its dark eyes were on the storm, not on her.
Around them the landscape had turned an ugly yellow-green. Nava darted a glare at the storm clouds. s**t.
Thunder rolled again, closer this time, and she used the noise to cover her approach. The hair jumped, but didn't run. It would in a minute, as soon as the first drops of rain struck the parched ground. The wind blew harder, ruffling her fur, almost knocking her off balance. Nava ground her teeth together. She took another step.
She was almost close enough to strike...
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 8:51 pm
The Rogue Lands had done wonders for him. As bad as he still was, he had been worse. Out here, he learned to track prey, water, and many pretty females to serenade. Dinner was not all he'd gotten from his father: Araiya had Mtembei's wonderfully smooth singing voice, and being from the Nchi, many occasions to use it. They did not worship the rhythm like his pride did out here, but their dumbfounded stares and glowering were attention.
He loved attention.
But he also loved not starving to death, so there would be no more singing unless it was on a full belly.
There was never an absence of scents in the land of rogues. How was he to know someone was really there this time, and hadn't just lingered here before and left their smell behind? His thoughts were not on these matters, only the hare.
Araiya bounded out of the brush and snatched the animal by the neck, killing it almost instantaneously.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 9:21 pm
Nava had been raised right. She didn't interrupt her elders (most of the time), and she didn't hit her siblings or talk back to her father. She'd almost always been prompt to her parent's call, especially her mother's, and when it was time for her to hunt or clean the den, she did it. Nava wasn't lazy, like her sister was. But most of all, the one truth she'd been instilled with throughout a childhood of scarce herds and drought, was that she didn't steal.
Starving or not, she asked.
She was a lady.
So it was with a large amount of shock that she watched this dark son-of-a-b***h male lion pop out of nowhere and steal her kill. By the time Nava was finally able to pick her jaw up off the ground and form a rational thought around her incoherent rage, this... this... PREY STEALER had already killed her hare.
HER HARE!
"What... what the hell do you think you're doing, you THIEF!" She screeched, popping sideways out of the bushes. "You dog! You mangy carrion-eating HYENA!! THAT'S MINE!"
Nava's coat was bristled from the back of her neck to the base of her tail, and she stood up on her toes as though her anger was denying gravity's effect. A small, slightly more rational part of her wondered how she'd missed this lion's presence (after all, he'd appeared upwind...) but the rest of her, composed nearly entirely of irrational rage, quickly stomped that small part into bits.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2013 10:02 pm
Uhhh!
Araiya went slack-jawed as this female berated him. Was this karma for all the times he'd danced on his mother's last nerve? This lioness was her with a different coat and less reservations; she was what he always imagined Mom sounded like in her head when she gave him the look.
"Gods and drums, lady, calm down!" Araiya exclaimed. What did she have against hyenas, anyway? Racist! But racist or not, she was bombarding him with the kind of attention even he didn't like. He made quick work of pleading his innocence: "I didn't know," he offered -- no, swore! "I didn't see you! Where did you even come from anyway?"
The hare had fallen out of his mouth long ago and he seemed to forget the damned thing was even there.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:10 pm
"How could you--!" Nava bit off the harsh reply, nearly choking on it.
She took a deep breath. And another. It wasn't his fault she'd gotten kicked in the face by that gazelle earlier. OR that she'd been chased off of her favorite watering hole this morning. And he hadn't put that thorn bush there when she'd gone to--
Anyways.
She was a great huntress. And she had been doing an awfully good job of blending into the dirt (her white spots no longer being very white, and all). And he did sound contrite.
Blue eyes fell on the limp hare - an hour! a damned HOUR of my time, wasted on a dumb hare, and he just pops in and takes it! - and her teeth ground together with the effort of not screeching.
"I came[/] from over there," She jerked a paw impatiently behind her, "and I'd like my hare now. thank. you. very. much." She stared meaningfully at the dead animal in the dirt. If the last bit of her didn't sound very thankful, or thankful at all really, well... at least it was said in a level tone.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2013 7:42 pm
Araiya surrendered the animal, but at a price. That price was laughter at Nava's expense. He couldn't help it! She was so serious and uptight and over what? Something that barely made a meal? He was starving and he wouldn't have made such an uproar.
"O-kay," he enunciated distinctly this word and the next four that followed it. "You. can. have. it. What a waste of a pretty face, scowling like that." To prove himself more than a fulsome flatterer, he picked up the hare only to drop it at her feet. "There you go, pretty lady. Don't eat it all at one time."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:36 am
"I! ..." Her words shriveled in her throat. Wait, what did he say?
