IC Timeline: The first five days days after In Seer-ious Trouble.
Talis watched the day turn to night and wondered whether she'd see the morning.
Each sunrise found her weaker than the last. Dying would be easier, she was sure. All she had to do was stay here, keep her face nestled in the pallid fur, and death would not take long to find her. She'd just ignore the voice in her ear that kept reminding her to live. For days now she'd wasted away in the shadow of this tree, which to her seemed fitting, since she didn't feel much beyond a shadow of what she'd once been. She could just meld into it, fade away...
"Breathe," he said.
Talis breathed.
If the hunger and dehydration didn't kill her, the food and water being forced on her to cure it would. Every slice of meat felt like it had been rolled in sand, and when she drank, it tasted sour in her mouth. She told him it had been too long since she'd had access to potable water and a meal that wasn't scraps unfit for a hyena. Maybe it was already too late.
"Breathe," he reminded her. "You'll have to drink soon."
The roguelands sounded promising to the ears of adventurous youngsters because only those who thrived there lived to tell about it. A pack of wild dogs had once accosted her for her kill. Other times, it was lions, her own kind stealing from her, threatening her. She'd been trapped in a gorge for... for so long, she told him. Tears stung at her eyes. Walking out might have been easy if not for the visions. They came to her often, sometimes every hour; most were disjointed echoes of the past or mantic glimpses into the future, but sometimes, they were the sights of paths she had just walked or roads she might take until she could only wonder where she really was — and when.
"Drink," he insisted.
There was no fresh water there except when the Gods were merciful and it descended from the sky. It pooled in the hollows of the stone and puddled on the ground. She licked it off the rocks and sucked it through the mud without complaint, too parched to spare the words when no one but the vultures would hear them.
"Talis, look at me."
They were grossly wicked, those vultures. They didn't hunt as lions did. No, they didn't hunt at all. They congregated on the naked limbs of dead trees — not trees like this one, but ones rotten at the roots — and they chattered while they waited for her to die. Though she'd never hated anything as much as those birds, she'd grown too feeble to lunge at them. It was all she could do to lie in the shade of sparse branches and wait for the next rainfall.
The wheeze in her throat, the pain in her gut, the filth in her fur and the sweltering heat and the frigid cold... She'd started to think of them as friends. They were her only steadfast companions for years, and no matter how pathetic she'd become, Talis was born a princess. She was meant to die surrounded by her most trusted friends, even if it was one of them that took pity enough to finally see her through to the next life.
They said Kabiro was wise beyond his years, but for a lion who had barely lived a year, how much did it really amount to? Yet he felt an almost filial sense of duty when Chyou brought her friend to him. She was so kind, so generous. In his adolescence there were days he spent more time with her family than his own. He'd no sooner have left this poor soul to wither away if he'd found her himself, but knowing she was familiar enough for Chyou to call her by name made his patience all the more staid.
Patience? Hm... Courage was a better word. He'd undoubtedly lose his resolve before his temper. The days had been the longest he'd ever known, but his nerves were frayed, not heated. Talis, as they called her, went from a deep slumber to hours of shrieking with no warning when it would begin and when — if — it would stop. Usually, she wailed the vultures were tearing the flesh from her bones. Other times he couldn't be certain what drove her to such an agitated state.
The first day had been like this. The second she'd had her wits about her enough to do as he said, and just as he thought they were making progress on the third, the fourth came and madness consumed the lioness again. She needed constant care and reminders to eat, drink, breathe, sleep.
"Focus your thoughts, Talis," Kabiro instructed, gentle as he could while still loud enough to be heard over her murmured nonsense. She thought herself more coherent than she was, he assumed. Every now and then she'd look to him and her eyes would focus just slightly, awaiting an answer to a question that was lost in translation. "Think of where you are, not where you've been or where you might end up," he said. "Stay here with me."
"Where am I?" she asked weakly, not for the first, second, or third time.
He replied, "The Pridelands," and because this always followed the same pattern, he hoped she'd save her energy if he answered her incoming questions ahead of schedule. "My name is a Kabiro. I'm a seer like you, and I found you out on the borders. You need to stay calm and remember to take deep breaths."
He wanted to tell the truth, but Talis twice spiraling into a panicked fit when she heard Chyou's and Alake's names was one too many times to be coincidence. Why it triggered something so distraught he couldn't say. Best not to rile her more than necessary, no matter the reason.
"I can't see you," she wheezed.
"What do you see?" he asked
"I don't... I don't see anything."
