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 Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:15 pm
Hebapa stared down into her paws at the little rodent-like creature found high up in the baobab tree. It ate moths and the nectar of the tree's flowers and was highly able to escape predators by such a high perch. But Heba had been no ordinary predator. Being a friend of monkeys and other primates certainly had its advantages. It was a funny-looking creature with bulgy eyes and big ears. But quickly, before she lost her appetite, she dug in. Like a leopard, she had brought it back to her tree to eat. Kind of a fruitless effort. Oh well.
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 7:55 pm
 Ahmadas really couldn’t say that he spent a lot of time climbing around in trees. Of course, there was always the times that he slept up there for lack of anywhere better. He was a small cat, so closely grown branches offered a good nesting place when you were unfamiliar with the lands you happened to be in and too tired to bother sleeping lightly enough to waken at any noise that might signal some form of predator. Smaller cats could be a good target for the larger species and he was in no mood to be attacked, or eaten, or worse – whatever that happened to be.
However, at this current point in time, Ahmadas was not concerned about where he would be sleeping tonight. He was a cat that lived by the stars and the sun, he went where his paws took him and where the wind called him. He was a wanderer, a traveler, a gypsy at best – the four corners of the world called to him and right now, the only thing that mattered was in which order he chose to go to them. He would see the world, like he had been planning to before he had settled down with Jahala.
Thinking about her still caused a little pang in his heart, but since his talk with Moyo, he had begun to heal over. Sure, there were the nights where he couldn’t get the thoughts of her or his unborn kit out of his head, but what was he to do? Healing was a long and tedious process, it would take time, and perhaps he would find a friend like Moyo that would help him along that road. He could hope, but he thought it unlikely, especially with the way he travelled so much.
He sighed as he stopped, coincidentally under the same tree that the female serval had come to occupy. He thought little about meeting other servals, given the few numbers of their species around these parts. Of course, he probably never would have thought to look in the tree for one of them anyway. So, he simply plopped down on his hind quarters and let out a rather relieved breath – glancing off at the sunset from the shadows of the tree. He needed rest, and a little shade – he could have used a small drink, too, but that could wait.
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Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 8:07 pm
Hebapa had a large love for her tree. It was brown and it's bark sturdy, uninjured by the antlers of a horned animal. Its branches were strong and could probably support a leopard. Who knew how many years it had seen or what creatures had used it for a shelter on a rainy night. Everything had a story and so did the tree. But this was not why Hebapa loved her tree. She loved it because she found things under her tree ...all the time.
Last time the wonderful thing beneath her tree had been an interesting creature called a cheetah. It was black and white and pretty bland in coloring but its body structure had been amusing. The creature, Gabus, had talked about making people happy which really was an amiable goal. He was going to meet her back here under the tree in a few days to discuss their agreement. That was right: agreement. Hebapa was all about having fun and so was Gabus. She'd get to see and meet interesting creatures in the process too.
To do what? Well, to perform in his own little circus. The word circus had a funny ring to it. It didn't roll on her tongue because it wasn't a smooth word at all. The shapes she had to make with her mouth to pronounce it were common enough but for some reason, she just found it enjoyable.
She leaned down to rip off some more meat from the creature and grabbed a chunk of breast meat. However, it wasn't easy. The darn meat ripped up into the neck and took skin with it, popping the darn head right off ...and rolling in the air to the ground. She stopped with the meat half in her mouth to stare after it. Oopsies!
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Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 8:52 am
Ahmadas grunted as the head of the small creature fell to the ground, bouncing a little before it finally settled down and rolled to a stop. He frowned and leaned towards it slightly, one hesitant little paw reaching out to give it a little prod. Things like blood didn’t bother the feline – after all, he hunted to get his food – but it wasn’t every day that a head came raining down from the sky to plop down in front of you. He supposed it would have been a little comical if he hadn’t been so curious as to what had popped its head off in the first place and then tossed it down here.
With a little heave, he pulled himself gracefully up onto his paw, immediately turning his attention up towards the tree. It took a few moments of scanning the branches, his ears swiveled forward on his little skull to listen for any sort of sound that might give away someone. Of course, none of this was absolutely necessary, for nearly as soon as he began to search, he picked out rather vibrant red fur colors among the branches of the tree.
“Excuse me,” he called up, still unable to make out quite what sort of creature it was among the obscuring tree branches, but he knew whatever it was – it was smaller than himself, “but I think you dropped your.. head?”
