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 Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 6:38 pm
 It had been many, many months since she'd last seen her best friend and first crush. Every day that passed, Mollie stepped back into that quiet, calculating cub she was. Up until the day she left the Pridelands without a word to anyone. She wanted to see Vu; wanted to know he was OK. She had a feeling deep in her bones that he was, but after what happened with that Firekin, he'd fled from her. And Molemogi knew it was her fault, and only her fault that Vu was attacked so viciously by that stupid female. He was protecting her because she was so weak.
Of course, Mollie hadn't practiced since he'd left, at least not what they'd been practicing together. No. She honed her skills by going hunting with some of the hunters, fighting with her siblings physically, mentally preparing herself for encounters that were bound to happen when she left the Pridelands.
...And yet, here she was. Days, weeks, into her journey with no sign of Vu but a very, very faint scent and no one had approached her. She could be considered lucky. She wasn't even sure it was Vu's scent she was following; just a familiar one that tickled her memory and made her think of him. Her father told her once, if she had a gut instinct, go with it. It usually led you to the right place.
So she'd traveled South in hopes of finding him. So far south she couldn't see Pride Rock anymore. Her beckon of returning was invisible and she felt sad she couldn't see it; but she didn't regret. This was to find Vu. She had to do this, she had to be strong in order to do this. Regret and sadness weren't an option when in the Rougelands, or so she told herself time and again.
She'd grown a lot since he'd seen her last. She'd put on muscle, but still looked stocky despite everything she tried. Her weight didn't bother her, however, like it bothered some lionesses she encountered. Mollie needed all the weight she could get to make herself look bigger, harder to approach. She honestly didn't want a fight.
Her eyes looked forward and spotted, way in the distance, tiny little specks that seemed to move. Was it a pride of some sorts looking for lands to settle in? Maybe they'd seen Vu. It couldn't hurt to ask. Well, it could, she just didn't think negatively. Not yet, anyway, not when she had a full belly of Gods know what kind of meat she'd eaten. She found it discarded, by the scent of things, by hyenas. Which meant something had chased them off. So she ate it quickly and went on her way despite the instinct to sleep off all the weight. Now to catch up to the moving dots on the horizon.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:29 pm
 The band of zebra scattered, but they left someone behind. It was the little zebra, the baby of the group, and that was what it was. What would you call it now? Lunch.
Vu dragged the still warm carcass by the neck and took under a shady tree. Since joining Zito’s gang his hunting skills saw a vast improvement. Without a pride to hunt for him, Vu had also grown in size and strength. This carcass was too small to share. Vu dropped it in the shade and stood over it, scanning the horizon. He squinted at a black form approaching, warped by the heat radiating from the ground. Too big to be Zito. He squinted as the shape drew nearer. Probably another lion. Vu roared in warning. The deep sound carried over the grasslands, the roar of a lion approaching his prime. He paused and listened for a reply.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 7:38 pm
An unfamiliar roar startled the female enough to cause her to pause. But it was one of warning. She roared back in answer, the roar of a female not quite an adult; on that awkward cusp. Molemogi stepped closer still, not heading the warning. She could take care of herself, and she knew that. She'd prove that to anyone else who tried to threaten her.
But all she wanted was information. Of course, the lioness knew not all the others in these lands were friendly, she expected more than a warning. That's part of the reason it startled her. When she got close enough for hollering distance she stopped. That colored pelt and awkward mane of the other. It couldn't be Vu. That would just be to lucky. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. Maybe she was thirstier than she believed. Mollie hadn't gotten water in a while because she didn't know where the watering holes were.
There she didn't move from, firmly rooted to this spot if the male wished to approach. Her body language didn't read submissive, but it didn't read aggressive either. It read apprehension; she was very stiff, very unsure and it was high time she rested. Maybe they'd accept her. The odds of that were minimal, but there were still odds.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:07 pm
The scars on his muzzle and forelegs were still visible from a close distance. His face was forever grizzled by the encounter with the Firekin, but his scars no longer troubled him as they had in the Pridelands, where explicit battle scars such as his were rare. Zito and the others joshed him about his scars sometimes, called him names that made him laugh and feel better about himself because they treated him as an equal. They were a rude and rough bunch. Vu felt like he had found the home he wanted all his life.
