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He had almost made his mind up to leave, when the lion's deep, dark voice rolled into his discomfort like distant thunder, and replaced it with something else. Something Jii either couldn't or wouldn't put words to. He looked up at the dark cat, studying him a bit more intensely, a bit more thoughtfully than he had done before, while a silent battle took place inside his thin chest.

He realised that he was actually a bit grateful towards the big guy. The lion had clearly seen him soften, the slight change in the look in those brightly-coloured eyes told him as much, and yet he hadn't taken advantage of Jii's temporary weakness at all, but rather... respected him. And after the overly rude way that Jii had greeted him and everything...

It was new. It was different. And therefore it was also a little bit scary. Jii didn't count out the possibility that maybe the lion was just leading him along a bit, to try to get him to open up a bit more before he paid back the earlier rudeness with a vengeance, but... something told him that maybe... just maybe... he wouldn't.

He also - and that was even more scary for much the same reasons - felt a very tentative connection with the big cat, absurd though that notion was. They had both lost their parents. That didn't in any way make them brothers in misery at all, of course, but...

But still.

"Okay," he admitted, trying to make it sound grudging, "All right, that sucks."

But he was not ready to give up on his main point - now, though, he kind of wanted to put it in a different way.

"Still, though," he said, looking off out across the grasslands as the sun changed every colour of the world while it rose through the sky, "You should at least try to be happy that you're alive, yourself. You almost look like you couldn't care less, and that... that just pisses me off. I..."

He took a deep breath and frowned with the effort of speaking the words that his conscience demanded, but his pride forbade:

"I'm... sorry I came off so rough." His teeth almost ground against each other in their effort to keep his mouth shut. "I guess it was a bit... unneccessary."

There. He said it. Now he would know if the other had really been worth apologizing to, or if he had just been imagining things again.

Somehow, the lion's very taciturnity made the words that he did speak seem just that much more significant. Gahiji felt almost embarrassed by the honesty in the big cat's voice and eyes as he accepted the apology, and had to shift his position to get rid of the sudden restlessness in his paws.

"Hm. Yeah." He muttered, suddenly completely at a loss for words - which didn't happen to Jii all that often. "Good for you - that you're happy to be alive, I mean."

Ah, there was a thread to follow for a little while, until he felt normal again. Jii happily picked up the conversation again, deciding to try to start over a little:

"'Cause, y'know, it would be just downright ridiculous if a big, strong, handsome guy like you didn't get anything more out of life than just sitting around and mope about it." He couldn't help but let out a small, slightly awkward laughter but realised right away that the dark lion wouldn't join him. What was that he had said? Hard to see? Yeah... Gahiji took a closer look at the other's closed countenance. Yep, definitely.

"You don't talk much, do you?" He said, hardly even thinking about it before the words left his mouth. There was no accusation in them, not even any sarcasm - only curiosity, and maybe a very slight hint of concern. Another thought struck him, and he threw a sweeping gaze out over the grasslands. "Say... where's your pride? Don't you have one?"

"Heeey..." The black cheetah tilted his head to the side at the subtle twitch of the dark lion's lips, and raised one eyebrow with a wry grin. "Keep that up and you might even fool me into thinking that you know how to smile!"

Normally, he would have followed such a comment up with a chuckle at his own brilliant sense of humour, but this time he felt his face quickly fall back into seriousness. The lion had admitted that he didn't have a pride to belong to, and now that Jii had started feeling sympathetic towards the big guy, it was kinda hard to stop. Hell, if the loneliness managed to take it's toll on Gahiji himself from time to time, it must be quite a lot worse for this lion, seeing as how his kind seemed to be pretty much designed by the will of Mkodi to live in groups and families.

Of course, he wasn't sure. The big cat himself didn't seem all too upset about it - but then again, the big cat didn't seem much of anything, except for that stony, kind of suffering air about him that had annoyed Jii in the first place, but that he now felt like he might be starting to understand.

"Soo..." he ventured tentatively, "Are you, like, all alone or something?"

At first, Gahiji frowned, but it was quickly replaced by a lopsided little smile. The lion didn't talk much, they had established that, but it didn't seem like he was entirely aversed to Jii's presence anymore, so the cheetah decided that it was probably safe to prod a bit more. This was obviously a guy who needed a lot of incentive to actually talk - pretty much the opposite of Jii, who sometimes talked way too much given but half a chance, but who, on the other hand, really didn't mind supplying that incentive once he understood that it might not be unwanted.

"Could say?" he asked curiously, "What d'you mean by that?"

Trying to look even more at ease, so as to better convey how comfortable he was starting to feel in the dark lion's presence, and maybe to loosen the big cat's tongue a little, he actually laid down. It was a risky manoeuvre, he knew that, but he chanced that he would still be able to get on his feet quickly enough, if he should need to.

