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 Posted: Wed May 12, 2010 7:52 am
Her sister's softly expressed hope that she would not let anybody down made Pur want to frown, but she managed not to. It took an effort, just as it took an effort to phrase her words so that they wouldn't come across in a way which would make her sister worry more or belittle her. Which meant she couldn't say that it didn't matter if she wasn't much good at it, because she was noble and that came with privileges.
"You couldn't let anyone down, Raziela. You're too nice. And besides, it's what you were born to do. How could you be bad at it?" That was the theory Pur worked on, anyway. Sure, she practiced and worked hard to be the very best noble, but that was just to please herself. And Maua and the queen just a little. But it was mostly for herself.
Pur's grin was wide and toothy as she tried to get into a butterfly's mindset, though the toothiness was incidental. She tried to make her mind go to light and pretty thoughts, like a butterfly might have, but trying to direct her thoughts toward that end basically sent them right to visions of blood and destruction. An undisciplined mind was an incredibly frustrating thing to have, Pur thought. She would have to work harder on that.
"You're right. I'm hungry," Dreamflight agreed, turning to watch her sister. When Skyjewel mentioned hunting her mind again went to the way lions hunted, and that didn't seem like a very butterfly way to hunt. She just knew no other way to go about doing it.
"I think I see a likely-looking herd over there," she said, pointing with her nose toward a cluster of pale pink flowers. Then she dropped into a crouch that approximated a hunter's crouch and began to slink toward her prey.
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 1:09 am
That was language that Raziela could understand. The logic fitted perfectly with the way the little cub thought the world worked - if she had been born into the position, that had to mean she was destined to be a Noble, and if that was what fate had written for her long before she had been born, then she couldn't possibly be a terrible Noble. The heavens would not have slated her to do something that it they didn't want her to do well.
"Alright," Skyjewel nodded in the affirmative
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Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 8:03 am
Dreamflight hardly heard her sister agree with her. She was in the hunt. Butterflies probably didn't hunt and stalk flowers, but she was in her heart of hearts a lion and not so creative that without direction she could imagine how a butterfly would go about finding food. It was inconceivable to the cub that they might just fly up to the flower and eat parts of it. That wasn't how prey reacted to hunters. Prey fled and sometimes fought back. Dreamflight didn't think flowers could do that, which made them ideal as prey.
She slunk closer, her tail low to the ground and her ears flat against her head as she approached the pink flowers. She hoped her sister was coming at them from the other side so that they would be trapped, but she couldn't poke her head above the grasses to look, or else the flowers would see her and spook. Three metres from her prey, Dreamflight shifted her weight onto her haunches and prepared to spring forward. She leaped from her cover.
"Yrragh!" she exclaimed, attempting a roar as she rushed the cluster of flowers.
She ran straight through them, snagging several stems in her teeth. She spun as quickly as she could, ready to go back and make another pass but her tail, swinging wildly for balance, tripped her up and she ended up sitting down very suddenly and gracelessly with a mouthful of flowers. In a split-second decision, she decided to try to make it look as though she'd done so on purpose.
"Wasn't that great?" she asked.
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 3:40 am
((Whoops. That last one wasn't quite done... I didn't even realize xD;; ))
Before Skyjewel realized what had happened, Dreamflight had slunk off, already hot on the heels of her prey. The little cub leapt to her feet, eager to keep up, and dropped into a similar crouch, stalking several paces behind her sister. Angling her course away from Dreamflight, she circled around to the other side, taking precaution against any possible escape. As she moved, her mind went back to the few hunting lessons she had had in her short lifetime, drawing back the images of the crouch and slink that she had witnessed as she did her best to imitate them exactly.
Drop, push with hind legs, pull with forelegs. Slink, slink, slink.
Suddenly, she heard Dreamflight's little roar, and reacted, bounding forward toward the patch of flowers as well. "Raaaaarh!" Forelegs outstretched and little fangs bared and eager to sink into wild flower flesh, she dove headlong into the now-crushed flowerbed, ripping what she could from the ground before she tumbled out of reach.
Scrambling to her feet once again, Skyjewel turned her head to find her sister. Her emerald eyes caught sight of Dreamflight sitting rather askew with several flowers dangling from her muzzle, and looked down to realize that she herself had landed in a similar position. A giggle bubbled out of her as she placed the mangled flowers on the ground. "We hunted!" She exclaimed, nodding her agreement
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Posted: Tue May 25, 2010 9:37 am
Oops. I didn't notice either, apparently. I just thought it was short. cool
Dreamflight pranced a little in place, for the moment not minding the dirt which marred her white chin. As her sister had said, they had hunted! It was exhilarating to think so, even though she had never really been much interested in the task before. There was something to be said for bringing down prey and knowing that it had been done by one's own cleverness and skill.
"We did!" she agreed, trotting over to join her sister while carrying her kill between her teeth. She was beginning to notice the grit in her coat and she knew that if she gave it her full attention her enjoyment of the day would be spoiled, so she made herself ignore it.
