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The young cub's white fur stood out like a sore paw against the light and dark greens of the forest. He wasn't ideally suited for camouflage our skulking about under cover of darkness. But that suited him fine at this point in his young life, because such pursuits didn't interest him. That would mean attempting to hide from his family, and to do such a thing never entered his mind. He loved his family; the last thing he wanted to do was avoid them.

Indeed, Kileji wasn't far from home at all right now. He could still see the entrance to the den where they slept, and he could hear the roar of the waterfalls nearby. Most energetic cubs his age would be off who knew where by this time in the day, but not this little boy. He was quite happy entertaining himself with the simplest things that may seem grossly uninteresting to anyone else. But where things were lacking exctiement, his imagination filled in the blanks, and so he was rarely, if ever, bored. So long as he had something he could spin a bit of mind-magic around, he was satisfied.

Right now, he was apparently completely fascinated by a brightly coloured exotic bird high on the branches above him - a macaw, but he couldn't know that. He himself was perched on a fallen, moss-covered log, gazing up at the bird as it preened and cleaned itself, and occasionally ruffled its feathers, his tail dangling over the side of the log and slowly swaying back and forth as his attention became focused entirely on the parrot in question, which continued to studiously ignore his presence.

Small things pleased small minds, apparently.

Despite Janja's care not to frighten Kileji, he was still mildly startled by her sudden appearance, enough that his little body actually jerked a bit. Being so engrossed in the bird and then having that concentration broken by the voice of another could do that to a cub, especially one so quiet and shy as Kileji. The good news, however, was that the bird was still paying no mind to them and hadn't flown away.

He recognised his mother's voice practically instantly and tilted his head back to peer up at her, looking as though he might almost topple over backwards, gifting her with a smile. "A birdie," he whispered back, louder than Janja as he hadn't quite grasped the idea of subtlety, pointing upwards with a black-toed paw.

"Pretty, huh?" he asked in that same loud whisper, still pointing childishly, as though Janja still needed the direction of where to look.

Kileji carefully lifted himself up from where he sat, trying very hard not to make too much noise (he wasn't the most graceful of cubs, and the odd creak of the wood was a sure certainty if he was moving), and shifted over to his mother so that he could lean against her when he sat back down to look up at the bird. Though, since onl Kileji was on the log, if Janja happened to move, he would likely topple off. Most of his weight, if not all, was against his mother, and he was fully trusting Janja to support him.

With his bright blue eyes fixed on the macaw, he shook his head slowly, and went on with that not-quite-whisper. "No, never." It was why he was so entranced; he'd never seen this type of bird anywhere in the jungle before. "Have you, mummy?"

As Janja sounded so disappointed with him, Kileji's ears flattened a bit, and he looked up at his mother worriedly. He wasn't yet able to distinguish when his mother was only playing, or when anyone was, even at this age. It seemed he might be like that always, for he certainly wasn't making any progress in learning to decipher the jokes.

"Should I have?" he asked quietly. He couldn't help it if he hadn't seen one! He just... hadn't noticed. He didn't remember ever seeing a bird like this one... not that that meant anything, because his memory had quite a few holes in it. Sometimes he'd start walking, and within a few minutes, he'd have forgotten why he started or where he wanted to go.

Reassured by his mother's words that everything was fine after all, Kileji's easy, happy smile was again pulled back onto his face, and he turned his eyes back onto the macaw. He was easy-going and laid-back enough to not let little things like that get to him. Janja wasn't really disappointed in her son, and so he was happy again.

"Really?" he asked excitedly, his tail lashing back and forth a few times? "That'll be fun, mama! They're really pretty to look at!"

Kileji tilted his head slowly as he considered, his bright blue eyes still locked on the bird, even as the black tuft of fur that sprouted where there would one day be a full mane fell slightly into his line of vision, so that the boy had to absently blow a puff of air up to get it out of his way. It was proving to be nothing but a nuisance, this odd growth of hair, and he didn't get why he his had to be so long. It was always getting in his way when he wanted to look at interesting stuff.

Finally coming to a decision, the chipper-but-somewhat-slow cub said, "I'll go looking if you come, mama." He wasn't really the type who liked to wander off on his own all the time. At least, not too far. This kind of expedition would need company, or he wouldn't be gone long enough to see anything.

Hearing that Janja agreed to come adventuring with him as he explored the vast, unknown terrain of the jungle (pretty much all that lay beyond as far as he could see from that very spot was unexplored), he got to his paws to rub briefly against her again with a light purr before hopping off the log to stretch his small, roly-poly body out.

Turning back to his mother, tail flicking with the first stirrings of cub-like excitement, he asked, "Which way should we go, mama?" Unfortunately, he forgot to keep his voice lowered for this question, and his ears lowered a bit as the suddenly disgruntled bird up above flapped its wings agitatedly.

Having been given the all-important task of picking a direction, Kileji set to it, spinning around on his paws to look around in all directions. Though, unfortunately, all he saw was pretty much the same whichever way he looked. But he had to pick a way for them to go, or he'd never get to have an adventure with his mama.

He randomly scrambled to the left (he'd never been the most graceful of cubs, that's for sure) and grandly pointed his paw in that direction, following what looked like a sort of winding almost-path through the trees. "We should go that way, mama!" And he just hoped there was something interesting and exciting down there so his mama didn't end up bored.