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 Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:48 am
She looked a way for a moment, then back at Ripuka. "Alright..." She held onto the words, considering them, processing them fully. When she thought about it, she was a slave to her mind, believing being a slave to the Firekin was a way of repenting for her perceived sins. But she'd already made up for them, hadn't she? All the time she'd beaten on Shin... She'd made up for. Now... Now she was trapped in the nightmare she had set up for herself. "My habits... My mental enslavement... It'll be hard to break free..."
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Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 10:56 am
"But you will." Ripuka replied. "Soon, something will change." She nodded slowly to herself. "Change will come someday but it won't come soon enough to save my son." Her eyes were sad but serious.
"It may come in time to save you. When it does, Kimiko, leave this place and don't come back. There is a better place in this world for you."
She shifted backwards so that her son was sat in front of her. "We were wrong. Wrong about many things. I knew it then but refused to acknowledge it. It is only now - when it is too late - that I see the truth. There is nothing I can do to save myself. I am in this until the end." She meant leaving traditions behind. Leaving Finar-Si's memory in the shadows were it belonged.
But she could not. She was too old for change, too weary. She would stay in this desert and hope - in vain - for the Goddess to return.
A good job she'd never get that chance.
"I'm going to go now, Kimiko, and when I do I want you to stay. Help Makaa watch over the children. I ask this of you not as master to a slave, but as friend to friend. If anyone asks for me, tell them I have gone for a walk and will return soon."
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Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:30 am
Bowing her head, Kimiko let out a small sound. What it meant, only she would know. When she looked back up, she tilted her head. "God luck... Ripuka..." She smiled, a tired one, then looked to the cub. "And you.. Never forget your mother's voice, her smell... Remember her, in the way my own cubs never knew me..." She looked again to the Firekin, one of the last remnants of the old, pure blood. Bowing her head again, she turned and started back. The only pause came to look back, letting out a mournful roar, the kind only a mother who'd never gotten to raise her cubs would make. A roar from one mother to another.
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Posted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:37 am
She hesitated.
This lioness. This lioness she had thought a slave. Worthless. Pitiful. Good for nothing but serving her. That feeling had long ceased to appeal to her. She'd kept up the act for her daughter but she found no pleasure in throwing her weight about anymore. This hadn't been a recent change. It had happened during the battle - after she'd been defeated by a rogue herself.
Then, glancing down at her son, she lifted him and - with a nod of thanks - turned and headed off across the sands.
The nameless cub gave a tiny mew. It wasn't clear whether he truly understood the slave. Even still, he knew that she was right. He could not forget his mother. Not ever.
And so, he allowed himself to be lifted and - silently - waited for this terrible day to close.
Maybe, come tomorrow, things would be different.
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