Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sinasina had been sleeping in the rear of the day, sprawled on her side with her head right near the wall. Her tail twitched, whiskers flinching as she struggled to hunt something in her dreams. She wasn’t doing too much thrashing, though, seemingly aware of what was lying in front of her stomach looking from a meal. A tiny, pale purple cub was there, whimpering and digging at her tummy for something to drink. Eventually she found what she was looking for, suckling without further distress.

Her new daughter. The only of her cubs she seemed to have in the cave. Where the males were, she wouldn’t say.

Mostly because she was still sleeping.

Still sleeping, that is, until the young lion burst into the cave, his cry waking her up instantly. Her head slammed against the wall, the thunk echoing through the cave. Her jump had made the baby start to fuss, the small leopon squealing with distress, and starting to wiggle about on the floor. Sinasina sat up, giving her baby a few assuring licks before looking over at Hadaya.

“Hadaya!” she gasped, watching the older cub pant, “what’s wrong? What happened?” She got to her feet, letting her cub moan herself to sleep as she moved over to check on her young friend. “Hadaya?” she asked again, “are you alright?”

“Whoa whoa!” Sinasina said, smiling at the frantic nature of the boy. It was difficult to forget someone like Hadaya. “You don’t need to be so upset,” she offered lightly, “the child isn’t frightened, and I’m fine too. You don’t have to look at me in that way, honest. Take a moment to catch your breath.” She moved away at that, nodding her head to indicate he should follow her inside. Her offer of an open cave wasn’t gone simply because she was tending to a cub.

She wasn’t interested enough in the cub to take complete concentration on it anyway. Still, she knew the baby was fussing now, the wiggling on the floor getting on her nerves. Sighing heavily, she bent down, picking the cub up by the back of her neck and letting her dangle from her mouth. The swaying in the air calmed the baby, the whimpering fading.

Putting her down, Sinasina strolled around the pale violet lump, lying down once more to let her go back to suckling. “Come over here,” she said to Hadaya, “and tell me what put you into such a panic! You looked like you had seen some kind of ghost.”

Not only was she genuinely concerned with the state of the boy, she was also eager to hear news from outside the den. Recently it felt like she had been trapped in her own home thanks to the litter. This was not what she had agreed. What was worse was the fact that she was starting to grow attached to the little annoyances.

She wasn’t ready to be ‘mommy’.

Sinasina listened, a smile spreading over her face as she slowly came to understand what had been happening to the boy. She had learned through stories of the Gods what his powers were, and knew that what had happened really hadn’t been some kind of dream and certainly hadn’t been a ghost.

But how to tell a boy prone to panic about the special gift that was now inside of him?

“Don’t look so frightened,” she offered after a moment, “I believe you. I know what you saw was real and that you’re not making it up. Come over here and sit down. I’d go over to you but this child whines if I move too far away from it. Come then and settle down, I’ll explain it to you… if I can.” She wasn’t the best at telling stories, so she decided to skip the whole ordeal and just dive right into the nature of his condition instead. No need to give him nightmares about Gods or something. Knowing him he would take a good thing and fret over it like the world was going to end.

“You have a special power very few animals share,” she started gently, “Gods had the power first, they still do, but now we mortals sometimes get blessed with it. You’re a seer, Hadaya. That means you can sometimes have visions into the future, as well as ones from the past. They’re like day dreams, or normal dreams, right? But they’re not something you need to be upset about! What you have is a very special power! It makes you incredibly lucky. Once you get a better handle on it, you could even use your visions to try and help other creatures.”

She sighed softly, chuckling. “I know it’s a lot to deal with all at once, but I’m sure you’ll get used to it. You’re a brave, strong lion! And now you have a very special power.”

“You’re looking at it the wrong way!” Laughed Sinasina, “you should think of this as a gift! That’s what it really is- a gift from the Gods given specially for you. It might seem like a burden right now, but someday, hopefully, you’ll learn to appreciate it. Maybe you’ll become used to the vision and they’ll help you help other animals. Don’t you think that’s cool? You could be like a hero of sorts. The ladies would love you for that,” she chuckled lightly, giving him a teasing wink.

“I wish that I could have that power. Sometimes I think even a glimpse into the future might be grand. But I wasn’t lucky enough to be blessed with it. Still, it’s nice to say that I know someone who is a seer!”

She listened to him carry on, smiling warmly. “Oh, you’re just fussing because you don’t understand yet. Give it a little time before you decide to hate it! How many visions have you had, one? Sometimes the seer powers are weak and you can’t do much with them, true, but other times they get more potent and you can clearly see into someone’s future. Even your own future!”

Stopping, she looked down at her cub, smiling slightly. It was a half-hearted show of thanks for the rather awkward comment.

“Yes,” she said faintly, “I haven’t named her yet. I’m not sure what to call her. She doesn’t look anything like me. Nor her father. There must have been some stray genes in the pool or something.” The baby then gurgled, spitting up the milk she had decided she no longer wished to swallow.

Sinasina smiled. “When we met I was pregnant,” she admitted, “but you were so frantic and upset there didn’t seem much point in bringing it up. I mean, would you have mentioned it out of the blue when there was no real moment to talk about it? Anyway, I had met a lion and we… well… hit it off, I suppose you could say. He wanted cubs and I wanted… how you make cubs. So things worked out for the both of us in the end. He got two males and a female. I don’t know where the boys are right now and I don’t honestly care. I never wanted to raise cubs.”

Wincing, she knew that probably sounded really blunt and horrible, her head shaking quickly. “I mean, maybe someday. But I’m not ready. And now… I have this one. This little female here is the one I suppose will be staying with me. Unless that brute brings back the other two. But that wasn’t part of the deal.”

She bent over for a moment, cleaning her messy baby, who gave a huff of a purr to the touch. The tiny creature then started to wiggle again, moving herself along the ground towards Hadaya’s voice. Sinasina, smiling, watched the child.

“You can help me name her, if you’d like to,” she offered, “she seems to like the sound of your voice.”