Kavu whimpered lowly, limping his way beneath one of the few trees scattereed over the dried ground near a small watering hole. Plopping down under the dotted shade of the dying leaves, the white lion looked down at his bleeding paw, the long gash over the top of it bleeding weakly. It was hardly the kind of injury that seemed to call for all the limping and moaning he had done, just barely digging beyond the fur into the skin, but to him it was by far the worst injury he had ever gotten in his life. Sheltered, Kavu had never been exposed to a lot of rough situations.

So cutting his paw really sucked.

Trying his best not to cry, remembering how much his father disliked cry babies, the large, yet pathetically soft lion sniffled loudly and swallowed down his tears, bending over to clean the wound. "It stings!" He wailed, pulling his head back up before even touching it. He couldn't do it; he couldn't bring himself to draw pain intentionally, even if it was for the best. Defeated, he merely stared at the gash, trying to will it to stop hurting.

But it was ignoring him.

Moja lay contentedly under the shade of a puny tree, it's branches just wide enough to give her some sort of refuge, and the red lioness had fallen asleep under it's boughs after a long drink at the watering hole. However, some new sound entered her dreams and woke her. It sounded vaguely of one of her cubs, and the mother jerked to reality, scanning around nervously for any cub that could have followed her from it's father's watch.
But no red, black or white form of fluff was to be seen, which only filled her with more anxiety. She gathered her feet hastily, clumsily and drowsily turning to find it.

"Hello!? Where are you!?! It's okay! Mommy's here!" Moja tried to keep the worry from her voice, but her acid green eyes could not.

Eeping to himself, Kavu promptly shut his mouth, ears flattening against his skull as he heard someone calling back. Had he gotten someone to think that her kids were in trouble? The animal felt a little embarrassed about that, and more than a little guilty. Making someone worry for nothing! What would his father think? Real males were supposed to be able to handle themselves.

Missed that boat.

"I, uh...." he askwardly sputtered, not really sure how to respond, "it's alright! I'm sorry... I didn't know anyone was here! I thought that... I was just... it was for a little show I'm doing with some friends! Haha! Yes, that's it, I was just pretending to be injured... nothing to worry about!" Kavu: master liar.

Moja stopped where she stood, and looked over her shoulder at the lion-shaped mass she had somehow missed before. It took her a few moments to process that she was safe, her cubs were safe, and that nothing in the world was wrong.

"Oh."

She still seemed confused. She didn't see any of the lion's friends, but maybe they were hiding. Were they practicing some sort of ambush? The thought made her pout, she was now more than happy to have woken up than to have been mistaken as a participant and sprung upon. She walked over to where he lay, and tilted her head, nodding at the gash on his paw. "Is that some sort of berry paint? It looks very real. Smells real too. Oh! Is it from an earlier kill? That would be clever." Her head tilted in the other direction, as she still tried to puzzle out the strange scene shed' walked upon.

"Just why are you pretending to be injured, anyway?"

The male watched the lioness for a moment, concerned that she was still upset that something might be wrong with one of her children. When she seemed to understand what was going on, Kavu was able to let out a small, secret sigh of relief. At least he hadn't gotten her completely convinced that some child was in danger. To think that he could be mistaken for a child! As if he were so immature.

"I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to startle you," he said again, trying his best to bring that point home. He hadn't said it directly yet. Still watching her, looking a little like a cub trying desperately not to look like he was lying, he inwardly cursed when she brought up his paw. Of course it smelled like real blood.

It wasn't something he could pretend wasn't actually real.

"Oh that," he chuckled faintly, looking up at the sky as his mind ran through the best of his excuses. In the end, he had to go with her idea. "Yes! It's from an earlier kill. We all thought it would add an element of, uh, realism to our show." He couldn't bring himself to look at her again, talking about his paw making it sting all over.

"Um, well, it's just a... demonstration... that we're going to show some kids... about, uh, how to look after injuries after a fight.... I'm how not to do it."

Moja nodded, and a faint smile crossed her face. "It's alright, I'm just glad no one is really hurt." A slight sigh escaped her in her relief. She nodded, and appreciated his apparent community service. "So where are the children, then?" She looked again over her shoulder, as though she'd possibly missed them as well. In her mind, she figured that perhaps it was a very young cub not yet on solid food that was startled by the sight of what seemed to be real blood coming from the male's paw.

