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He never realised how much he'd miss the Pridelands until he'd wandered to the Kusini lands. Red eyes gazed upon the Southlands, the free-roamer's border to the Pridelands. As the dark male stopped in his footsteps, he looked back to his travel companions - Kabichi, whom he'd grown fond of through the trip, that he was feeling a blossoming warmth towards growing, and his uncle Sairin. His uncle... He'd barely been aware he had any family. It almost made him want to go find the rest, find the others that hid. And yet, the homesick feeling he got thinking of the Pridelands kept him back. But he was almost home, and it was almost over.

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Off in the distance, he could smell it. After so long, it made the old Firekin's heart leap with joy. Even though he was a juvenile when he left, he still remembered. Oh, Finar-si did he remember it. The sand under his paws, between his toes, in his mane and fur... The shift of the sands as one ran, the heat of the sun. He remembered and missed it all, but he was close, so close. He just had to cross the Pridelands, and he'd be home. He sat down, looking to Paki and Khepri, black ears perking up. "We're almost there..."

Silvery colored eyes shimmered in the sunlight behind the proficient bangs that hung down before them, sharp but for no real reason at all. They were a double edged blade, blind while his remaining senses were so sharp that he could even feel the two large bodies on either side of him. Paki was large for a lion, larger than a lot of rouges, though not hardly the largest of all time. No, the two lions beside him, the two hulking firekin that were almost the height of gods, they were the largest lions he'd ever met, even larger than his pappi.

Sniffing in with his caramel colored nose, Paki let his fluffy chest expand, almost stopping in his tracks as he closed his unseeing eyes and smiled. This was the smell of the pridelands eh? Was Moyo around here then? Would he soon be able to see his big sister again that he'd been missing ever since she left?

He was so close that it felt like every step changed his life forever, when in truth that had already happened.



Limping a little on her front left leg, Khepri smiled at Bodaway mischeviously and nodded her large red head. She of course hadn't heard a word he'd said due to the large sea-shell headphones on her head that kept out the voices in her head, but she knew what he meant as she'd passed by here on her way to find the accursed Ela' that Boda had proven to be so evil.

Now there was only one thing for her to find, one thing she had to focus on... and that was finding that big black and white fluffball that she'd left at the ocean so many months ago, before she'd met Boda and started on her stalwart journey towards the Ela lands that hadn't accepted her. But she had a promise to keep first to the lion that had probably saved her life, she'd said that she was going to take him to the Firekin lands once more and she had every intention of doing so.

"S'bout time too. Not tha' bein' with a pair o' big strong males ain' fun an all, bu' Ah need some alone time too." Khepri slurred from her fluffy muzzle and grinned playfully at them, knowing that Paki would get that she was only joking around.

Even so.. she could smell the pridelands and knew more than ever that she was closer to the Firekin once more, closer to those evil sands.
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Kabi sniffed the air happily. They were almost HOME, even here, amongst a dead smell.

A dead smell. The lioness froze, head jerking up. The ground carried the scent, even after the rains cleansed the land. The scavengers, yess, had since moved the bodies, save a skull.

Kabichi's ears flattened at the skull. It was not small, rather, it was large. Enormous. But familiar. Immediately she bagan backing away, memories almost forgotten rushing forward.

Rogues.

They were surrounded.

Her mother was on the ground as she fled, not looking back to her father or littermates; the rogues had her family... The rogues....

Kabichi suddenly screamed, and began to tear away.

Sairin jerked his head toweards the lioness first, unaware of the memory resurfacing to the fullest, and immediately tore after. The land wasn't safe, and he made a promise. What he didn't expect, however, was that while small, the lioness was faster than the overgrown lion, and she quickly outstripped him.

Blinking in surprise, Shin halted and watched Kabichi run off. When his uncle followed, he had no choice but to chase after, just barely catching up to Sairin. "Kabichi! Kabichi, wait!" What had scared her so much? He hadn't noticed the skull, nor the smell of death.

