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Ukahada was a quiet cub, he stayed out of trouble and did his best to learn as quickly and easily as his grandmother wanted him to. He knew he was going to be nvwati from a young age, training had to start early after all.. but it was only recent that he had found some aspect of it that just seemed to fit perfectly. Naturally, he was very interested in the tattoos that covered all Ela'wadiyi- it took time to learn the patterns and meanings.. but it wasn't until he really started learning how to do it that he realized how much he loved it and the fact that he got to help with it.

While the clan was settled for a little while near the river, Ukahada sneaked away to find himself a nice clear, dirty spot to practice. With the help of a stick and occasionally his toes and claws, he started drawing in the dirt. It was imperfect and every once in a while the wind or his paws would ruin some aspect of the story he was trying to tell, but he was having a lot of fun.

With the stick sideways in his mouth, his head tilted over and his paws seeming to go every which way, the cub was struggling to add a swirl and flourish to part of his work that he had circled back to, realizing it was missing something. It came out rather jagged and he was inspecting it when his aunt came wandering up.

"Huh?"

He looked over, thankfully with his head held high enough to avoid randomly scraping through his story. When he saw her, he smiled awkwardly through the stick and then lowered his head to set it down (which really ended up sounding more like he spit it out).

"Hi, Aunt Kawani," he said, "Watch where you step!"

He chuckled when she froze, clearly taking his caution seriously- it made him feel important. It was probably a good time to take a step back and look at the big picture anyway.

"Yep!" he said brightly, taking a few steps right over some of his scribbles before scrambling away before he ruined even more, "Oops!"

He rolled his eyes at himself but it wasn't the first time he'd done it today, he'd been going in little circles, up and down, trying to get the right angles to try making different pictures from.

"Can you tell what the story is about?" he said, looking back down at the dirt, away from where he had put paw prints right through the design, "I can't tell if it'll be easier or harder on an actual lion. Grandma makes it look so easy."

Ukahada nodded seriously when Kawani laughed and said Grandma had been doing it forever. She was definitely old, that sounded right. Especially to one as young as him. When she moved on to trying to interpret his story, he put on an overly-thoughtful expression and looked down. He was happy with it, he had fun trying to make it.

...

"Close enough!" he said brightly, laughing.

He didn't bother looking too much into her reaction. He was still learning to tell stories this way and she did get the gist of it. Kind of. Ukahada wasn't about to cause either himself or her any problems by arguing about it. He still had a lot of learn and, unfortunately for one as young as him, the easiest way to learn to read the stories was sometimes seeing how your own looked. He didn't have much of a story yet.

"OK," he said through a laugh before fussing with his mane after she messed it up. There wasn't much there to ruin but it seemed instinctive to try to fix it up again.

"What do you do for fun?"

Ukahada made a face. She wasn't selling herself as a very fun alternative to studying and practicing, though he did like his aunts and uncles a lot. They didn't try particularly hard to be fun either, though.

"I dunno where they are," he said, looking around, "Do you want to go look for them?"

He was having fun practicing (and he needed to practice!) but he could have more conventional fun, too. Aunt Kawani suggested it, now she had to follow through right away.

Hmm, mud was usually fun. And they were already near water and dirt, they were all set! Except.. they didn't know where his siblings were. They wouldn't have gone too far, of course, but that didn't help someone short and unfamiliar with the land (always moving made it really hard to learn it all!).

"I bet you're right!" he said, "Let's go find them!"

Ukahada scrambled to start running off to search for his siblings-- and then he suddenly circled back around to collect his stick before continuing. He didn't want to lose it, this was the best stick he'd found for practicing tattoos!