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Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:33 am
Hebapa "slurped" the meat rather unceremoniously into her mouth, not appreciating the stringy meat and the bit of fur that stuck to her lips. She paused her meal to bring her paws to her face and wipe it off. Her ears twitched as they caught a noise, a voice. She looked straight ahead as though it would be right in front of her in the tree. Of course, there was never another intelligent creature in the tree with her but it was always her natural reaction to the situation.
Finally, almost hugging the branch, she leaned over the side to look down at the ground. If it wasn't for the fact that the sun was still up and grass was green, she might not have even noticed him. "You can have it if you want," she sang down to him. Really she had no use for it. She had a thing against eating heads anyway, despite the fact her mother taught her that their brains were quite nutritious.
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Posted: Tue Oct 30, 2007 9:13 pm
Ahmadas grimaced at the thought of trying to digest the head of the small creature. Bulging, popping eyes, lolling tongue, gritty little bits of cartilage – no thanks. He shook his head and gave it another good prod, sending it rolling away from him with a slight grit to his teeth. No, he wasn’t against eating meat – after all, he was a carnivorous little bugger - but he was against eating faces. Well, that made little sense, but he couldn’t bring himself to want to tatter a face or eat some of those odder body parts. They could keep their brains, for he didn’t want to have anything to do with them. Heads and faces and that area in general had a little too much personality for his tastes – he liked good, thick meat much better.
“No, that’s quite alright, I’m really not very hungry,” he said with a little quirk of his brow, only just not detecting the traces of blood staining her coat. She was marked in such rusty red tones that at first anything of that form had been undeterminable – but he saw it once he began to look for it. Honestly, how could you rip the head off of something without getting a little bit of blood on your fur?
“Is there any reason that you’re up in that tree?” Well, he might as well ask. Ahmadas never spent a great deal of time in trees, and neither had Jahala – Moyo certainly hadn’t mentioned it. If it was natural for servals to climb trees, Ahmadas had never been made very aware of it. To each their own, he supposed, although he did wonder as to what had made her climb up there in the first place.
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Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 10:37 am
Hebapa watched his reaction, quite distracted from her food. There was something about him that amused her in the same way the cheetah cub had. Well then, why was she still up in the tree? Thinking exactly that at herself, she abandoned her food and leaped down onto the ground beside him. Up close and personal, he looked exactly like a melanistic serval. In a trip to the mountains in Kenya with some curious monkeys wishing to see what mountain gorillas look like, she had stumbled upon a large population of melanistic servals. They hadn't seemed very interested in her so she had no interest for them. He seemed different some how.
"Well, I was up in the tree because leopards do it and monkeys do it. Why not us? We are very well able if we only try. Why, even lions can climb trees. Plus, it's a great way to hold onto your foo-" she paused and scowled upwards as a spider monkey jumped out of no where and ran off with her food. They don't even eat meat. What stupid dare was it performing? Hebapa thought to voice her thoughts and with a mental fist shake, yelled after it in it's language. It only laughed as it disappeared from sight. Damn fickle creature. She'd make sure it got a punishment for that. She didn't hang out with the monkeys not to get some sort of benefit for when situations like this happened.
"So much for that..." she trailed off with a dejected frown. She turned to him, eying him over. "You don't seem so accustomed to the forest. What brings you here -albeit, the edge of the forest."
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Posted: Wed Oct 31, 2007 6:39 pm
Ahmadas took a small step back as he saw her body teetering on a jump, sitting down again before she even plopped so delicately to the ground. Up close, it was fairly obvious that she was a serval – in the tree, she had been too obscured by the branches and the leaves for him to determine much of anything. Of course, that was a surprise in itself by all means. He had seen very few servals in his life other than himself and most of the ones he had actually seen seemed to be in the last few weeks alone. Well, perhaps they had all just been in hiding? This female had certainly been in a rather odd place.
He blinked as the rush of a form overhead drew his attention, spying the creature just in time to see it grab what had been left of her meal. He blinked after it, studying what little of the thing he could see – he had certainly never come into contact with a monkey before. He shook his head, ears swiveling in a startled motion as she yelled after it in what seemed like some form of senseless chattering. Well, if that meant something, he had no idea what it was.
“Well, I’ve passed through here before but I can’t say I’ve ever spent a lot of time – and I haven’t been through in a very long while anyway,” he said calmly, despite the entire scene that had just gone down. Ahmadas was a very collected creature and it took something quite a bit more unusual than this to bother him. “I’m really only passing through, though – I’m a traveler, or I used to be. I settled down for a little while, but now I’m on the move again. I just happen to be going this way – it’s just where my paws have led me.” He shrugged, glancing back at the tree idly. He saw no real need to tell her about Jahala, that was a wound that was just beginning to heal and he didn’t feel particularly like cutting it back open.