She was blissfully oblivious about his unease and discomfort, and had she come to the realization of his lying and pain, surely guilt would have flooded her and she would have done everything to help. But maybe she could just play along with his play. She smiled at him and sat down.

"So, Mr. Accident, what might your name be?" Without realizing it, Moja spoke to him as though he were a cub. Must have been from spending so much time with her five. Whenever she was with them, she just seemed to oooozzzeeee 'mother', and their father, well, almost the same.

"Oh, we're just practicing right now!" Kavu said quickly, "actually, I was just on my own at the moment. You know... making sure I was doing well on my acting thing." Why was lying so hard? His father had always made it seem to simple and easy, unless he was lying to his mate, but he couldn't seem to lie to anyone without it all going to hell. The whole thing was just sucky, really. One more thing he couldn't do to make his father proud of him.

He was glad, however, that she seemed not to notice his lies. The female would probably start to wonder why there was more and more blood coming from the wound, assuming she stuck around that long. Why was he lying, anyway? Because it was too unmanly to admit that he had been whimpering over such a small injury?

Right.

"Oh! I'm Kavu," he said with a grin, happy for something to distract himself from all the lying. Hopefully he'd be able to remember everything he had told her already, "it's nice to meet you... uh... and what's you name?" He didn't seem to notice the way she had spoken to him. If he had, he was doing a much better job about hiding that than he was about his paw.

Moja nodded, that made sense. Perhaps she was a little too quick to buy into his bad lies, or maybe she was still half-asleep, but she smiled. "You're very convincing, Kavu." She bobbed her head, as a substitute for a bow. "I'm Moja. It's very nice to meet you too." As she gave him another looking over, it struck her as odd that more blood flowed from his 'wound'.

Scrutinizing it and scrunching her nose, she leaned in a bit closer, and motioned to the cut. "Uhm, Kavu, is that supposed to happen?" Had Kavu not told her it was fake, she would have instantly picked up on his state, but she was far too invested in his lies to begin to doubt him.

"Are you alright?" Her brows cinched up with worry, as though she was looking on one of her own cubs.

Kavu couldn't help but hope she meant he was convincing in his faked pain, and not saying that he was "convincing" as in "I can totally see through your lies, knock it off you big baby." She didn't seem like a mocking-influenced lioness, though, so he felt pretty safe in that she hadn't picked up on anything. The sooner they could move on, the better.

"Moja," Kavu repeated, as he often did to make sure he had a name down, "that's a nice name! And short like mine. I don't meet a lot of lions who have names that are short like mine." Something that wasn't a lie.

His smile vanished as his eyes followed hers to the wound again. HIs mind clicked and he found himself in a position to get out of the nice hole he had dug for himself.

"Oh!" he yelped, "would you look at that? Looks like I got a real cut while playing around... I totally hadn't noticed at all with all the acting and whatever, heh heh. It doesn't hurt at all... funny... I wonder how it got there. It's nothing to worry about! I think.... is it?" He looked down at the cut again, frowning.

Moja nodded, it was true, not many lions had short names, or at least that she'd come across, her cubs and their father were no exceptions. Awiti'Asha, Dubwana'dubu, Mteketezo'dubu. Sometimes she nearly forgot. To her, they were Awiti, Dubwa, and Tezo.

But her ears flopped back on her head.
"Oh, you poor thing. Let me help you!" Of course, right now she didn't quite know how to help, it was just her first response. If her cubs ever got scrapes, she'd lick them clean, but this looked like a different sort of injury. And for a young adult like Kavu, Moja was also pretty confident he'd be far too embarrassed to let her take care of him like that.

"I think you should wash it first, Kavu." She pursed her lips and tried to think of how next to proceed. She was never taught the art of healing, she knew no herbs that could help, but her mothering instinct told her that she had no excuse from trying to help

"Oh really?!" Kavu yelped, apparently abandoning his attempts to cover his pain at the sounding of her offer. She was the one who said she would help, after all. It wasn't like he was the one to beg her to help him. So that made it perfectly okay, in his mind, to feel glad that she was there to help him. Little wounds could kill lions just like big ones if they weren't taken care of properly, that's what he had heard from his siblings from time to time.

Though, come to think of it, they may have been messing with him.

