When Gliri vanished Kiek had been at a loss. He was a hunter for the pride, and a good one. Even a lioness with Gliri's experience should not have been able to take a few steps and vanish from before his eyes. And the most frustrating part was that he knew he would never manage to find her once she decided to hide herself, even though he knew the area around her den as well as anyone. He did not know it as well as she did, and that made all the difference. With no hope of finding the lioness, he was left with no choice but to leave and return at a later time and date.
Making himself wait for that later time and date was difficult for the young lion. Now that he had admitted to himself that he was in love with Gliri, which had been laughably obvious to his family at least, it was hard for him to think of anything else but her and being with her. But before he could be with her, he knew he would have to convince her to be with him, addressing each of the concerns she had raised when he told her how he felt and proving them to be baseless. He did not know how he would do that, but it was certain that he would either succeed or die in the attempt.
During the time he spent giving Gliri space, and perhaps a chance to miss him as well, Kiek turned to some of his friends for advice. Many of his friends were older than he was, but they were of both genders, which he felt might give him some insight into what sort of thoughts and feelings Gliri might be experiencing. All of his friends expressed astonishment that he had this great love that they had never heard of until this moment. He had no ready answer for that since he did not want to admit that he had only recently realized that what he was doing, he was doing for love of a lioness.
Some of his friends tried to dismiss his feelings, or to warn him that first love was always like this, and that the lioness in question (he did not give any of them Gliri's name) was probably correct in saying that he ought to find someone his own age. They told him he did not have to be with the first person he liked for the rest of his life, and that it was probably a bad idea at his age, given his youth and inexperience. The least romantic among them suggested that perhaps she would be amenable to an arrangement wherein he and his lioness remained friends but also had sex.
He did not appreciate this sort of advice and allowed it to flow in one ear and out the other without even a hint of doubt being permitted to take root. He did not want just a sexual relationship with Gliri. He knew that the love he felt for Gliri was the real thing and the sort of love legends were made of, if he could only get her to see it that way as well. He had no desire to sully it with carnality. The first time he said that he had earned a great deal of laughter from his friend, which had brought Kiek's temper to the surface and nearly caused a fight between the two of them.
His more helpful friends told him that he ought to do as he was doing and give her time. It was quite the thing to spring on a person, after all, particularly when your relationship before that had been simply that of good friends. It was, they assured him, a shock and he ought to be mindful of that. Some of them said that he ought to stay away from her for a long while to give her time to miss him while others warned him not to stay away for too long, or else she might get the idea that he was easily put off, and thus not really as interested in pursuing things with her as he claimed.
As far as the concerns Gliri raised, the one about how well he knew her could be dealt with easily enough, everyone assured him. He had but to ask. She might not want to tell him everything, but anything she did tell him would be more than he had known before, and if he did not know her well after asking her directly, that would be her fault and not his. Kiek did not wish to play the game of assigning blame, but he could see the logic in what they said, and if it became necessary he would point that out to Gliri. He hoped that he would not have to do that.
Her concern about the difference between their ages was one that made his friends smirk. A number of them asked how old his lady love actually was, that she felt a relationship between them would be inappropriate. Kiek did not actually know the answer to that question. He told his friends that she had been an adult when they met while he had been only an adolescent, but that was the extent of his knowledge. She did not seem all that old to him, and that was not just because she was petite and had a tendency to tease slyly.
It was Gliri's concern about how well she really knew Kiek that gave everyone pause. A few of them had even looked at him in askance and wondered only half in jest how well they really knew him. He told them that he was becoming the lion he wanted to be, and that it was no crime to wish to be a certain kind of lion and try to achieve that ideal. He told them that it did not matter what sort of lion he may have been when he was born. Everyone was born blind and helpless, and while most people grew out of being blind, becoming less helpless was a matter of conscious choice. What he had done was the same thing. It was, he felt, a good argument and he thought he might try it with some success on Gliri after he practiced the exact wording a little bit more.
Six days after he told Gliri he loved her he returned to her den to find her gone. She was not out hunting, he was told, and had in fact failed to show up for an arranged hunt a few days ago. That combined with the evidence that her den had not been lived in for several days gave Kiek the miserable feeling that she had fled. He had actually succeeded in driving her from the pride with nothing but a declaration of affection. He was horrified by this realization and realized that an extra step had been added to his plan to win her over: before he could do anything else, he would have to locate her.
Word Count: 1,186