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Posted: Fri Nov 02, 2007 7:42 am
She grinned at him and shook her head. "Your paws are not supposed to lead you, silly. They are meant to follow your brain ...or your heart. And go wherever you would have them take you." There was something about him that made her sad. It was probably the fact that while he was talking to her, he was calm and ....well, he seemed to lack energy -viability- as though he lived life with a barrier that held him back from experiencing even the most fun of actions.
There were many reasons her life had been anything than serval-like and she questioned quietly to herself if this was one of the reasons why, some underlying reason that she hadn't discovered without having a nice chat with another serval. But Hebapa stopped herself with a mental paw in the air. She never thought this much. Why start now? She had only met the guy. Maybe he was just so weirded out by how different she was that he tried to remain calm and collected to keep from revealing himself.
...or maybe he had a dark and gruesome past full of fighting shadowy villains and losing his lady fair to some plight. She sat back and tapped her chin thoughtfully before she realized that she was thinking with her gestures and possibly giving something away. Oops~! She flushed although any coloration wasn't the least bit visible, her ears flattened slightly and she looked down at the ground, embarrassed. "Sorry..."
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Posted: Sun Nov 04, 2007 9:25 am
He smirked as he heard her thoughts on letting his paws lead him, tilting his head as he listened to her. “I always prefer to wander without thinking, actually, because then I might end up somewhere I never would have gotten had I thought about where exactly to go,” he said with a little purr on his tongue, thinking about all the places he really had found that way. “I prefer to trust where I might end up rather than think about it all constantly. After all, if I think about where to go, I’ll always end up back in the places I’ve already seen.” She might not see that as very fun, but travelling was his passion and that was simply how he chose to do it.
Ahmadas thought she was odd, very true, but he would not hold that against her. Like the many lands he had come across, so had he found many different types of creatures with many different personalities – so far he had met quite a few that didn’t stick to the general manner of acting even for their species. She was unique, true, but he had seen his fair share of unique. He would not look badly upon her for being different and nor would he rise to comment upon it unless she said something on the manner first.
“Don’t be sorry,” he said with a little laugh, although he was not entirely sure what she was sorry about. For the thoughts she was obviously considering in her head, or was it because she had shown that she was thinking something that she wasn’t sharing? It mattered little to him, for she obviously was thinking nothing bad, otherwise she would neither have apologized nor remained talking to him for very long. “They’re your thoughts, you can think them if you want to.”
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 7:08 am
Hebapa scrunched her face into a puzzled look as she listened to his words. "I should think it would be the other way around. For if you don't think about it and let your paws take you, might they not fall into habit if stumbling upon familiar ground and take you somewhere you've already gone?" Because that made absolute sense to Heba.
She turned her words over in her head, thinking the best way to explain her apologize for thinking out-loud in her gestures. "Well... you see- I mean.. I was rambling and I shouldn't have been rambling ...or much less giving myself away for rambling. Or just like the things I was thinking were so ridiculous and blown outta proportion and..." she trailed off. "And now I'm doing it out loud."
She flushed and turned to look over her shoulder as if there was something to see over there to try and stop her foolishness, even for her. Heba looked back, thinking of a way to change the subject. "You know, I met a cheetah the other day and he had the most peculiar idea. You see, he wanted to find a way to make people happy but knew he couldn't do it himself. So after talking with him for a while about it, I remembered my monkey friend whose human name is BoBo. I brought him to him and after talking for a while, the cheetah decided to start what's called a 'circus'. It's something about doing silly things to make people laugh ...even if it does involve sometimes making a fool of yourself. Of course, I volunteered to help him. He seemed quite nice. I couldn't see why not. It'd be a nice change from being out-plotted by scheming monkeys.
"Hmmm, I don't even know how I turned this back on myself when that wasn't even the point... Talk about yourself, I 'command' you."
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Posted: Wed Nov 07, 2007 1:35 pm
He blinked very slowly as he considered what she was saying, although it did seem to border on nonsense. However, he figured that if she was willing to say something so nearly tongue tying and ridiculous that he might as well attempt to answer her. “Well, for someone like myself, if you don’t ever stay in a place too long for it to become familiar then there’s never any danger of your paws taking you to somewhere you’ve already been. Of course, I usually recognize the lands I’m in, but I’ve never been in them long enough to know my way around them all by heart.” He shrugged softly, not really bothered by her way of explaining things. Jahala had done worse.
