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 Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 9:04 pm
Intombi practically melted. Habu's tone when he said the kids' names was just making those warm fuzzies kick into over drive. He was so cute when he was looking at them. She wanted to just lean over and nuzzle him, but she kept from doing it for some reason. The situation just seemed... She couldn't really put her paw on it. Either way, she kept to herself and looked back at the cubs. "After those three, I was just... shocked, sorta. I really thought I was only going to have two cubs, tops." She shook her head in disbelief. Right now she might still find it amazing, but when it actually happened, she'd been in complete shock.
"Oh, yeah. Well, alright. Some of them are buried." She moved forward from her place and nosed around the pile of cubs a little, gentley moving the top layer to show the others better. It still wasn't the best view, but it'd work. "Alright, this one here is Four. This tan and blue one." She patted one on the rump that had two shades of blue and leaned back into her sitting position. From there on, she resorted to pointing instead of tapping. "That one there, the little pink girl, is Five. Then there's Six, the little grey one. He reminds me of my brother sorta. Well, my brother has pink, actually, and doesn't have your shoulder-spots, but still. Anyway, then there's Seven, the all blue boy. And the last one, Eight, the white boy." She nodded once to conclude her list of cubs. "Lots of them have blue," she mused happily. It was funny, since Habu had so little of it. She had no idea it was such a popular color in his family.
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Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 9:20 pm
He looked back and fourth between four, five, six, seven and eight. There were so many of them, but he wanted with all of his heart to get this right the first time, prove that he could do it. He was so amazed when Intombi moved them so gently and so easily without making them wake up, or even really jump. It was so amazing, they almost looked like if he touched them he'd disturb them, like he would frighten them or hurt them.
"Should- should we give them proper names?" he asked carefully, not wanting to insult her decision to go with numbers for them. But there were no two ways about this, they needed names. It was interesting, maybe, to be a number but surely a name would be happier for them.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:26 pm
For the first two days, Intombi had been afraid to touch her cubs. She'd even been afraid to talk around them, or to them for that matter. After that initial case of the willies, the new mom sort of thing, though, she'd gotten right on with moving them around and talking to them. She cooed at them when they were awake and not whining for food or attention, and picked them up and reorganized them without a second thought. It just took that first couple of days to get past the 'oh-no-I'm-going-to-break-them' stage.
Smiling somewhat dumbly at Habu and the kids, Intombi had to blink a couple of times before she actually processed his question. "That's a good idea." She looked at the little group and nodded. "They can't be called by numbrs forever, right?" She looked back at Habu and giggled a little.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:38 pm
Habu was lucky in one way, he was not coming into the family in the stage when they would be most fragile. How he felt about that was uncertain, but for now he was still awed into wide eyes and hushed voice. He looked back from the cubs to Intombi when he realized she wasn't answering him right away. Had she really not thought they'd be needing proper names are some point?
"Right," he agreed quietly, looking back to the cubs, "S-should we do it now, or wait until they wake up? How active are they now?" It seemed to him that they had the rare opportunity to name some of them special names that might reflect something of their personality, not thinking of it as a label but something more affectionate.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:55 pm
Intombi somewhat regretted giggling. It had been her way of trying to ligthen the mood some, but Habu still seemed to be walking on egg shells. No, things definitely weren't the way they had been. Even such a normally happy event such as naming the cubs wasn't quite the way it should've been. She almost felt that same need to defend herself that she had felt before, to explain again why the cubs were numbered. It really did look pretty bad, the more she thought of it. She had intended to name them, just when she could take a second to actually think. After the first three cubs, her brain baisically shut off. It hadn't really turned back on yet. She had naively thought that she'd suddenly feel better and rested once she got to Habu, but it seemed that wasn't going to happen. And the cubs wouldn't sleep much longer, she knew, so she wasn't really going to get a break for a while still.
"They're pretty darned active when they're awake. You'd think cubs would be a bit sluggish in their first little while, right?" Or at least, that's what Intombi would think. "Well, they really aren't. When they're asleep, they're out like the sun. But when they're up, you'd never know they slept so soundly." Hopefully, they wouldn't grow out of that sound sleeping. Intombi really didn't know what to expect, though. For all she knew, they only did this while they were newborns. She really had no idea what to expect about anything. Her very limited experiance with cubs was when she was one herself. She'd met maybe one or two since getting to an age where she might be able to take care of them, but she wasn't really focused on how to do that when she met them.
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:58 pm
Habu didn't want to mess this up, he didn't want to do something that might make Intombi upset or that would adversely influence the cubs. Numbers were fine and dandy, and he didn't really blame Intombi for any of that- she'd been alone and taking care of eight cubs. Even if that was her own fault, he wasn't going to say she'd done a poor job just because she had focused on the important thing- keeping them alive and healthy. Names were important for individuality, though, and he wasn't sure he wanted to imagine trying to keep track of eight separate cubs who all wanted to do eight separate things at once.. but names, names he could handle. Maybe.
