Nabihi was sitting.
She didn't usualy do that. Usualy she was either running or she was sleeping. Sometimes she walked, but today she was sitting in the shade of a large rock, and she was thinking.
Actualy she was fuming more than thinking. She'd never really had a call to be angry before, she was solitary and in all reality nothing in her life really provided the oportunity for anger but this time something had.
"AND THEN SHE JUST LEFT ME!" She yelled out suddenly. Nabihi wasn't a yeller. Her usual tone of voice was calm and subtle like water over rocks or something equallly soothing, but she still had that weight in her chest and she wanted it gone.
"I NEARLY broke my neck! All over some stupid monkey! FOR THE MOON! What did that even mean!"
Gzifa had a thoughtful expression, which somehow managed to look moronic. It wasn't possible for someone so dense to be thoughtful enough to look it. She tried though, if only to try and offer extra support. She'd known Nabihi a short while now. Shwari had sent her out to hunt for him. To Gzifa, the "lion with lots of lines" had sent her out to hunt for him. He'd never given her his name and she'd never asked. All she knew was he was nice and so sad! Couldn't hunt for his family!
Gzifa had gone out to hunt for him! ...And gotten sidetracked by this cheetah who at some point had started ranting. There was a missing bridge connecting her two thoughts. Had it been there she'd have realized that instead of sitting, listening to a cheetah ramble and thinking about being out feeding cubs, she should have actually been out hunting and finishing. The lion had been so nice! "Hm... " Her back foot scratched her ear. "Hmmmm... Maybe the monkey can fly?"
Nabihi gave the wild dog a look. On her scale of things that are okay wild dogs rated pretty high, they weren't really big enough to hurt her or fast enough to catch her even if they were. Also, they usualy stayed out of her way, and Gzifa was... Gzifa was even more harmless because she was not all there.
"The monkey couldn't even fly! Or else it would have never come on the ground with that crazy- crazy- UGH, lion!"
She dreadfully wanted to call the lioness a name. A real mean one but somehow her mother's insistance that she be a proper lady still affected her and she still couldn't bring herself to actualy say anything too awful. But she thought it!
"It could have killed me you know. Not like she would have cared, she probably would have- would have just ran off! In fact my neck could have actualy been broken and she would have never known, she didn't even make sure I was okay! You know, I bet that she escaped from somewhere, like, I don't know, a pride full of crazy lions or something."
Thudthudthud.
Gzifa's foot smashed against the ground with every scratch of her ear. There was evidence of confusion in her voice when she asked, "But if all the pride was crazy, wouldn't she have wanted to stay with them?" You couldn't escape your home! That was like starving when you hadn't eaten in days. Just SO obvious. Besides, who would want to leave a place they fit in? Birds of a feather and all that. Heh, birds. Birds were awesome. "Birds are awesome."
This was a first for her. She'd never heard a story quite like this one. Though Nabihi kept her attention more because of her bright color than what she was saying. Pretty. "Well, maybe she didn't think you were hurt. I mean, you aren't." A couple scratches maybe. Nothing that wouldn't heal in a day or two. No harm done. "Didn't she say it was doing it to make fun of her? Maybe it could fly and just didn't want to."
"She was probably even too crazy for them," Nabihi said darkly, ears going back as she scowled.
She was about to continue with her next hypothesis, that the lion had been dropped head first into a river when she was a cub when the wild dog interjected.
"What? Oh uh, yeah, I guess they are?" she said, a little slowly, studying Gzifa for a moment before adding, "The birds didn't like her either though."
"She couldn't have known, she didn't even look. It was just rude. Anyway, what about my emotional injuries? I can tell you, I'll never look at antoher lion the same way again."
This was true. The lions she had met, with the exception of Sora, had all been incredibly strange. Even the big Nishan had been weird. But this lion had been much, much worse than any she'd met before. It was all adding up to a black mark on the species as a whole.
"Huh, well, I am sure the baboon just wanted her to leave it alone too. It was probably yelling 'Go away crazy!' the entire time, I bet."
Too crazy for a pride of crazy lions?
Wow, that was crazy!
Gzifa was alarmed at the thought of someone that bonkers out, running around free. Didn't she know she had kids?! Somewhere. Out there. She was suppose to be looking for them when she'd gotten distracted by Shwari. Shwari was so nice! She couldn't help but frown at the idea he might not be. 'Another lion'? Did that mean all lions? "Aww, now, not all of them are bad!"
