Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nakki frowned over the sands where the reavers sparred. For several days she had enjoyed coming down to watch everyone practicing, hoping to meet someone who would make her an acceptable husband and cement her place in the pride. A captain would be better than a reaver, of course, but Nakki was pretty sure if she could snare a reaver she could convince him to become a captain. And from there, maybe he'd even become the warlord. That would be most excellent. She could easily imagine herself the wife of a warlord.

Frustratingly, there wasn't anyone on the sands. They were completely and totally empty. There weren't even any cubs rolling around and getting underfoot. Her lip curled and revealed her sharp teeth as she surveyed the sandy ground. What in the world was going on here? If this was some kind of joke, she didn't appreciate the humor.

Nakki was just about to leave when she saw a lion at the far side of the sands. She put on her prettiest smile, just in case, and set off in pursuit.

Daffyd was probably one of the only lions in the pride who was not particularly interested in watching the battle between Njal and his challenger. He wasn't well-versed in pride lore and he didn't really see how things would change significantly for him one way or the other, no matter who won the fight.

He really hadn't expected to hear the sound of paws falling heavily on sand, drawing nearer to him as though someone was giving chase. That sort of experience was one he had abandoned when he fought his way into the Stormborn, he'd thought.

Daffyd's claws slid from their sheaths as he turned to face his pursuer, and then just as quickly slipped back into hiding. It was just a lioness, smiling a little oddly at him. He regarded her with mild curiosity and asked her while she caught her breath and spat out sand what her name was.

"Nakki," the lioness bearing that name answered, spitting sand from her mouth as delicately as she could. It wasn't very delicate at all, really, but she finished up with a pleasant enough smile. "What's your name?"

She sidled closer to the lion, who was very well put together and had a rather fierce mien. Well, he had a mien with the potential for ferocity at any rate. At the moment he merely looked mildly curious. Probably it was because she had kind of chased him down, which wasn't the usual way for a lioness to behave, but she hadn't wanted to yell at him. That was even worse.

"By the way, could you tell me where everyone is? I wasn't born to the pride and sometimes holidays and rituals catch me by surprise." She fluttered her eyelashes like she was trying to communicate in Morse code. Behind her, her tail curved into sinuous, sexy shapes.

Daffyd tried not to laugh at the lioness, whose spitting, blinking, and tail lashing made her look like she was having some sort of fit. And, yes, that really would be his first reaction to someone having a seizure in front of him. Laughter. Thoughts of going for help would be a distant second or third.

"I'm Daffyd, and probably nobody's here because there's been a challenge to the warlord, and everyone's off watching that." He didn't bother to hide the disdain in his tone while he informed her of this painfully obvious fact.

"You're not a thrall, are you?" She didn't act like a thrall, but she'd just admitted that she wasn't born to the pride, which meant she was either a thrall or she had fought and won a challenge to get into the pride. Looking at her, Daffyd didn't find the alternative to thralldom all that plausible, either. "I really don't have time to talk to thralls, you know."

Nakki's affront showed in the way her face snapped into a frown. How could he think that she was a thrall? That was just ridiculous.

"Of course I'm not a thrall. I'm a freeborn lioness. I fought my way into the pride and won my very first challenge." It was a calculated risk to tell him this. Some of the more conservative lions didn't like when lionesses admitted that they could fight, but it wasn't like Nakki was very good at it. She was just better than the lion she'd ended up fighting.

She was actually so annoyed about having been mistaken for a thrall that it took nearly a full minute for the rest of Daffyd's words to register. Someone was challenging the warlord? You could do that? Nakki had always assumed that was an inherited title, since she knew next to nothing about the pride's history, even the recent history that fell under the reign of the previous warlord.

"Why aren't you there, watching?" she asked, sensing something fishy.

Daffyd actually did laugh now. She was so funny looking when she was offended. Gods. He wondered if she realized that her nostrils became absolutely huge when she was angry. Like, you could store medium-sized pebbles in them, probably. Probably she didn't, or she would never make that face.

"Yeah, okay, sorry. You don't have to get all bitchy about it," he said when his laughter subsided. "Anyone else would have thought the same. It's not like you're wearing a sign or something."

He tossed his mane in a roguish way. "I'm not there because I'm not particularly interested in the outcome. Really, what difference does it make to me one way or the other if Ru wins or if Njal stays the warlord? I don't know either one of them."

He also didn't know either one of their politics, but if he had, he would have preferred Njal's, since that suited his generally misogynistic attitudes.

Nakki could not find the words to express her disappointment with Daffyd's attitude toward important pridal goings on. These were important things that could have really huge impacts on the rest of the pride. She couldn't understand how he could be so blase about it.

"It's going to have an effect on you if Ru wins," she argued. "How would you like it if your wife decided she wanted to go viking?"

She had never met Daffyd before, didn't know if he had a wife, but this was a tried and true method of ferreting out that information. She didn't think she was interested in him as a husband, but it was always good to know who was available for that and who was not. She didn't want to accidentally find herself in a relationship with someone who was already married. That would be a ghastly waste of her time.

"I heard Ru's very progressive."

Daffyd yawned pointedly. One of the main problems with this pride, in his opinion, was that entirely too many of the women felt entitled to voice their opinion on everything. It was basically the only problem he had with the pride, so he didn't complain about it much, but he was reminded of it whenever he had to deal with a nagging nuisance like Nakki.

"My wife, if I had one, would be more than welcome to go viking if she felt like it, as long as she remained loyal to me." As far as he was concerned, that was pretty much the natural way of things. Females provided for males, and males protected females.

Had he been called upon to do so, Daffyd would have been willing to do his part and defend the pride, but there were so many warriors that he really didn't see any reason to do so. Besides, he wasn't as good at fighting as most of the lions who had been born and raised in the pride, so his help wouldn't be very helpful. Not that he ever, ever cited that as a reason.

So he wasn't married. That was useful to know, she supposed, but since he was also an a** it wasn't as useful as it could be. Maybe he had a brother or something who was as good-looking and unmarried as he was, but significantly more pleasant.

"I'm surprised to hear that. You seem like you'd be pretty conservative."

Nakki frowned at the lion and his foul manners. Too many of the menfolk here thought they could just dismiss her because she was female, or an outlander, or both. She couldn't help being either one, and so she hated to have those traits used against her.

"Thank you for telling me about the challenge. I can't believe I didn't know about it" she said, putting on her sweet persona once more. It wasn't for him. It was so that she would be completely in-character by the time she got to the fight. She hoped she wouldn't miss it!

"Are you sure you don't want to watch?"

"How nice to have surprised you then," he said without inflection to convey his disinterest in the subject.

He fixed her with his best a*****e stare. He was capable of being charming for very brief periods of time, but mostly he made no bones about the fact that he was who he was, and most people seemed to agree that he was an a*****e. When he wanted to, he could be quite repellant, and it was his most repellant manner that he was now wearing in hopes of ridding himself of this unwanted companion.

"Look, I'm certain I don't want to watch the fight and I have things to do, so if you're looking for someone in particular you'd better go watch the challenge. That's probably where they are. Don't die in bed."

And with that, he turned around and walked off, leaving Nakki to do...well, he didn't really care what. Probably go watch the fight like everyone else.