Safimoto:
Happy eyes reflected the sky as a young lion-cheetah hybrid padded along in the soft afternoon heat. Safimoto jingled as she walked, gifts from a friendly stranger on her tail and paws and in her ears. The piercings had been quite painful at first, but she had gotten used to the jewelry and learned to like it rather quickly. It made her unique among her brothers and sisters, not to mention her odd habit of not forming words. Her aunt had caught her talking, and she had a lovely time with a young lion-leopard cub not too long ago, but other than that, no one really knew she could talk. And she quite preferred it that way... sometimes. Other times, it was nice to have a friend she could talk to.
With a small huff, she twisted into a dance, fluid and graceful, almost like the movements of a snake in a river, twisting and turning, the metal disks on her leather bands clinking softly.
Li Wei:
She may or may not catch the flick of a dusty golden tail from a nearby patch of grass. Li had traveled for a time, always traveling it seemed. He'd not yet found anywhere that felt quite right. He'd found plenty of nice places- and a few other kind individuals- but they didn't seem to answer the quiet, but persistant, tug in the back of his mind. He had a home- he just didn't know where. He had a family- he just had never met them.
Presently, enjoying the faint sunlight, the dust-pelted cub laid on his back, belly to the sun in one of the larger dappled patches beneith a small tree.
Safimoto:
Safi, in the middle of a serpentine weave, caught sight of a tail among the grasses, dusty and quite like her cousin's lovely gold pelts. A small smile spread on the hybrid female's face and she did her best to quietly weave towards the tail and its subsequent owner, noting its size and style. It looked kind of like her papa's and hers but smaller, so if it was a cat like her or her papa, it was smaller than her.
Tracing gracefully around the patch of grass, she giggled and mewed.
"Why don't you come out?" she asked among her giggling. Ever since meeting Zoran, she had been a bit better on talking with others. And it was probably helped by her overly cheerful mood this afternoon.
Li Wei:
Li's eyes slowly opened at the faint ring of the hybrid's jewlery. He didn't make any movement to further rouse himself. Not until she spoke anyway.
Giving a long, deep yawn, the cub rolled himself to his side and rubbed lightly at his eyes. "Mmmn...but it's nice here."
There was no telling who the voice belonged to. He certainly didn't reconize it... but 'enemy', and 'danger' were among many words that were still alien to him.
Safimoto:
Safi giggled some more at the sleepy voice and peeked her nose into the grassy patch, smiling.
"But it's nice out here, too. Warm and sunny and pretty, the perfect day for fun," she retorted, smiling at the cub, her ears perked forward in a friendly hello. She sometimes thought the fact that she had the hoop on only one ear made her look a little lop-sided, but she still liked it, and at times like this she really didn't care all that much.
Li Wei:
"Fun?" He rolled himself to sit on his backside- though his hind legs remained sprawled out in front of him. He was still learning what was and wasn't decent, indecent, or in this case- just plain silly looking.
"What do you do for fun? Like...run around?"
Safimoto:
"Sometimes," Safi replied, her tail high and swishing back and forth behind her as she spoke. "Most of the time I dance, though," she added quickly before twisting back in a half-jump, twirling around so that when she stopped, her paws were crossed and she was bowed slightly. Her head looked up and she blinked at the patch of grass expectantly.
Li Wei:
"Huh?" He blinked as he watched her. "Dancing? I've never heard of it." He rolled himself forward to catch himself on his front paws and kick his hind legs out under him. Strange and akward as it was- it was graceful enough, "Is it fun?"
Safimoto:
Safi almost fell over at that one. Never heard of dancing?! "You've never heard of dancing?" she asked in disbelief, righting herself and blinking at the lion cub. "It's... It's..." Safi plopped down and placed a paw to her chin, thinking. How to explain dancing... And then it came to her, as did a smile.
"Okay, have you ever listened to the world around you and felt kind of a... Well, felt like you should sway or something like that? Or just had to tap your paw to a beat or something?" she asked, swaying a bit, like a tree does in the wind.
Li Wei:
"A beat of what?" He tipped his head to one side, his eyes still only half-open. Perhaps from the daze of his nap, perhaps it was a bit too bright for him. It was hard to say.
"Sway..." He looked to his paws and started to rock dramatically back and forth- almost as if a strong wind was knocking him around.
"Like a leaf! Lookit I'm a leaf!"
Safimoto:
Safi giggled. "Exactly! Just like a leaf," she said and thought about the beat thing. "Well... you know how some prey-beasts stomp their hooves sometimes? Sometimes it's in a beat, like this," she explained and tapped out a steady rhythm. "Or it could be more complicated, like this," she added and changed it so that there was a mixture of fast and slow beats that repeated after a few.
Li Wei:
The little cub laughed, though there was something hauntingly alien about it. The sound would almost have a musical quality to it. "Silly! That's not beating, that's -singing-. Music."
Safimoto:
Safi stuck her tongue out at the lion. "Nu-uh, it's the beat of the music. The tempo, my papa told me so and he's a history-singer," she argued but smiled as she did so. "This is singing," she said and sang a short, couple-lined verse of one of her papa's ballads, an epic about a curious leopard who tried to find the gods. Her singing voice was quite good, better than her dancing, though she wished otherwise. Her father would have been proud at the light, high quality of it.
Li Wei:
"Haha!" He rocked back to his rear end and began padding his front paws together. Clapping- though he wouldn't know what to call it if he was asked. "I like your song! It's pretty. Hey- so beating things and singing and dancing go together. If it's fun I wanna try."
Safimoto:
"Yup, they certainly do!" Safi replied happily and stood again. "And this is what a more complicated dance looks like," she added and closed her eyes, slinking around as she listened to a song in her mind, rolling her shoulders once, arching her back, rearing back to wave her front paws in the air before returning to the low crouch, her jewelry clinking with every movement, making her own music.
Li Wei:
Li watched with mild amusement, still perched on his hind legs with his front paws tucked up against his chest. "Hey! I'll dance with you. Leaaaaf~" He started to rock back and forth once again- it was hardly a dance. Perhaps if he had a hoola hoop it might have been impressive.
Safimoto:
Safi giggled as she watched the cub sway back and forth. There were different types of dance, to represent the different parts of a story. And this was definitely one of them. She liked his leaf dance.
"It looks really good!" she exclaimed, but then there was the sound of someone calling in the distance, her ears perked up, and she turned away, looking back in the direction she had come from.
"I think I hear my papa calling me. Maybe we could see each other again sometime. I'm Safimoto, by the way," she said and turned to run off.
