"You're back! Finally!" Isarmaq pounced on Mustela, literally and figuratively.

The pale lioness yawned mightily and threw her cousin off her with relative ease. Isa was not a particularly large lioness and she was not making too much of an effort to hold on.

"You're unusually happy for someone who's all mud from paw to stomach," Mustela observed drily. Her own evening had not been the sort to make her bouncy and exuberant.

"I am," Isa agreed. "And I'm sure you would like to know why, wouldn't you?"

Mustela rolled her shoulders and her neck. A day and evening spent putting some muscle-headed reaver's loot in order according to a thoroughly arcane system had left her unhappily sore about the shoulders and neck. She would have liked to have someone rub the soreness out, and she knew there were numerous thralls around who had the skill to do something about it but that would clearly have to wait. Isa wanted to talk, and Isa tended to get whatever she wanted.

"You discovered a new appreciation for hunting?" she guessed unenthusiastically as she continued to roll her shoulders, flexing her claws in the vain hope it would have some effect on her sore muscles.

Isa grinned wickedly at her cousin, her eyes flashing in the dark of the cavern that made up the unowned thralls' resting place. "You might say that."

Mustela eyed her cousin and her sly expression warily. She had a very strong impression that she was not going to like what she heard next, even though whatever it was obviously pleased Isa a great deal.

"All right. Let us assume that I am saying that. What has prompted this new-found appreciation for hunting?"

Looking at her cousin, Isa could tell that she was not in an appropriately festive or receptive mood for her news, but she just had to tell someone, and Mustela was her closest relative and only friend, which made her the obvious choice. Plus, Isa really wanted to get some perspective from a more experienced and worldly lioness, and although Mustela always downplayed it, Isa was certain that her cousin was more experienced in male-female interactions and relationships than she let on. At least, she had to be more experienced than Isa, who had grown up so sheltered that she was still a virgin.

Well. She had been until earlier this evening, anyway. Just the thought of that change to her status brought Isa's grin from wicked to actually sinful. Then her thoughts drifted back to the scenario that caused her change in status and her grin intensified, if that was even possible. Oh, that had been wonderful.

"I met someone while I was out," Isa began, intending to tell the story in delectably detailed bits and pieces, but then deciding based on the look Mustela wore that she would be taking the wrong tactic in doing so. "A reaver. He had just finished hunting and I talked him into giving me his kill, which meant I didn't have to hunt."

That was not why Isa was looking so smug. Mustela knew it couldn't be. For one thing, Isa's expression was disproportionately pleased for simply having conned a reaver out of his meal and getting out of a solitary hunt. For another this had the feeling of a spooled out story, which meant there was more to it. There had to be.

So Mustela did her part and asked for more information, as she was expected to do per her role in this scenario. "That was unusually generous of him. He must have been quite the special reaver. Why don't you tell me about him?"

Isa's eyes lit up as she was given the opportunity she had been working to engineer since her cousin came back. Seeing that delighted expression on her cousin's face made Mustela happy, despite her misgivings about what she suspected she was about to hear. She didn't know why it worried her that she was about to hear about her cousin being deflowered, but it did.

"His name's Erykk. He's beautiful. Handsome. Whatever. So very good-looking. But also very sure and strong, and dear gods is he good. I mean, really good."

It was a little infuriating. Isa had been planning how she would tell her cousin about her encounter with Erykk, crafting her story with care, but now she couldn't find the words to describe him, let alone what they had done. That was just maddening.

"I'm not doing a good job of this," she grumbled.

"You had sex with him," Mustela surmised. "It was your first time, right? And yet it was apparently good for you. Are you in love with him?"

Mustela really hoped that Isa's answer to that last question would be no. They had not been in the pride for terribly long, but it had been long enough for Mustela to realize that relationships between thralls and freeborn were too unequal, and it was always - always - the thrall that came out of it badly. Every time.

"Yes to all of that," Isa said with a satisfied smile. "No, wait. Not all of it. I don't think I'm in love with him. I definitely like him, and I would be happy to repeat this experience with him again, but I have no plans to seek him out for it. I want him to come to me."

Looking at Mustela's skeptical expression Isa hastened to explain herself, "I think I can make this work for us. If I can make him love me, he might marry me. Then I can claim you as kin and you'll be freeborn, too."

Mustela had heard this plan before. It was, in her opinion, full of holes, but she appreciated the thought. Really she did. And she would like it if Isa was able to get herself out of thralldom, at least. Even that wasn't very likely, not with the Stormborn concept of saltwives, but Mustela liked and loved her cousin and hoped for the best for her.

"That sounds nice, Isa. And I'll listen to all your details later, but I need a rub down or some sleep." Mustela could have sounded more enthusiastic, but deep down she was a little jealous. Despite what Isa might think, Mustela was not all that experienced, and she envied her cousin her ability to just go after what she wanted and get it.

"Oh, okay," Isa said. That hadn't gone exactly as planned. "I'll talk to you later then."

"Later," Mustela agreed. Then she added somewhat sardonically, "Don't die in bed."

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