Frowning, he looked at the wound. "Clean it...? You mean, like.... touch it? But it stings! Won't cleaning it make it hurt more?" He watched her, a very serious expression on his adult face despite how childish the question he had asked had been. He let his brows knit together. "Should I put it in the watering hole? That will clean it..." His eyes flickered to the nearby pool.

Moja tsk'd softly to herself. This poor boy! He was hurt and he didn't know how to take care of himself. Just the same, he didn't have anyone to take of him. She shook her head, smiled, and patted his fluffy mane gently. "Don't worry, Kavu. But yes, you have to clean it, and yes, I'm sorry, the water will make it sting more, but clean water hurts a lot less than a nasty infection."
Mother knows best.

She used her tail to bat his bum in an encouraging manner to get him to stand. "Yes, the watering hole will be a good place to clean it. It's not far, the water is clean and its very cool. You're lucky we're so close, Kavu!"

Kavu pouted somewhat. Maybe she was right. He should wash it off even though it was going to hurt. His mother would tell him the same thing, really. That made him feel a little bit better about things, knowing that this was how his mother would handle things. It didn’t occur to him for a moment that he was being treated like a child and other lions might have taken offense to something like that.

Not that other lions would have put themselves into a position where they would allow themselves to be treated like children in the first place.

“Yeah… lucky… though more luck would have kept me from getting cut…” he muttered lowly, reluctantly getting to his feet at her urging. He moved himself forward, limping over to the watering hole before closing his eyes and sticking his paw slowly into the water. “OW!” he moaned.

As he hobbled over, she walked next to Kavu, matching her strides with his incase he faltered and fell, though she doubted he would. Moja tilted her head as she watched him, her brow contorted with worry. Just how had he hurt himself? She began to speak but stopped herself, her mouth turned down at the corners. It probably wasn't best to ask. If he wanted her to know, he'd tell her, right? It was none of her business.

She cooed as he bemoaned his pain, and patted him gently on his back as he washed it. "Now dipping it isn't the only thing you do. Can you reach in there and wash with your other paw too? You don't want any dirt to stick in there even after the blood is washed out." She looked over his shoulder into the water, and watched the red diffuse into the otherwise clear reflection.

Kavu obeyed, though only because he felt like he would have to go to the corner of the den if he didn't listen. Using his paw, he ignored the pain the best he could as he carefully cleaned the wound. Without all the blood, it really didn't seem like anything to get so upset about at all. Pulling his paw out of the water, he tilted his head to the side, blinking and observin the cut. "It... shrank in the wash..." he muttered lowly.

"I think it's fine now," he said with a smile, looking at her, "thank you for helping me out! I didn't really know what I was supposed to do..." he felt embarrassed now. Such a little cut! "I guess I should be going... you know... to practice for that show... thing."

Moja smiled at him. She was glad it was smaller than the blood seemed to indicate. "Well that wasn't so bad now, was it?" She didn't realize it, but any observer would have told her that she needed to hang out with cubs less and interact with real adults, otherwise she'd end up treating them all like the former.

She bobbed her head. "Well now you do! Just tell me one thing, Kavu..." She eyed him with feigned suspicion, tilting her head to stare at him with one bright green eye. "You'll be more careful from now on, won't you?"

Kavu felt heat on his cheeks when she told him to be careful, the white animal slowly nodding his head while his eyes drifted to the ground. He felt too embarrassed to look at her now, especially considering all the trouble he had caused her making her wake up to such a needless fright. Clawing in the dirt, he sighed heavily, his fluffy mane bouncing as his head bobbed up and down.

"I'll be more careful," he said lightly, "I promise... and I'm really sorry about upsetting you! Thank you again for all your help..." He looked up at that, smiling dorkily and tilting his head to one side.

"Maybe I'll see you around some time," he hummed, turning to leave.

Moja smiled again, thinking his embarrassment cute and reminiscent of her daughters (so it was a good thing she didn't tell him) She nodded, and said with a high note in her voice "Good! That's what I like to hear!" She patted him again and with a softer tone said, "Don't worry about a thing, Kavu. It's fine, I'm glad I could help." The lioness chuckled as he turned, and she bobbed her head, black mane drifting into her eyes.

"Maybe, and I'll be making sure you've kept your promise if you do! Goodbye, Kavu, it was a pleasure to meet you." Moja was grinning still as he walked away, and she too, turned, and walked back to the tree of her former rest, and laid down again for a well-earned rest.

THE END