WC: 1024
Gaige was a runt. Tikoto had never seen a cub so small, and one of pure stock at that. Even though his sister had been born last it was the son who had lost the most weight. She wanted nothing more than to bury him in the mud he refused to touch the moment his father was away, but Chozi would cry if she did that. And for some reason that made her lenient.
His paws were bigger than his head at times, causing the tiny runt of a male to stumble around the interior of their hellish den. He reveled in the times when his mother would stop to feed him, if only because it was the only time she would allow him to be close. Gaige’s large orange eyes took her in as she murmured to herself, and ignorance was truly blissful in that he could never notice the malice in her eyes at having been left with him.
She wanted him, needed him, but she was getting weak. Tikoto couldn’t go on feeding both of them from her own body without starving herself in the process. It made the lioness jittery. Stained incisors snapped at everything that moved, nipping at strips of decaying bodies littering home homelands and even her own paws at times. Why hadn’t Chozi taken it with him? Did he want it to die? He was testing her, oh he thought he was slick, but she saw through it….
Gaige waited on the edge of the skull, his rump playfully wiggling behind him as his mother paced outside. He growled and ducked, nipping on the ivory bones that made up the walls of his home. His teeth were not yet strong enough to do any real damage, but he was bored enough to test his limits. Slowly, with the trepidation, and yet, the eagerness of the ignorant he crossed the space between them to her side.
And was shocked into silence when a swift paw came down on the back of his neck. Then the shrieking mewls came.
“SHUT UP, FOR GODS SAKE, STOP YOUR WHIMPERING.” Tikoto pressed down on Gaige. His body broke through the layer of grime caking the ground. His white underbelly was now a mixture of tainted earth, and the blood of a lovely leopon that had visited for supper last week. “So help me if you do not learn to follow orders I will snap your neck right now, and feast on your entrails before sending your pretty little eyes back to your sister as earrings!”
She took a moment to let loose a loud, ground shattering roar of utter frustration before ripping her claws away from him. The force of the movement flung Gaige toward the skull, the marks of her claws bleeding on his back. Tikoto didn’t look to him; rather, she placed a paw on her face and clawed her cheeks. “Calm, calm – you can’t eat the boy. He’s bait, you can use bait. Meat will come to bait.” The moment of clarity didn’t last long, and she was stalking towards him once again. “I never asked for you. Do you know how hard it is, raising ones dinner? Oh, don’t look at me like that, you smell so sweet when you’re crying.”
Gaige didn’t move from his spot. His ears were pressed back against his head and he was openly crying. He was too young to realize his moment of weakness was only pushing her further towards the edge. He didn’t realize why she was acting this way, why his back ached or why he found no warmth from her now that his papa was gone. Where was his sister? He wanted her back, and the other one, the one who loved… “Bait. I bait.” He nodded hurriedly. Gaige sniffled, wiping his eyes with a filthy paw. “Mama bait?”
Tikoto paused, and bent down to sit next to him. Ever so brutally she pulled him to her, jerking his head to the side so that she might have a look at his back. “Oh yes, baby, mama would like that very much. If you play bait for her then I’ll be very good to you. But you have to follow all of my rules, okay?” She saw him shake his head, but even she knew he would slip. He would break. “You’ll learn. They all do.” Tikoto dipped her head, lapping at the blood she had wrought. Her tongue was hard and course, eliciting more cries from the boy of fear than comfort.
Gaige’s paws couldn’t stop shaking. The pain was worse now than ever, and when she finally stopped he didn’t have the strength to walk away. It was with some relief when his mother picked him up by the scruff of his neck, and carried him inside. He thought it odd, since she had fed him not so long ago, but…now she held him close. She had not released her hold, and seemed to be kneading his neck with her molars.
The young cub settled in between her forepaws, laying his head against her sickly legs amidst the mites and fleas. To him her fur didn’t stink – it was the smell he was used to, what he had come to know as home.
“You’ll grow and hunt for me. You won’t be like the rest.” Tikoto started sat back to look at him as Gaige laid sprawled across her paws. There was nowhere clean or warm to lay the boy, but for now he seemed less prone to shivering like usual. He didn’t whimper in his sleep, nor did he cry out. Was this the trick? “But you’ll have to be good to your papa, and your sister. The rest…we will consume.” And should Chozi or Mpenzi turn against her, they would be on that same list.
Gaige nodded, yawning with a look of mixed worry border lining exhausted. He had lost a bit of blood in the attack, and finally when he laid his head over it was with the knowledge that for once in his short life his mother was fully focused on his welfare.
