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Matu wasn't really as antisocial as his reputation would suggest. He has a smallish circle of friends that he saw sporadically, and although he might wish to see more of them, he was at peace with the amount of time he got to spend with them overall.

That said, he was at a complete loss when a lioness he had never actually met came up to him and introduced herself as Worknesh and told him that they had to have a talk. She had then proceeded to tell him when she would be available to do so, and intimate that if he failed to show up, there would be dire consequences.

She had left him with no way to get in touch to say he wasn't coming, so here he was, sitting by the lake getting wet, as it was not just raining, but the middle of a downpour. What fun.

Worknesh had not known when she issued her ultimatum that it would be raining on the day she suggested. Had she known, she would have chosen a different day. There was, however, no good way for her to change the date without actually seeing him again, and she was certain that if she saw Matumaini again before their meeting, he would try to find a way to get out of their scheduled meeting. It's what her brothers would do.

So she trudged through the puddles and the mud to the lakeside, where Matumaini's white pelt stood out glowingly against the grey, soggy background. Like her, his paws and legs were mostly mud-covered. It wasn't his coat or his muddiness that made him really easy to spot, however. It was the fact that he was the only other lion there. Everyone else had the good sense not to be out in this downpour.

"Thank you for coming," she greeted him.

Matu almost hadn't seen Worknesh approaching, but her arrival did not come as a complete surprise to him. He was a hunter, and not a bad one, so noticing things moving was something he was pretty used to, even when they blended in with the brown and grey landscape as well as Worknesh did. His best friends, Kiek and Gliri, were similarly earth-toned, as were their offspring, and he never had much difficulty spotting them either.

"You made it seem like this was of paramount importance," he said dryly. His tone was the only thing about him that was dry at this point. "I admit, I didn't particularly want to come, particularly in this weather, but I had no way to let you know I wouldn't be here. So here I am."

As he spoke his tone moved from dry to acerbic. He was not, in fact, pleased to be out in the rain and the mud like this, ordered about by a lioness he had never met before in his life.

Worknesh offered a tight smile, recognizing his tone and acknowledging that he had every right to feel that way.

"I'll try to be brief," she promised.

It was unlikely that this meeting would be anything but brief. She really had only arranged it because she felt her friend Hviske had been suffering her infatuation with Matumaini for far too long without saying anything, and it was about time someone found out how the spotted lion actually felt about her purple eyed friend.

"We could also walk someplace less wet," she suggested. Although that would just mean they would both have to adjust to being wet again when their talk concluded.

"I would appreciate that," Matu replied. He meant both that he would appreciate it if she kept this brief and that he would appreciate relocating to a less wet location. As far as places to get wet went, there were few locations better suited to it than the lakeside in a rainstorm.

As soon as they began to walk Matu asked, "So what is it that is so important I don't dare miss an appointment to discuss it, but not so important that you had to tell me about it immediately?"

He was, at this point, making not even the slightest pretense of being pleasant, which was unusual for him. Ordinarily Matu's reserved nature made even speaking to strangers difficult, and being rude to them nearly impossible, assuming one wasn't the sort to take silence for rudeness, as some were.

Worknesh nodded, "Right, of course."

She tried not to be too annoyed by the tone he took with her as he began questioning her. She also reminded herself not to snap back at him. She was here on a fact-finding mission, and if she antagonized him any further, it was unlikely he would answer her at all. As it was, she was losing hope that he would answer her with anything resembling candor.

"First there's something I thought someone ought to make clear to you. Our mutual friend Hviske is completely in love with you, and has been for quite some time." She paused and added, "I should not need to tell you this, since I am breaking her confidence to do so, but as I've never met you nor seen the two of you together, I have no way of knowing if you were already aware of this. Were you?"

It was all Matu could do not to choke. Whatever he had been expecting from this unconventional meeting, this had not been it. Still, Worknesh was looking at him expectantly and he felt he would not be allowed off the hook until he answered her.

He spoke very carefully when he gave his reply. "I had some idea but I wasn't quite sure what, if anything, I ought to do about it."

In truth, it would have been difficult to miss. Hviske had all but crouched for him and urged him to mount her on one occasion, when she was in heat. She had later claimed that she had forgotten that she would be coming into heat then, and he had accepted her explanation without argument, but he was pretty sure that wasn't the kind of thing a lioness forgot.

It took a colossal effort for Worknesh not to lash out and swat Matumaini with a muddy paw. She had always taken Hviske's gushing with a grain of salt, but she had not expected that when she met her friend's crush she would have to work so hard to give him a fair chance. So far he was not impressing her.

Icily, she said, "That depends, I suppose, on how you feel about her."

She fixed him with her best piercing stare. She had gotten much better at using her bright blue eyes to effect since she was an adolescent lioness, and she was confident that she would be able to force an answer to her next question as long as she could manage to hold his gaze.

Fortunately, he did not seem to realize how easily he could avoid answering her when she asked, "How do you feel about her?"

Almost unwillingly Matu found himself saying, "Hviske's one of my best friends, so obviously I'm very fond of her. And it's not like I haven't noticed she's attractive, but..."

When he trailed off the lioness did not break her stare, and he continued reluctantly, "I really don't know if I feel the same way about her as you say she does about me."

Until that moment he would have said his answer was the honest truth, but speaking it aloud made his stomach roil. Something about his last statement hadn't been true, but without time for reflection, he wasn't sure which part of it.

Worknesh couldn't help wrinkling her nose at Matu's response, which struck her as terribly cowardly. Nevertheless, she said to him, "That's reasonable, but you should figure it out, and quicker would be better."

Before he could ask what the hurry was, Worknesh decided to elaborate with a harmless bit of fiction about their friend's prospects: "Hviske has other options that she's been ignoring in the hope that you'll finally tell her you love her, and if you don't actually love her, you should tell her that so that she can get on with her life and find someone she actually can hope to find happiness with."

Then she went in for the kill.

"If she's really so important to you as a friend, you owe her that much."

Who was this lioness to just appear and start asking him all these personal questions, anyway? That's what he'd like to know.

Unfortunately, it appeared that she had spoken her piece and had no further need to hear anything he had to say, as Matu found himself alone, watching her stalk into the rain with her ears flat to her skull and an expression he had no idea how to interpret.

"I'll leave you to your thoughts," Worknesh had told him before departing. "I hope you aren't really this much of an idiot all the time."

Matu might have called after her, but what would have been the point. She most likely would have ignored him. Besides, he apparently had some thinking to do. She wasn't wrong about that.