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 Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:22 am
She'd never been this far away from home before. Jini had taken extra precautions to make sure she wouldn't get lost and could find her way back by marking every other tree that she passed with an indentation from her claws. It was nothing intricate; just simple and straight and only significant to her. It was important that she get home safe, after all. Home was where her family stayed. It was the only place (she suspected) where she would ever truly feel safe. It was the familiar. Familiarity always brings security. Security usually, but doesn't always, brings happiness. Hundreds of giant, grey clouds filled the dark sky and almost completely blocked the sun from the earth below. It was still quite bright out, but there was a slightly dull tint to everything today. She meandered this way and that and took special notice of plants and scenery that she'd never seen before. This was exciting. Everything was so new. Absently, Jini wondered if she should have picked a less dreary day to adventure alone.
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Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 9:33 am
Lifting his head and sniffing to assess his surroundings, Korou smelled grass, rain, flowers, grazing beasts off in the distance. Life was moving around him at it's normal quick and yet slow pace, completely oblivious to the small blind cheetah that passed through its lands.
Faintly Korou pondered of how Chopi and Amai and Jumanji were. So Chopi wasn't his mate anymore, that didn't change that for the majority of his short life he'd loved her with all his heart, but it ached all the more to wonder where his two daughters were, to wonder if they were still alive and healthy.
Scrinching up his face so the tears didn't fall down his spotted cheeks from his sadness, Korou steeled himself and kept walking. There would be time for pain and suffering another day, today he was determined to keep walking and find something different.
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Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 2:16 pm
There was no real mission behind her adventure, no real reason she'd wandered so far away from home. Jini had grown tired of the same old setting and the same old everything. She did intend to return to her homeland before the night fell, however, other than that one restriction, she had no reservations about where her paws led her.
The young lioness watched the sky with a mixture of trepidation and curiosity. She hoped that the weather didn't take a turn for the worst. It would be so much harder to find her way home if it rained. She turned her blood colored eyes to the ground before her, and let them roam over the surrounding lands.
A peculiar looking creature snagged her interest. It was similar to a lion, the only animal other than food that she'd ever had any actual contact with, but not really similar at all. He was so much smaller than any of the other fully grown felines she'd met. He looked lighter, built for speed rather than strength. Her eyes narrowed curiously and she, only slightly wary, took a tentative step in Korou's direction. A twig snapped loudly beneath her feet.
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Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:29 pm
Due to how entranced he was with the joy of his surroundings, the young cheetah almost missed the snapping of the twig and kept walking. However due in part to his incredible senses and his lack of sight, Korou froze mid step, his back left foot hovering off the ground as if he'd been frozen completely in time.
Only the fluttering of his deep chest betrayed the fact that he had not in fact been frozen to the world before him. Korou's nose was sniffing in bursts, trying to discern where certain things where, what they smelled like, why the twig had snapped. If it were a predator out for the hunt he should have no problem, but if the 'hunted' were something other than a prey beast then Korou could have himself a severe problem.
The long gone images of his foster father being torn to bits by a lion and how he'd been treated while within the maziko danced behind his blind eyes through his memory, but Korou staunched those horrible memories as simple fleeting dissillusions. That had been in the past when he was a cub and unable to get enough speed into his legs to either help, or flee. If he had to do the latter this time he was more than capable and he knew it right down to his dotted toes.
However, diplomacy wasn't something lost easily on him. "Hello?"
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Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 8:48 pm
Her eyes widened in susprise when he stopped and glanced down at the broken twig that lay at her feet. She'd heard it, sure, but the young lioness was having difficult comrehending how he possibly could have. There was noise all around them; the sounds of the birds and rushing water, the sounds of the distantly grazing animals in the background and the gentle hiss of a nearby snake. Jini knew nothing about being blind, or the effect such a disability has on other senses.
She had no intention of throttling the cheetah into bits. In fact, she wasn't hungry at all. Lunch had come and gone not-so-long ago. The adolescent was still full and satisfied from her earlier meal.
It was a couple moments before she responded to his greeting. Jini wasn't quite sure what to make of him.
"Hello," she said softly and took another, curious step in his direction. What an interesting creature!
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Posted: Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:35 pm
Twisting his head in the direction of the light and very feminine voice, Korou's spotted ears swivvled forward slowly and he took a deep breath, his glassy looking eyes blinking vainly. His delicate looking neck craned as he sniffed, slowly lowering his hind leg back down once more so that it came to rest on the dried grasses of the parched savannah.
From the tone of the voice he could tell that it was a lioness, not a leopard or another cheetah. It was far too large to be a cheetah or a leopard as well. With each sniff he took he could get the faint outlines of the lioness and she was much larger, though he would probably come to her chin. Maybe full grown, maybe not, but she wasn't tiny by any means.
"Hello there." There was a friendly tone to Korou's voice that seemed to drift through the space between them like a warm summer cloud.
For a cheetah, Korou wasn't desperately afraid of lions, but he was still quite spooked with the ones that he saw. Nothing had ever come of the ones he'd seen in the past other than pain and anguish. Only one lioness had ever brought good times with her, his 'sister' Safura.
Maybe this lioness would be as nice as Safura? There was always hope and Korou was willing to latch onto it before giving in.
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Posted: Sun Sep 16, 2007 9:25 pm
Jini had never been one for the subtleties of introduction and, more often than not, her manners were lost to an insatiable curiosity. It didn't take long for the young lioness to become impatient with the repetition in their conversation and the silly cycle of greetings. How long did it usually take strangers to get passed the 'hello, it's nice to meet you stage?'
She didn't know, but sensed that it was something easily controlled. Jini decided to take the initiative and blow passed it. The black colored lioness sniffed the air, committed this unfamiliar creature's scent to memory, and then asked him the first question that had popped into her mind.
"What are you?"
He he had teeth and claws, but she wasn't at all threatened by him. She was quite a bit bigger. Safe- out of danger.
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Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 4:52 am
Quite the blunt little female that he'd met. Not that Korou wasn't used to that sort of female, he'd ended up mates with one after all for a good long time before she'd left him. The bluntness of this lioness made him want to laugh aloud, however for sake of his own skin he with-held the laughter and instead let a small smile over his muzzle.
"I'm a cheetah. Have you never seen one before?" Korou wasn't sure exactly where he was, however he knew that with all the cheetah in the savanna that there surely had to have been at least one that could have met this female.
Tossing his weight back to another paw, Korou pricked the ground with his dull claws. They were the claws of wild dogs, as if they had been worn down by ages of running, which they had. His teeth, not nearly as stained as that of a lion, were in fact quite white against his midnight colored fur, showing that as far as predatory creatures went, he was lower on the rung than most.
Slowly his tail began to wag in a gentle fashion, like a pendulum rather than a dog or the like. It was showing that he was happy, or maybe just content that he was safe?
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Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 8:43 pm
The concept of 'cheetah' was an entirely new one to her. Jini had grown up surrounded by other lions, and the only other creatures she'd met so far came in the forms of food, insects and the birds in the sky, which usually flew to high for her to reach. Of course, she'd tried. On numerous occasions.
"You're the first cheetah that I've met," she said conversationally, head titled to the side slightly as she examined the smaller male (what a change!) from head to tail. Korou looked similar to a lion; cat-like, though, after that, there was nothing other than differences.
"You look light," Jini informed him in an as-a-matter-of-fact tone, "Can you go very fast?"
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