"And now we feast!" She dropped her kill on the ground near her sister's flowers. Looking at the bedraggled things with the thought of eating them made her stomach give a nasty little flip. In her heart, she knew that she was not meant to eat flowers, but meat. Pretending to be a butterfly was going to be harder than she thought.
With careful politeness that she hoped hid her own doubts, Dreamflight said to her sister, "After you?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 6:40 pm
Skyjewel grinned, feeling pride rush through her. Yes, they had hunted, and all by themselves too, with no adults to help or watch over them or anything! And granted, the flowers hadn't exactly made concerted efforts to escape, but that was beyond the point. The point was that they had hunted, and now sat with the results of that hunt before them. Damn, it felt grown-up.
"Feast! Right!" The dark cub glanced down at the flower. Hm. It had never occurred to her that the next logical step after hunting the flowers would be to eat them. What did flowers taste like, anyway? It didn't look exactly appetizing to her, but then... all the other butterflies ate them, so they had to be good. Or something.
"Uhm, okay, so I think we just... eat them..." She picked up her mangled flower and began to chew. Momentarily, her face contort into a frown. This wasn't good! It was... icky, and bitter, and just downright gross. But for the sake of being a butterfly, she choked it down all the same, and beamed. "It's not... that bad."
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Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2010 7:05 am
Dreamflight watched her sister choke down the plant and came to the immediate decision that she had no desire to do the same thing. Even her sister's beaming countenance could not sway her. No way was she eating a flower. She wasn't really a butterfly. She was a lion, and lions did not eat plants. She backed up, taking half a step away from her 'kill.'
Then she looked at her sister again. She'd been enjoying playing with her, and nothing really bad could happen to her for eating a flower like a butterfly. It would taste bad - she'd seen that much on Skyjewel's face before she'd flashed her smile - but Dreamflight could bear that. She stepped forward again and took the blossom of one of her dead flowers in her mouth. Maybe if she just swallowed it and got it over with quickly it would be better.
The petals tried to catch in her teeth and throat and then she nearly gagged when she got a good taste of it. Gods, it was foul! She hoped she never fell ill and had to eat plants to get better. The cure might be more painful than the disease. In spite of all this, she managed to get the pink thing down, and almost immediately regretted that she'd made so much of an effort.
"Um...I don't feel so good," she said, glancing uncertainly at her prey. "My tummy's all rumbly and bbrrrAAAP!"
Her belch was loud, smelly, and unladylike. She was mortified. Or she would have been if she didn't feel so sick.
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 6:58 am
Skyjewel burst out in giggles at her sister's reaction to the flower. It was perhaps the most undignified moment that she had witnessed in Dreamflight's life, and the fact that it had happened to her, the most prim and proper one of their litter, was met with such irony that the cub couldn't quite help but react as she did.
"I suppose that was not the brightest idea," she admitted, still giggling lightly, although Dreamflight's sickly expression had begun to worry her somewhat. She wasn't going to... die or anything just from eating a flower, was she? And if Dreamflight was, would she fall prey to the same fate as well?
"Uhm," she said uncertainly. "Are you okay, Dreamflight? Maybe... maybe we should stop being butterflies. We weren't that good at it anyway, and... we don't have to eat flowers anymore then."
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:38 am
Pur stepped out of her Dreamflight persona. It had been fun, but she really didn't feel well enough to keep playing at it. She turned her green eyes to her sister mournfully and said apologetically, "It wasn't a bad idea. We didn't know."
She closed her eyes and crouched, touching her nose to the ground and trying to achieve some sort of internal balance between her stomach and everything else. Being giggled at didn't do much for her overall feeling of happiness, but having her tummy feel the way it did was doing more to make her unhappy than being giggled at. After all, if their situations had been reversed she would have been hard-pressed not to giggle, too.
"I think I want to go home," Pur said. She was not attempting martyrdom with her next words, but she would have been pleased with how they came out had she been feeling well enough to notice. "Please don't let me spoil your playing. I'm sure I'll be fine. You seem to be all right."
She was already on her feet again and walking with deliberately-placed paws back to the den. Mother would know what to do. She always did.
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Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2010 7:59 am
"Oh, but we should have thought about it beforehand," Raziela answered, pressing her ears unhappily against her head. It felt like it was her fault that Pur was feeling sick, for even bringing up butterflies in the first place. Who cared if a stupid bug had talked to her anyway? They wouldn't have started pretending if she had just been able to let it go.
And she felt doubly bad for having laughed at Pur. She hadn't known that her sister had felt so sick to begin with, but that didn't make it okay to giggle. The little lioness made a mental note to herself: No more laughing before she had made absolutely sure the situation was proper. That was what ladies were supposed to do anyway, and she imagined it was high time that she started acting more like one.
Especially after what had happened today.
Raziela shook her head determinedly. "No, I'll go back with you." She decided. "If you can't play, then we can just go home and hang around there." It didn't matter if the weather was perfect. Or, well, it did, a little bit, but that wasn't the point.
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 10:24 am
What do you think? Can we call this one done?
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Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:12 pm
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