He glanced over at Intombi when she described them as active and looked back at them, seemingly having a hard time taking his eyes off of them. What would they be like when they woke up? What kind of chaos was about to be unleashed? Having always been from a rather small family, or a small part of a larger family.. this would be quite different for him! An anxious thought took him as he wondered if any would be like Kilango, if they would inexplicably hate him.. none of them looked like her to him, but then she'd seemed friendly enough to the poor yellow lion until she tried to kill him.
Suppressing a shudder, he went back to the idea of names.
"S-so shall we name them now?" he asked.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 8:36 am
After all of everything that had happened that day, Intombi was finally realizing she was exauhsted. She'd bottled it away when she had decided it was the day to go to Habu's den, but now that she was with him, the cork was popping out. She looked back at the pile o' kids and sighed. It wasn't an annoyed sigh or a sad sigh, it was a happy sigh. The kind that you do when you're looking at something beautiful, like a mountain scape or a quiet lake. She knew darn well that those cubs wouldn't sleep too long before they were up and hungry. She also knew that even if she went to sleep now, she'd be woken up by the whole army of little ones before she really got rested up. Realization was sinking in that even with Habu's help, she'd still be a tird new mom in the end.
A sliver of fear worked its way through her happiness as she looked at the little bodies. Would Habu suddenly change his mind about all this when they woke up? They really were a pawful when they were loud and wiggly. Even more than a pawful, considering there were eight of them. "We can wait." She finally decided, looking back at the yellow male. He looked so nervous, it only played on her fear. She didn't think for a second that Habu was the kind to walk out on someone who asked for help, but then again... Had she actually asked for help? Had she even explained any of the reasons for her coming back? "Maybe you should meet them first, y'know? See if that might help you come up with some names." See if it might help us, she corrected in her head. That whole he/me/I/you thing wasn't going to be easy to break. It had to be we and us now, right? Right. "At least... if that's what you want to do." She didn't want to seem too pushy about naming them, especially since she was the one who had failed to name them in the first place.
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Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 7:12 am
Had Intombi expressed her concerns about how things were going to unfold for the pair of them, Habu would have reassured her. However, he was still struggling to comprehend how the whole situation would work out. Names pushed from his mind now, he could only stare. They had eight cubs, and soon all eight would be awake- and that would be the state they were usually in, awake. They would be all over the place, all eight of them.
He sighed, letting out the mix of joy and worry he was feeling all of a sudden. They were amazing, and now he would never be bored.
"Ok," he mumbled finally, "We'll wait for names. Let's move them to the den, shall we?" The den that would soon need to be made bigger or abandoned, for it was big enough to house Habu and his den-guests.. but a whole ten lions? Likely not.
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Posted: Sun Feb 24, 2008 12:02 pm
Having just carried the group one by one to this spot, Intombi simply nodded. She'd moved them around the very small den she'd been hiding out in at least a dozen times, and then had walked around collecting them when they crawled too far away. They were baisically newborns, so they never really got that far, but Intombi had been worried about them when she was alone. More so than she was now, at least.
She hadn't given much thought to the size of Habu's den until then. It had seemed large before, when it was Riko, Habu and her. Now, there were eight cubs to cram in there. Eight cubs who would grow someday. She pictured ten lions sleeping ontop of eachother like cubs do, but doing it because they had to, not because t was comfortable.
The fact that this whole thing wasn't going to be easy was still sinking in. Eight cubs... since they had been born, things hadn't been easy. Now, things might not be so hard physically, but a mental roller coaster was starting. Intombi didn't understand half of what was going on, or half of what was going to happen, but she did know something wasn't right. And by something not being right for her, it meant that things weren't as cheery and full of sunshine as they should be. Following Habu's sigh, Intombi looked at him. "That'd be good, I guess." Attempting not to wake them before they would on their own, the new mom moved forward into the pile and picked up one of the sleeping cubs.
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Posted: Mon Feb 25, 2008 7:20 pm
As Intombi's hopes were slowly deflating to something more realistic, Habu's couldn't help but elevate continually. He was numb from the surprise of Intombi's return and the arrival of his eight beautiful cubs. Having been expecting to be alone and watchful only from a distance for the longest time now, things only seemed to be looking up. He was ready to try to handle this, to be a family- even if he was unsettled and worried about his relationship with Intombi. That wouldn't matter as much, she needed his help and he was here.
"Ok," he agreed. He watched Intombi pick up a cub and carefully, hesitantly, he stepped forward and mimicked her. This would be a much quicker move, shorter distance and with some help. This was how it would be. They would help each other through all of this.
Fin.
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