Nava stared at him. He was giving it to her, just like that? The pale lioness had been ready to chase him down through the storm (it was the PRINCIPLE of the thing, it was her hare!) but now... She could feel anger draining from her limbs despite her effort to hold on to it.
At least until he laughed at her. Then it came right back. Nava scowled, her face dark. Who did he think he was, calling her pretty? The flirting just confused her; she was angry, pleased, and embarrassed all at once, and she didn't like any of it. Which only made her scowl deeper.
"I'll eat it however I please, thank you!" She said hastily, snatching the rabbit up in her mouth. It tasted like victory, Nava thought, congratulating herself. Skinny, scrawny, victory, but victory none-the-less.
"Eehl reest oo ukcov!" She said around the rabbit. Nava punctuated her words with a glare, daring him to challenge her. " 'ell?"
Her crowning moment of triumph lasted for all of two seconds, before the storm that had been threatening finally delivered on its promises.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 4:22 pm
This was worth the price of admission. He'd gladly surrender a meal for entertainment like this any day.
Araiya set his jaw so as not to mock her with his laughter; however, he didn't take any preventative measures to shoo away the grin on his face. It was said they were contagious, and this grouchy lioness needed to be infected by his charm bad.
"Fine, fine, eat however you please," he said, super serious. Ironically, too serious to be taken seriously.
Whatever complaints she had after that were lost in translation, nothing but garbled words whose coherence was held hostage by the hare in her mouth. Revenge for its death from beyond the grave perhaps?
"I don't know what you're --" Araiya felt a drop of water on his nose.
The clouds let the rest of it go all at once. Kind of like that time he had to pee, but there was a drum circle, and mom told him to wait, so he did... and you get the drift.
"The clouds are pissing on your hare."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:11 pm
Pissing on her hare? How crude.
Nava might swear like a sailor when the mood was on her, but she didn't really appreciate anyone else using such terrible language around a lady like her. She sniffed loudly, looking down her 'pretty' nose at him. Her contempt was somewhat nullified by the water dripping in steady streams down her face.
It was true - her hare was quickly becoming soggy. Its fur was sticking in her mouth, too. She wrinkled her nose and would have dropped it, but that lion was watching her.
So instead she made a great show of setting the hare on the ground and primly ripping its leg off. Nava kept her eyes on the lion (and his annoying, insufferable grin) while she ate. Everything tasted like dirt. The mud made her meal gritty. The rain made it hard to see.
She did her best to pretend that neither existed.
"At least I have a hare!" Nava replied. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she winced. Even to her own ears, and considering the circumstances, that sounded terribly inappropriate. ... too late now, though. Said was said.
She eyed the dark male sideways, while chewing gamely on the tough meat. Look at him, standing there grinning like an idiot in the middle of a damn storm. She scowled around her hare, but felt a twist of guilt alongside the annoyance. Males. They couldn't help how they were.
"Here." She jerked off the hare's other leg and tossed it to him. "You can have this." It tasted like s**t anyways, to be honest (not that she'd ever admit it out loud). Nava forced herself to take another bite, acting for all the world like she wasn't crouched in the middle of a deluge.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2013 11:41 pm
Araiya's was a kind of gaiety not easily confined or stilled. His entire family was stubborn. The males tended to be judged as capricious due to their mellow attributes being plentiful and easily understood. His kindness was in-your-face, always. But he was adamant that this lioness would cheer up whether she wanted to or not. Hence, stubborn.
"At least I have the hare!"
That she did. Araiya laughed about it. He was preoccupied searching the area for something, but if he were to look, he bet he'd see steam coming off the top of her head. Maybe the rest of her too. She was pretty hot.
Haha, pun. Genius
Araiya heard the leg thump on the ground, felt it nudge his paw when it landed, and he looked down at it in awe. Ooh. So she had a soul after all! That was encouraging.
"Thanks." He flashed another smile. "Give me a minute..."
Now, if he could only...
Araiya wrinkled his nose at the flat, thin, wide stone on the ground. He'd prefer more of a tree branch or a leaf, but those were in short supply in the immediate vicinity and searching in the downpour would be like -- like -- like searching for a leaf in a downpour, actually.
A lion couchant in the grass was nothing special. Strange, though, for one to be out in the rain and defending another against the onslaught by holding a stone over her head. Some umbrella.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 8:13 pm
I won't give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much I don't want this hare anymore.
Nava bit down and ripped another chunk out, her lips pulled back from her teeth in something halfway between disgust and determination. Out of the corner of one eye she could see that silly male rooting in the mud for something. Already lost that leg, I bet. It'll be beyond saving by now. Not that it was worth much saving in the first place.
