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Skadi was having a hard time, lately. Food was scarce, aunts were weird, tensions ran high and everything just seemed to work towards turning her into a sort of person that she wasn't sure she liked. She had been snappish and grouchy, lately, and had finally decided to take a timeout and try to calm down a bit.

So she went in search of her cubhood friend, Senka. Surely she too would have felt the bad air, and maybe she would be willing to harp about it and other little irritations for a while - then they'd both come out feeling better for it. Or they could go out hunting together, or something. She wasn't sure. All she knew was that she needed some good company, and Senka was someone that she liked to spend time with.

It would be good just to see her face for a while. Hopefully, she wouldn't be too busy.

Catching a glimpse of a familiar back pelt up ahead, as well as the faint echo of an even more familiar snarl, Skadi sped up a little. She hadn't even met her old friend yet, but she was already feeling better - by the sounds of it, Senka's mood was about the same as her own. Yup, she was glad she came. This would probably be quite satisfying.

"Hey," she called out. "Senka! Are you doing anything right now? How's the hunting going?"

She knew very well how the hunting was going, of course, but wagered it was just the right thing to open up for some mutual griping. Grumbling about a problem alone only made everything worse, but share it with a good friend... you just might end up laughing about it.

"Nnnrrh." Skadi sat down next to her friend, making a grimace and letting out a frustrated growl as a reply to Senka's question. "Not good. Not one bit. Hungry almost all the time, you know," she said, giving Senka a nod that meant to convey that she fully understood the Huntress' difficult situation. "And it's... sorta starting to make me really grumpy. Bad moods all around."

"Oh," she added, leaning in a little closer to Senka, "and to top it all off, my Aunt got really weird on me while ago. Wanted to talk about my life and... it was just really weird, the whole thing."

Skadi paused for a moment, eyeing Senka thoughtfully. "You give her bones sometimes, don't you? Have you noticed anything... off about her lately? I mean, more than usual."

Skadi merely answered her friend's question with a noncommittal shrug. It wasn't as though talking about her life was strange in and of itself, but... it was the way she had mentioned it. But Skadi didn't feel like trying to explain it to Senka - besides, the more she thought about it, the more she became convinced that there had been nothing really unusual about her aunt's weirdness.

Her aunt was always weird, after all.

"Eh," she grumbled. "She's probably just getting old. Nevermind." The subject still made her feel slightly uncomfortable, so she decided to change it:

"You know what happened to me recently? I caught a gazelle, and the damn thing managed to kick me - in the face!" She let out a half-chuckle of embarrassment at the memory. "I mean, isn't it enough that they are so much harder to find - can't a girl try to eat them without getting kicked for it?"

Skadi was laughing along with her friend, but couldn't help but grunt and frown in irritation when one of her leats favourite subjects was breached. Why she hadn't joined ranks yet. Yeah, it wasn't as though it was taking that much longer than usual, but the crux of the matter was that Skadi wanted to join the Heart. Her coat made it pretty darn clear that her spirit was quite strong in that department, and yet all she had gotten so far for her queries was 'We will consider it.' She knew that she shouldn't feel that way, but on some level it made Skadi feel ignored and overlooked. Sometimes it was almost as though the powers that be were trying to tell her to try to pursue a different rank.

But really, if her crazy old aunt could be a Scryer, then why couldn't Skadi? It didn't make sense and it really irked her.

"I'm trying, I'm trying! Don't be like that." She poked Senka with one paw, but still couldn't really stop laughing. Heaving a theatrical sigh, she shrugged and shook her head. "Yeah, that might be a good idea. Maybe I should try to be a Huntress after all. And I really don't want to get kicked in the face again! It makes me a very grumpy cat, you know."

A sting of embarrassment and guilt shot through her stomach as a certain recent mishap came to mind, but she tried to hide it as best she could with a laugh. A laugh that sounded forced and nervous even to her own ears.

Darn it.

No matter how awkward she felt about the unpleasant memory that had resurfaced, Skadi couldn't help but let out a loud laughter at her friend's last suggetsion, and shook her head empathically.

"Oh, dear spirits, no! No way! I'd rather go hunting for flesh, no matter how difficult it may be!" She gave her friend a toothy grin, still snickering enough to make a faint ache begin to form around her ribcage. "You might be all alright with her nutty bone-fixation, but I am so fed up with all that mumbo-jumbo, especially after this latest conversation-thing we had. I'd rather stay well clear of my darling aunt for as much as it is at all possible, right now! And even further away from her bones." She took a deep breath and added, with a more keen-eyed grin:

"Besides, we'd do a damn lot more good to the pride by hunting eatable prey, right now, wouldn't you say?"

Skadi's smile faded along with her friend's, as her only too-true words reminded her of all the hungry cubs she had seen, lately. She gazed down at the sprigs of dry grass around her paws and half sighed, half mumbled an agreement to Senka's wish.

Then she bit her lower lip and felt her ears sleek down even further as her bad conscience came visiting again. She heard Senka's cheerful voice, but couldn't move from her spot. Not yet. Something very heavy was weighing on her mind, and... she had let it out. She had to tell someone.

"Senka, I..." She began, without looking up, hoping to stay her friend from leaving, just yet. "I... There was this guy..."

She frowned, whether it was at herself for finding it so hard to speak, or at the memory of his stupid stubbornness, she couldn't even tell. "I was bringing him his food, and... he was sulking, for some reason. He didn't want to eat."

She glanced up at Senka, to see if the other lioness was listening. She almost hoped that she wasn't.

Skadi made a faintly groaning sound in the back of her throat and looked down again. She took a deep breath and shrugged, trying to make that worried expression on Senka's face go away - the last thing she wanted was to make her friend upset too. What she hoped for was some sort of... well, reassurance.

She cleared her throat and forged on: "Yeah, well, so I thought he was being pretty stupid and childish, and I told him so, but-" she shook her head and looked up at Senka through her bangs, frowning in annoyance at the memory. "-That only seemed to make him sulkier. He tried to send me away, you know, but... I was already angry, and hungry, and I had been working the whole day, and I really wasn't in the mood to argue with him. So..."

She looked away again, pawing aimlessly at the ground as her ears sank back in shame. "...So I hit him."

It wasn't the end of the story, but it was this last part - the one still left unsaid - that really bothered Skadi, and it was the most difficult one to admit to.