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She had one 'those' feelings. The kind of feeling that told Zola that there would be very little 'calm' that day.

She had woken, spend the morning wandering, found a thing or two for herself to make inquiries about, then had gone to find herself a tree to rest her sorry little butt (which did very little 'playful' activities) to climb up into for a sort of 'naptime'.

Which is where she had spend a good portion of the early afternoon, sleeping away and waiting for her next 'event' of the day. Which, with the impending silence, wasn't too far away.

Nothing stayed silent for too long.

"Auuuugh! You bit me too hard, it huuuurrrtttsss!"

The teal-colored hyena was wailing, obviously in some semblance of tears, at his travelling companion, a maned wolf. He, a full grown hyena, in tears. Oh, it must have looked hilarious to anybody who didn't know his more 'laid back' nature.

Though it was obvious that the 'bite' in question had only been a 'love bite' if existant at all, there were no 'wounds' on the Hyena to speak of, nor did he have a limp of any sort. ... so his 'tears' were being blamed on a pain that didn't exist to blame his emotional state on.

As for the hyena's companion, she seemed almost annoyed with his wailing, frowning and looking about ready to give him something to really cry about.

"Oh shut it! You wail like a baby!" she half-teased, half-complained, her ears flattened back against her skull.

"Besides, when I bit you it wasn't even that hard."

Zola’s own ears flattened back again her skull at the loud noises, opening one eye to try and look towards the source of the noise, yawning half heartedly before she lifted her head to observe the odd looking pair.

Off duo. A maned wolf and a hyena.

She watched them, waiting to see if they would enter her ‘space’ before she finally called out to them.

“Why are you crying when you’re not in pain?”

“I’m not a baby!” he pouted, bumping shoulder with his companion a-la-bumpercars style, knocking her off balance.

But when he heard the unfamiliar voice calling out in inquiry he froze, automatically lifting a paw to wipe across his eyes and upper-nasal area to clean away any of the ‘tears’ before forcing as manly of a frown as possible.

“I’m not crying!”

She didn’t squeak as she was toppled over, just flailing her limbs about hopelessly, before glancing up at Furamu a-

STRANGE FEMALE.

On any ‘normal’ basis, one would think that Mettie would be intelligent enough to know that a female lion was definitely not a ‘romantic’ threat towards her. But it hadn’t. Instead, the maned wolf had thrown herself to her feet, baring her teeth at the tree-borne (kettle girl?) lioness.

“He’s none of your business!”

She was certainly curious as to the sudden denial from both parties (especially the females) as to what the hyena had been doing.

Why were they in denial? To save face. Why was the female in a defensive state of being? She was feeling as though her territory was being threatened.

“Well he certainly was. Why?”

She wasn’t about to drop the topic because neither of them looked that keen on answering said question.

He had been half-expecting his ‘knight’ to leap to her paws and start protesting the female’s presence. Her? Posessive? Hardly!

But he wasn’t exactly quick to leap at the opportunity to just answer the revisited question. His ‘better half’ was still defending her own argument about said question.

However, Furamu did nose at Mettie’s side with a frown.

Mettie froze with a slight start at the nose to her side to ‘calm’ her, responding with a returning lick to his nose and upper muzzle, before leering back to Zola and slowly starting to skirt around the base of the tree, pressing her shoulder against Furamu’s in order to ‘herd’ him.

All the time eying the strange female up in the tree suspiciously.

“Let’s leave…” she whispered to her side and into Furamu’s ear.

Were they leaving without answering her question? Zola frowned. Why were they avoiding the topic? Had she struck a cord? Was it one of those ‘must be manly and macho’ things?

Her eyes followed the pair as they moved along around the tree by her, the frown on her face deepening just a tad more as they slowly moved past her as though trying to be discreet.

He put up little protest as his ‘better half’ started to her him along, following compliantly and also looking up at the lioness to see if she was or was not watching them…. Which she was.

While he might have been inclined to answer Zola’s ‘new’ question, he also knew that if he did try to a certain female at his side might bite his nose for it. He wasn’t exactly keen on being nommed on anytime soon.

So he left that result to his companion.

Mettie frowned at the new question, still refusing to answer it, instead continuing along with her ‘herding’ of her better half, a frown placed firmly on her face.

“No. We’re not.” She growled at the female, giving the stranger the most ‘answer’ she was going to get, before finally shoving against Furamu’s shoulder to move out of range of the female and her tree.

Do not want.

Zola frowned lightly at the answer she received as the other two went on their merry little way before resting her head upon her paws with a light sigh. Really, would it have been too much for them to have answered her question?

Because now she was going to sit in her tree all day and try to figure out the answer to her little plethora of questions.

And who knew how successfully.

Once out of earshot of the tree (or when Mettie stopped herding him), Furamu sighed and gave Mettie a slight frown.

“What was that?”

He obviously was inquiring into her ‘stubborn no talky’ act, his lower jaw set in a place. No smiling, he wasn’t going to give in to whatever antics she may or may-not have had in place ready to ‘defend’ her actions.

Mettie smiled innocently at him, before her less-than-pleased expression returned and she again licked the male on the nose. Mmm, love-boogers.

“Mmm, just letting her know what’s mine, love..” she teased, continuing on ahead of him once he’d broken from her side to trot along merrily for some time before the returning wail of ‘You bit me too hard’ resumed.

Oh men.

Hiding their adoration of being ‘loved’ to tears with fake pain. How she adored him so.