No wonder he looked so scrawny and underfed, if he treated all his meals like that! Nava wouldn't waste her food, oooooh no. Too many hungry days and nights had taught her to choke down her mud-hare and ask for more, please and thank you.
So intent was she on her meal and performance that she didn't notice the stone the dark lion pulled free. Not until he was standing directly over her, with it poised to crash down on her head.
What the hell? Nava gave a small shriek (a sound mostly lost in the storm, thank goodness) and dropped closer to the mud in a vain effort to avoid the blow. She squinched her eyes shut, waiting. But he didn't drop the stone in a sorry attempt to brain her. In fact...
It almost seemed like he was trying to keep her dry with it.
Or at least, keep her from getting any wetter. Dry was a long lost proposition. Nava winced as a dollop of mud plopped onto her head and slid slowly down the side of her face.
Well, it was the thought that counted, she supposed.
"Uh..." She blinked owlishly up at the male, feeling more unsure of herself with every action he took. Her anger, her source of unthinking confidence, was fading into something that more resembled confusion. Nava almost managed to feel angry that she didn't feel angry. Almost. "Uh..." She repeated smartly. "Thank you, I guess."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 2:02 pm
If he was getting points for effort rather than effectiveness, hurting his teeth was worth the score.
The rain water pounded on the stone and soon made it too heavy to hold. With a swing of his head, Araiya tossed it to the side. It broke apart from the force with which it landed.
"You must have brothers to think I was going to drop that on your head," he joked. Or common sense. What was she supposed to think with a rock hovering above her?
Araiya hadn't really thought it would work, just expected it to be a peace-making gesture in the end. Seemed he had succeeded as far as that went.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 3:58 pm
Nava watched her umbrella soar out into the storm and shatter.
It had been a nice thought. A dumb one, but nice.
In fact, it was one of the nicer ones anyone had had for or about Nava in a long while. Not that she had any idea why no one ever wanted to help her. They all just got grumpy and left. It wasn't her fault they were idiots, although she supposed she didn't have to say it to their faces. That was probably where she'd gone wrong.
Which was what made this lion particularly strange.
She'd called him worse than idiot earlier, she'd made him (in her mind) give up the meal he'd stolen, and she'd been less than graceful about the whole entire thing.
And yet, he was still here.
She squinted at him through the rain, her expression equal parts disdain and confusion. Was he just stupid? Not regular stupid, but really stupid? Or was he toying with her? Did he want something?
Probably the same thing all hair-brained males wanted. Nava wrinkled her nose. Well, he wasn't getting any.
"Of course I had brothers." She replied. "And anyone would think you were going to drop it on their head! Who uses a rock like that?" She sniffed loudly and gave him a sidelong look. She'd be ready, if he tried anything.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Fri Jan 11, 2013 3:30 am
The only thing Araiya wanted to "try" was to try to find a big leaf or a branch with many small ones. He looked again, just to make sure, but his leaf / branch hunting skills were still top notch; he hadn't missed a thing the first time. "Someone who doesn't have anything else to use. I could stand over you, but I don't think either of us want that."
He wouldn't mind it. And he'd gladly find them a nice, cozy den if he honestly thought it was appropriate. Araiya was in the market for glimpses of romance, not for manipulation or using aggression -- physical or otherwise -- to get his way.
Besides, this feisty lioness didn't like him at all and he wanted to keep all the parts that made him male right where they were.
Had he even gotten her name yet?
"I'm Araiya, by the way. Nice to meet you, grouchy face."
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2013 7:00 pm
Aha, see? Suggesting he stand over her. Ha! Nava pressed her lips together primly and congratulated herself on being such an excellent judge of character. All these lions were like an open book to her. They just wanted to get the goods, and then they'd ditch, just like her dad.
Next he would be sidling up to her, offering to take her to a nice warm cozy den.
He'd call her pretty again and --
... wait.
Nava's eyes bulged, and mouth gaping open in an unladylike display of surprise. Grouchy face? Who is this lion, anyways? First he calls her pretty and tried to defend her against the storm (not that she needed any help anyways), and then he goes and calls her ugly?
Realizing she was catching raindrops, Nava snapped her jaws shut with a click.
"Grouchy face?" Any nice thoughts the lioness had had about this boy were quickly evaporating. Nava lashed her tail, opening her mouth in a snarl to give him what he had coming. Her claws dug into the soft earth, but the mud squelching between her toes stole some of her focus. "Uck. I mean! I'll have you know that Nava means 'lovely'! You... you ugly face!"
Yes, a strong recovery. Take that, lion!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