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Chuckling a little, Bodaway nodded. "Thank you. You are an honorable lioness of your word, Khepri." Gold eyes turned and watched Paki, mindful of the blindness the lion experienced.

He was distracted, though, when he noticed something moving in the distance. He couldn't see clearly, just a shadow. But something about the movements... They were familiar, strikingly familiar. Turning off course and trotting towards the running lion, Bodaway squinted. A memory, fleeting though it was, brushed across his mind, of a tanned lioness, as large as a Firekin, and a feeling of affection. Was it...? Could it be...?

Paki had run so fast that he was already a good length ahead of his comapnions when...

WHAM!

Something ran before him and Paki leaped over it, shocked to find that it was moving so fast that even he hadn't been able to sense or smell it. It was just that fast, just that incredibly fast. As he leapt through the air, Paki realized that he hadn't quite adjusted his body to land only seconds before his nose smashed into the ground with a loud crunch and he lay still, large body sprawled out on it's side limply. The landing itself had sounded hard enough through the air that other ears were sure to have heard it, yet still Paki didn't move, eyes closed and sides rising slower than natural.



"Nah, Ah'm jus' a lioness tha' don' like ta let otha's down s'all." she smiled over at him, tarnished golden eyes shimmering deeply in amuzement before she flicked her ears foreward to watch what Boda saw.

However all that Khepri saw was in slow motion as Paki's face connected with the ground with a sickening crunch and her eyes went wide. The little female never stopped moving once even though Paki hadn't seen her and while he must have smelled her at the last second.. still he managed to leap over her, though his landing was just....

"Paki!" The roar cut through the air from her large muzzle and all of a sudden muscles rippled under sandpaper fine fur and Khepri's enormous body lunged forward to see if he was even still alive. The way he was laying there disturbed her greatly.
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Kabi kept going, panicking, when the larger lion slammed into her, knocking her to the ground and rustling her senses. It hurt, she could feel her leg slicing open as she landed, and her wound snapped her out of it as she jerked her head up to face the much larger male. The lioness gasped-- the lion was enormous-- and started moving to her feet when Sairin unleashed a roar at the other male, putting on a burst of speed before sliding to a stop, sighting the wounded male. He stood as tall as he could, and growled at the large male, bristling.

"What, lion, do you want with the female you just knocked down!?"

Sairing didn't trust the strangers to actually HELP.

Sliding to a halt, Shin looked between Kabichi and the obviously injured lion. But his growing loyalty to the lioness drove him to hurry to her side, checking her over. "Kabichi, are you alright?!"

Sides heaving slightly, Bodaway stood in a relaxed yet ready manner, watching the monochromatic adult male. "For her to not smack into a tree at such a velocity." He nodded over to Paki, ears flicking in his mane. "He fell because he did not smell her soon enough, and if a blind lion can be harmed that badly, imagine how much she would be hurt if she'd run into a tree."

Blushing at how bluntly Bodaway put his inadaquecies that still remained, Paki slowly sunk to the ground and padded at his nose with a chocolate tipped paw, a blush settling unhappily over his nose and cheeks. Of course he hadn't meant to actually trip over the little female and here he'd thought he'd done a good job of dodging her by leaping in the air. It was only his landings that needed working on after all.

"M'fine." Paki muttered beneath his breath. Though currently it seemed that didn't matter to Bodaway, who was simply having it out with the others purely on the principals and had forgotten about both himself and Khepri for the moment. Not that he minded, the less he was focused on the better in his opinion, especially after making such a fool of himself.



Stepping back as Boda started in on the others, Khepri simply let him handle it, as his voice and words weren't so broken and fragmented as hers, not to mention the sheer force of his words made her wonder.

Flicking her tarnished gaze over to the shuddering female that had caused all this trouble she frowned a little. Khepri was normally a nice and loving lioness, but when her family, her friends, her loved ones, were threatened she became a raging monster with rippling fur that was almost impossible to stop. She could only guess that this was what she appeared to this small and colorful female.

"Yo're alrigh' yes?" Khepri asked loudly enough for the female to hear and get the indication that she was indeed saying it for her ears.
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