He might be starting to feel comfortable, but that didn't mean that he was starting to get stupid too. He was cautious by nature, perhaps a bit overly so, but then again: That's how he survived.

"I'm a loner, myself," he said, a bit nonchalantly. "Don't have nobody to tie me down. Then again, cheetahs don't live in prides the way you lions do, so I guess I'm pretty average like that. The name's Gahiji, by the way, but you can just call me Jii." He grinned. "That way you don't have to talk as much. What's yours?"

"Just wasn't there? What, she just disappeared, just like that?" Gahiji raised one eyebrow in confusion, searching the lion's face for answers that his voice perhaps couldn't manage. He glimpsed confusion, more sadness and some sort of stoic determination, but he wasn't too sure what to make of it, more than that the loss of his sister was probably one of the dark lion - Djakovo's - heaviest burdens.

Okay, so he could understand that sort of sadness. The lion wasn't quite as pointlessly emo as he had assumed at first - but still, moping about a problame was hardly a good way to solve it... maybe there was something that he could do?

Y'know, just for the heck of it. Jii liked a challenge every now and then, or so he told himself.

"That's weird..." he said, the tip of his tail flicking thoughtfully up and down. "D'you have any clues about what happened to her? Hey! What did she look like? Maybe I've seen 'er somewhere!"

((No problem! I'm having a lot of stuff going on as well, mostly with school, right now. ^_^))

"Hmmm..." Gahiji streched thoughtfully as he went over his memories. "Golden-like spots, huh? I think I'd remember that..." He shook his head with a small shrug and frowned. "Can't say I've seen that... But what about the rest of her? I mean, is she dark with dark paws like you, or white like your spotted bum? You never know, you know, I travel around a LOT, so I might run into her at a later time - and if I do, I could tell her you're looking for her."

He halted himself and gave Djakovo another pensive frown. "Say... is there any one place where someone could find you, if they wanted to get in touch with you?"

Something of the initial depression had seeped back into the dark lion's features, and Jii was trying hard to ignore it right now. Of course the big guy was saddened, he had to think about his lost sister, but to Jii it still felt something like being groomed against his hairs to see the shadows come rolling in across the already quite dark countenance. If Djakovo hadn't been such a cool and decent guy for not holding any grudge against his earlier behaviour, he'd let him have it again. As things were, however, he tried his best to cheer the lion up instead. It could work. Maybe.

Was he even doing it right?

"Ah, see, that might be part of the problem then. Why you haven't found her, I mean." Jii sat up again and started moving the tip of his front paw across the ground in an erratic pattern, bringing the tip of his thick tail around to do the same, over the same area as his paw, illustrating his point while he spoke:

"If you're looking for her, and she's looking for you, and you're both moving around randomly... see? You could have crossed paths any number of times, but the chances of both of you actually being in the same place at any one time are practically none." He stopped drawing on the ground and looked up at Djakovo with a wry semi-frown on his face and shrugged. "Of course, if both of you sat still and waited for the other one to find you, it's pretty much the same scenario. I think..." Gahiji was starting to get excited now. This had somehow veered into his own special area of expertise, and he did so enjoy a good hunt, outsmarting his prey, figuring out the best strategy to get just the right beast...

"I think that if you really want to have a good chance at finding your sister, and you think that she might be looking for you, you should try to think of some place where you can be reasonably sure that she'll go, and then hang around there for a while! Like with hunting: You stake out the water holes, because you know those stupid grass-eaters need to drink some time!" Jii beamed at his own cleverness, starting to feel rather enthusiastic about the whole thing. "Other than that," he added offhandedly, "You could just keep doing this: Telling those you meet what she looks like and ask them to keep an eye out for her. Might turn out to be effective in the long run, but I guess you wouldn't really like doing that, huh?"

Gahiji grinned at Djakovo, happy to see some of those dark storm clouds behind the lion's brow begin to fade away. It seemed like he had actually listened to what Jii had had to say, and found some little merit in it, and that bolstered the black cheetah's spirit immensely. Not because 'he had been able to help another creature' or some such sappy nonsense, but it wasn't very often that he was really taken seriously - and most of his attempts at advice had too often been scoffed and pushed aside.

"She did?" he said, the amusement in his voice meant in a joking way. "I think she must've wanted to get busy with you." He winked meaningfully. "If you get what I mean."

"But hey, that's good," he quickly amended, turning a bit more serious. "That means you can talk if you really want to - or need to - and you really do seem like a decent guy, so... yeah. You should talk more. I'm pretty certain it'll help you find your sister, in the end. And who knows, you might even get yourself a pal or two!" He winked again and then stretched leisurely, a subtle signal of how relaxed he had come to feel in the presence of the massive lion, since doing so left him wide open for quite a while.