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 Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:02 am
 Gliri dragged herself from her sleep and made her way out of the circle of flattened grass that was serving as a resting place for herself and her brother. Even with her new pregnancy, her adolescent body was small enough that she barely disturbed the tall grasses as she made a quick retreat from their living area. The momentous Event which had put these children in her was recent enough that she was barely even swollen yet.
And then she was sick. She tried to be sick with a minimum of noise to avoid waking her brother, who she knew worked so very hard to keep them both alive. He needed the sleep, and it wasn't as though she hadn't been sick before. Particularly during this pregnancy, she'd been very ill. It was like a very clear message from her body telling her that she was not really meant to bear these cubs.
And yet...
She closed her eyes after the dry heaves ended and crouched there, remembering and trying not to smell the scent of her own vomit. The lion had been so handsome, large and black, and his voice had been so pleasant. There really hadn't even been time for her to form any sort of romantic feelings for him. She'd just been overwhelmed by his virility and Muscardini hadn't been around to save her from her youthful foolishness.
"It wasn't foolishness," Gliri said very softly as she stepped back from the cooling puddle of her puke. A shiver ran down her spine to the tip of her tail, though whether it was an aftershock of being sick or a reaction to the thoroughly pleasurable memory of being with the dark lion.
Having emptied her stomach the mouse-colored lioness felt significantly better and returned to the makeshift den she and her brother shared. They'd probably be moving on soon, and she'd be glad of it. It was difficult to feel secure with only high grasses for protection and cover.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 5:23 am
 Muscardini had not yet grown up into a mighty hunter, but he wasn't bad at it. He was also in the habit of listening for signs that his sister wasn't sleeping well or that she was about to have some sort of breakdown from nerves. Whatever the matter was - a bad dream, some stranger whose passing frightened her into hiding, or anything else - he had to constantly be ready to defend her and reassure her that everything would be all right. He would never let anything happen to her. Not ever.
All of that meant that when she got up and made her way away from their 'den', Muscar was aware of it. Since she didn't seem to be fleeing, but simply making her exit at a brisk pace, he assumed that she had gone to relieve herself. That was a business she could manage perfectly well on her own, without him watching over her. In fact, while he loved having Gliri as his near-constant companion, he was more than happy to let her have her privacy in this particular activity.
At least until the wind shifted and carried to him not the anticipated and politely ignored scent of waste but the more distressing odor of vomit. Was his sister ill, he wondered? The thought upset him deeply. His nose was pretty good, and yet he'd not smelled any sort of sickness on her since coming back from the hunt. He wondered if maybe he'd fallen ill, too, and if that was why he couldn't smell it about her. A lion's sense of smell tended to be one of the first things to go when he fell sick, Muscar had learned the hard way.
He opened his eyes, which he had not actually done yet, and lifted his head from his paws to await Gliri's return. When she did return, he stood up and went to her, sniffing her where her personal scent was strongest, along her jaw and down her spine. He was not rude enough to actually smell beneath her tail, but he didn't need to. She didn't smell sick, but she did smell of someone who had been sick recently.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 6:08 am
Gliri was taken aback to see her brother's eyes glowing in the darkness, demonstrating that he was actually awake, rather than asleep as she had thought him to be. She hoped she hadn't woken him up with the sound of her stomach rejecting its contents. She had tried to be quiet, but some things couldn't really be hushed.
She was more taken aback by her brother's forward actions and twitched away from him. It wasn't that she was uncomfortable with him being so close to her, but the act of scenting her, as though he had expected to encounter a stranger, was a little offensive. Not to mention unnecessary.
"I'm fine, Muscar," she said, just a little irritably. "Whatever do you think you're doing, smelling me like I was a female in heat? It's rude."
She twitched her tail at him with just a hint of amusement. She would forgive him. She always forgave him. Besides, there was hardly anything to forgive. She knew he was simply concerned for her well-being, even if he was being invasive about investigating.
"You worry too much, Muscar. Really, I am in no danger. There's nothing wrong with me that hasn't been experienced by hundreds, or maybe thousands of lionesses since time began."
She didn't know for certain that she was pregnant, but she thought she might be. Perhaps foolishly, she hoped she might be. That lion she had been with had been so handsome. Her first. She smiled to herself, realizing that she was doing all this backward, falling in love after having sex and getting pregnant. Maybe it wasn't love. After all, she didn't even know him. It was probably a delayed...something.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 6:50 am
"I'm sorry!" Muscar said, stepping back quickly so that he would not be in her way. Without realizing it he had placed himself between her and their den. His expression as he moved was sheepish.
"I didn't mean to be rude, Gliri. I was just worried about you. I wanted to make sure that you hadn't fallen ill. Remember the last time one of us got sick? It was such a misery."