As the figure came closer her other colors became visible. Orange mane, yellow tail, off-white belly… Vu’s throat tightened slightly. No, don’t overreact. Let her come to you. He sat down behind his kill, adopting an open posture.
He didn’t want to believe what he was seeing. His thoughts of home had dwindled away to nothing over the past few weeks. Now it was as if all of Pride Rock was rising over the horizon once more, chasing him like a rogue elephant. He felt guilty for thinking that way, especially if the lioness he saw was really who she looked like. He knew he should have felt happy to see her and yet his heart was full of fear.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:14 pm
It really was him. She could see it in the way he tensed when he realized who she was. Without a word, still, Mollie set out to get nearer to him. Their encounters together flooded her head and heart, bringing back fearful memories, good laughs, rough tumbles and friendship above all else. Green eyes clouded as she moved close enough to see the scars on his face. His muzzle forever shredded, his shoulders scratched. Tears rose to her eyes as she looked at him, but she didn't spill them. She'd seen them fresh; she was glad they were looking better.
Of course Mollie could still remember the tang of his blood as she tried to help him clean his wounds. That was the closest she'd ever felt to Vu; and she wanted that again. The closeness, the contact they had. Without thinking, acting on pure impulse, she would bury her face into his neck, brows knitted together, if he allowed. If he didn't, she'd stare at him for a moment. Either way, her mouth worked a whisper, "Vu..."
That voice as croaked again, frog like, but more feminine than he would remember. She hadn't used it much since her only friend had left. Mollie wouldn't tell him how bad he had hurt her by just leaving like that. She knew he was going to, but she'd thought she'd go with him.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:50 pm
Vu almost stumbled back but his position prevented him from escaping. When Mollie’s head pressed against his neck he froze and stared down at her, not knowing what to say. “Mollie?”
His fear slowly evaporated. If anyone asked him about his childhood friends the night before, he would have said he never expected to see them again. He finally managed to shift and back away enough to take her in. When he left she was still a cub. “Gods above, you’re huge!” he marveled.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:54 pm
She shuffled back when he did and then narrowed her eyes as she spoke. Of course he'd pick that phrasing, in a half insult of calling her fat. That's what any other female would have taken it as, but this was Mollie. She knew him better than that, or she thought she did anyway. She just huffed and snorted lightly, tail thumping gently against the ground. Of course she was bigger; time had passed.
"You're.... big too," she said softly. Everything she said was softly all things considered. She examined his face again, sighing at the scars and then sighed again, shaking her head. "You..... You look ...good. Better than covered in blood." The words held emotion, pain, shame, an apology. How a simple phrase held so much, she didn't know, but it made her throat tight and she just had to swallow and attempt to clear it.
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Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2009 9:16 pm
Vu laughed loudly at that. He learned to hide his trauma by laughing and being bold. The super serious male that brooded and bullied anyone who spoke out against him or his family was gone and he seemed much more at ease with himself. Freedom had done amazing things for him, though some things never changed. He picked up the carcass and dropped it at Mollie’s feet. “Here, you should eat. You must have come a long way.”
He found himself gazing into the distance. Pride Rock had passed out of sight long ago, but he felt it staring at him and turned away, smirking sideways at Mollie. A warm breeze brushed his thickening mane. “What are you doing out here, anyway? Gone back to looking for your mother?”
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 5:52 am
Mollie stared at the carcass and shook her head a bit. She wasn't hungry, she was thirsty. Green eyes observed Vu's every movement, not able to help it. He looked good since the last time she'd seen him. More grown up, more filled out, on the cusp of adulthood such as herself. With a paw, she pushed it back to him and stretched out as he questioned her about her mother.
"No. I came looking for you," she stated calmly. He never did come back for her like she felt he would. "You didn't come back. Worried," her sentences were to the point, nothing flourishing about them. Pretty words were saved for courting and only said by the male; unless it was two lionesses together. Or a very dynamically weird relationship.