“It’s fine,” he laughed out as she began to ramble out loud while trying to apologize for rambling inside her head – well, that’s what it sounded like she was trying to do at least. However, it become readily apparent that she simply wanted to get away from this topic and her rambling in general (even though he was beginning to realize that it was quite a common occurrence with her regardless) and he simply complied.
“A circus?” he asked quizzically, tilting his head with it to emphasize the question. Well, he gathered that it was something that made people laugh on purpose, that there was some reasoning behind it and that it obviously entailed making a fool of yourself quite often. However, he couldn’t quite grasp why in the world you would want to do that. Of course, he had never been one that just generally wanted to make other people happy for no reason – so that could be why. “That seems.. very odd.”
“Me? I’m really not that interesting apart from my traveling. I’ve traveled my whole life except for a while where I settled down in a distant land with.. a friend,” he said the last part quietly, furrowing his brows in though. “Now I’m back to wandering lands, looking for something interesting, and without friends again.” He shrugged, as if there was nothing to it and nothing really important about his life.
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 12:00 pm
She looked at him quizzically. "You lived with a friend? You mean, that servals actually live together? I feel jipped. I always thought it was the other way around. You know, being rejected does that to one, being alone and all - if that makes any sense." She nodded, "but it's good you've come to the jungle. There's a lot of interesting things to do in the jungle. You can learn to climb trees ...or the native language. And many other cool things too.
"Yea, a circus. You know what that is right? Oh I admit it is very odd. I don't think animals really volunteer to do this all the time. According to BoBo, they're usually captured and forced to work for it." she laughed. "Which is quite a funny story for BoBo. It involves a jar of peanut butter. Oh sorry, off topic again. But yea, a circus makes people happy and all that jazz. You can do it any way really: amazing tricks or feats, playing with people's fears by making facing them seeming dramatically exciting, stuff like that."
She felt odd just a little feeling the need to explain herself to someone else. Yes, she liked talking to people but usually didn't bother to see if people understood what she meant. It was a bit confusing she had to admit. It made her wonder just a little bit...
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Posted: Sun Nov 11, 2007 4:55 pm
He frowned slightly at her, furrowing his brows as she rambled on about being rejected and jipped. He shook his head with a small smile and a slight laugh to his words, “I can’t say that I quite understand what you’re talking about, no.” He laughed about it though, shaking his head again as he tried to figure out what she had just been rambling on about so fervently. Had she been rejected by her family, or some sort of group? He really had no idea, actually. “But yes, I suppose some servals do live together. I lived with another for quite a long time, but maybe we’re just not meant to if it all ends up the way it did with me. “
“I don’t think I would be very good at climbing trees,” he said lowly, staring up at the tree trunk with a little bit of a bewildered look. Sure, she had learned to do it, which meant it was possible for servals. However, he didn’t think that he himself would have the tolerance to be patient enough to learn something that seemed so ridiculous. Besides, he was just as happy with his feet right here on the ground. “And if the native language is that crazy talk you were using with that monkey, I’m not sure I’d be very good at that either. I don’t think my vocal chords can make noises like that.” He smirked, chuckling softly.
He laughed aloud at her as she began to talk about someone named Bobo and something or another called a ‘jar of peanut butter’. He had no idea what a jar or peanut butter was, but it certainly made for quite a few odd images in his head, especially when he tried to determine exactly what type of creature Bobo was. He supposed, however, that it was probably one of the monkeys she seemed to know around these parts. “I understand what you’re saying with the circus, I guess, but I can’t say that I’ve ever come to see one or even know what kinds of things you would do in a circus,” he trailed off, thinking of odd things in his head that were probably highly improbable. “It seems a little… crazy.”
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Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2007 9:28 am
Heba shook her head at him and chuckled lightly. "Don't be such a spoiled sport! Every thing's possible if you just try it. You ever heard the phrase 'there can be miracles if you believe'? Something you should take to heart.
"Now, anyway, I don't know what you do when you visit the other places. But while you're here, you might as well survey the local foods. And by survey, I mean sample. I may have lost my lunch but there's no reason you should be robbed of your's. Now come on, follow me. I'll lead the way."
She wasn't quite sure what she was going to feed him but she would find him something and that would be something good. She went through a couple of options, including monkey. After all, there were ones tiny enough to be caught. But instead settled on a type of tree-dwelling rodent that carried a resemblance to a squirrel but not quite.
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