Had Nabihi ran instead into her daughter whom agreed whole heartedly the conversation would have been much different. Gzifa couldn't imagine swearing off an entire species. Lions would probably be the last other than her own she would ever do that to! "There's lots of really nice lions out there. I know this one lion, named Banji. He's so nice and helpful. I bet he's friends with a lot of cheetah. Probably even a leopard!"
Good, good friends.
"I've never met one that wasn't, even the ones that weren't as crazy as her were still not normal. And they're too big too! Don't they seem too big to you?"
They always seemed to big to Nabihi, all large and slow and stupid or crazy. Why would you even need to be that big? She was surprised they could even move.
"Banji? That's a stupid name," Nabihi said, and then immediatley afterwards felt bad, "Well, not really stupid just... Well anyway, I've never met a lion who's nice or helpful. He probably just wanted to eat those cheetahs."
"Big?" Gzifa tilted her head to the right. The left. She hummed to the beat of the word 'big' chanting in her mind for a while before she decided what to say. "Not when they're little," she pointed out. "Just that they grow big. But they're not all as big. I've heard of some really big ones and the some barely big as you!" She'd never seen either but she'd heard of them so it must be true.
"Stupid?" A second frown. It faded quick enough when she kept going. "That's good. I like it. I think it's a nice name. Baaaaanji." Nice like birds. Birds were awesome. "Hehe, birds." Man, her ear was itchy!
Thudthudthud.
"I really think you're wrong about this one. How many lions have you actually met? You can't really think they're all bad just cause one is in love with a baboon."
"Even when they're little they're pretty big," Nabihi said stubbornly, slowly becoming aware of how rediculous this whole conversation was. Her new friend wasn't exactly the brightest and it was complling Nabihi to go down to her level.
"Well, it's not awful, I mean, there are worse I suppose."
She watched Gzifa scratch for a moment, it was almost hypntoic.
"Hmm? Oh well," her brows furrowed, "I've met a few. Enough, I'd say. I mean, I doubt you know any really normal ones. Even that Banji was probably crazy and who knows what's happened to him since then."
"He went and found a mate and had a lot of pretty kids and they lived happily ever after." Gzifa couldn't prove it didn't know that as a truth. The last time she'd seen Banji he'd told her of his son and three daughters. He called them beautiful. The only possible scenario resulting from it was that they were still hanging around the pridelands as a big, happy family, though not near as big as hers. That was almost an unreachable number. "I'm telling you, there's a lot of really nice lions. I could prove it to you."
Nabihi didn't know how to respond to the first part. It seemed waaay too fairy tale to her, no one she'd ever heard of found a mate had cubs and lived happily ever after, but Gzifa seemed pretty confident. So it had to be at least a little true, right?
"Well, I doubt it, you're probably just being sweet and they're not nice at all. Anyway how could you prove it?"
Perhaps she was being bratty, but she had almost died. Her neck still twinged.
Gzifa felt proud two whole times in one day! The first time was earlier when Shwari had said she looked strong. Now it was because she was sweet, too! How could that big jerk Khima run off and leave her if she was strong and sweet? Pssh! Maybe she should get a pet hare to keep her company. Hares were awesome. Like birds. --Right, lion talk. Okay. "Uh..." Shwari! "I know a really nice lion really close to here. In the Pridelands I think." They had that big rock which was the only identification method she had. "You should come meet him. He's not really big, but he is really neat."
Nabihi opened her mouth to argue and then shut it again.
Gzifa, for all of her, uhm, odd ways, had been nice to her, and listened to her yell and act, in general, very improper for a long time now, and she hadn't even complained about it. Nabihi didn't spend time around others often but she figured that pretty much made Gzifa a frriend, and she should return the favor. But meeting another lion was not on the top of her priority list. Then again, it's not like she had to stay a long time, she just had to go, see he was weird, and leave. And even Gzifa wouldn't do something so stupid as leading her to her death, she thought. Besides, the pridelands were nice, there was always alot of food around. She'd been too warry to go there on her own but Gzifa seemed confident so maybe she had a pass?
"Alright," she said finaly, a little hesitantly, "I guess that's okay."