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Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 6:24 pm
“I thought Jasira told you.” Jasira was his sister, the last lion he talked to before he left the Pridelands for good. The decision to go was sudden, though Vu didn’t think of it that way. He had thought about leaving for a long time before Zito came along with offerings of adventure. When he heard that Jasira had not told Mollie he felt truly sorry, because he never meant for her to worry.
“You didn’t need to worry about me. Running away was the best decision I ever made. I finally figured out why I never fit in at home. There’s nothing wrong with me, it was everyone else.” He placed a paw on the carcass, sniffing around. “My family still believes in the Pridelands. They would never leave. That’s why I had to go alone.”
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Posted: Mon Aug 17, 2009 9:03 pm
"Then I'm staying with you," she said firmly. Mollie had made it this far, why bother going back. She moved to brush against him, nuzzling her nose to his neck before stepping back and looked at him. She had mixed feelings about what he'd said; that leaving was the best thing he'd done. She knew why he said it. But she liked to think he'd come back for her, or something.
"....No one will miss me there," she whispered, motioning the way she'd come. The lioness wanted to meet who he'd been traveling with, obvious from how she was looking around. Mollie wanted to know his friends, to maybe gain a few herself. Feana, her only other friend in the Pridelands, had left when she learned she was pregnant, which left Mollie with Vu. Then Vu had left, which left her alone. "I have nothing there..."
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 10:20 pm
“How come you’re rubbing up against me so much? We’re not cubs anymore.” He smiled as if he was only joking, though maybe he wasn’t. The way she nuzzled him reminded him of that day when the Firekin took his face. Mollie’s friendship helped him through those hard times. Perhaps the only reason he did not retreat completely into his shell after the incident was because she was always there for him, even when he needed to sneak away from home to be with her, but the gesture reminded him of an ugly time in his life when he had been very weak and afraid.
Wanting to forget those memories, Vu suddenly grinned. “Hey! You’ve been practicing how to be a warrior, haven’t you? I still train every day, only now I’m really teaching myself. This is just a small snack.” He nodded at the zebra foal, red eyes glinting with confidence. “Since you’ll be staying, you’ll get to see me take down real prey. I’ve gotten really good at grappling big wildebeests and knocking them to the ground, haha! I can’t wait until I run into another rogue lion. I really want to fight someone.”
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Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:36 am
Mollie would have flushed at the question, but she didn't. When she started nuzzling against it, she half expected the question to pop up. Vu's personality might have changed, but he was still questioning everything. That little bit made her smile. Instead of answering his question and embarrassing herself, Mollie moved back away from him and watched him. He'd really grown. The scars were a bit paler now, and they almost seemed to suit him. For Molemogi, they were a badge of courage. He was so brave, protecting her. But on the flip side, she'd been so weak.
"You were my teacher," she stated at his second question. "Of course I still trained. Wouldn't want to disappoint you." Her tail flicked at the thought of watching him take down big game by himself. It was an attractive thought, but she wanted to show him just how much she'd grown into a warrior. Or, at the least, a very skilled hunter. She'd practiced every day to make him proud of her when they'd met up again.
Fatigue was setting in for the black female, but she didn't say anything about it. That would be weak. Instead, she stretched out overly used muscles and popped her neck in the process, groaning at the painful pleasure that jolted through her.
"Not much longer now and you'll have a full mane.."
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Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 4:15 pm
“That’s great! We should wrestle later, like old times, right?” He shook out his mane with pride and bent to pick up the carcass.
“I’ll show you where we’re camped. There’s some water near by, if you’re thirsty.”
((You wanna do the last post? ^^))
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Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 7:55 am
The lioness followed her best friend as he walked and nodded to his words. They'd wrestle, they'd settle down for the night, and she finally wouldn't be alone when she was asleep. If there was one thing Mollie missed beyond everything, it was curling up next to someone. Maybe she'd tell Vu her feelings that she'd discovered over time. Obviously, not now. But one day.
[Fin!]
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