It had been a misery because the last one of them to fall sick had been Muscar, himself, and that meant that neither of them was hunting for food. He and Gliri had both grown very thin, though Gliri had done what she could to bring back prey for the both of them, but she was not much of a huntress and her efforts had not been particularly fruitful. Meanwhile he had been truly ill and if their mother had not returned, surprising both of them, the pair might not have survived.
"I'm glad to hear you're fine, but I think I worry just enough. Besides, I don't worry nearly as much as you do. You seem to be keeping a double standard, sister mine." He grinned at her.
His grin faded, however, at Gliri's secretive smile and cryptic remarks. He couldn't make heads nor tails of that sort of thing. Gliri sometimes made up riddles to go with her stories, and he never did too well at untangling them, either. He wondered if she had taken that into account, or if she was merely being mysterious by accident. Sometimes she teased him, saying it was a female prerogative to be mysterious from time to time.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 6:51 am
"I'm sorry!" Muscar said, stepping back quickly so that he would not be in her way. Without realizing it he had placed himself between her and their den. His expression as he moved was sheepish.
"I didn't mean to be rude, Gliri. I was just worried about you. I wanted to make sure that you hadn't fallen ill. Remember the last time one of us got sick? It was such a misery."
It had been a misery because the last one of them to fall sick had been Muscar, himself, and that meant that neither of them was hunting for food. He and Gliri had both grown very thin, though Gliri had done what she could to bring back prey for the both of them, but she was not much of a huntress and her efforts had not been particularly fruitful. Meanwhile he had been truly ill and if their mother had not returned, surprising both of them, the pair might not have survived.
"I'm glad to hear you're fine, but I think I worry just enough. Besides, I don't worry nearly as much as you do. You seem to be keeping a double standard, sister mine." He grinned at her.
His grin faded, however, at Gliri's secretive smile and cryptic remarks. He couldn't make heads nor tails of that sort of thing. Gliri sometimes made up riddles to go with her stories, and he never did too well at untangling them, either. He wondered if she had taken that into account, or if she was merely being mysterious by accident. Sometimes she teased him, saying it was a female prerogative to be mysterious from time to time.
"I don't understand you, Gliri. Could you explain yourself?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:16 am
"I do keep a double standard, it's true," Gliri admitted. "But think about it. I must be held to a different standard than you are, or else I would be counted the most craven of cowards, beyond redemption. The double standard means that I am not so counted, at least in my own mind."
Gliri could have sworn she'd explained her double standard to her brother before, but perhaps she hadn't. Either way, it did no harm for her to reiterate the point. They could not be measured by the same scale. It simply would not be a fair measurement for either one. Even on her slightly skewed scale, Gliri came out as a coward, but not as much of a coward as she would have been considered otherwise. It was a little face-saving measure she employed.
Gliri's smile deepened at her brother's confusion. She didn't have a great deal of experience with men, though her most recent experiences with them had been great, but she wasn't surprised by her brother's reaction. She didn't expect his mind to automatically travel where hers had. He didn't know about her brief interlude with Al-Hattal. Just thinking of it brought heat to her insides.
"To put it as plainly as I can, so as not to confuse you, dear brother, I will say this. I believe that I am pregnant."
Her smile was as luminous as her eyes at the thought. Perhaps being a mother would bring out some sort of bravery she had not hitherto demonstrated. She wanted nothing more than this. She would be a mother and Muscar would be an uncle and together they would raise her cubs. Perhaps some day the cubs' father would even return and visit again, but she didn't really care if he did or didn't. She knew she and her brother could manage.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 7:57 am
"Oh, Gliri. Now that you mention it, I do believe I remember you describing this to me before. You went into a great deal of detail last time. I don't quite understand it, but if it makes you happy to think this way, I will not tell you you are wrong." He smiled affectionately at his sister and her eccentricities. She certainly kept life interesting.
"Just so you know, I love you no matter what," Muscar assured his sister. With a grin to keep the mood from becoming too serious he added, "Even if you do run away from rabbits and particularly threatening looking pieces of shrubbery."
He had clearly spoken too soon, however. The next words out of his sister's mouth absolutely floored the young lion. His blue eyes opened very wide and his jaw went slack with surprise. Surprise wasn't really the correct term, but he couldn't come up with a different, more accurate one to describe the depth of his shock. And then another thought occurred to him.
"Um. Gliri. Not to criticize or anything, or detract from what seems to make you very happy, but you do know how people get pregnant, don't you? It's really not possible that you could be pregnant. You haven't...well. Had sex."
It didn't occur to him that she might have met someone while he was out hunting. After all, she would have had to have taken the time to get to know a guy, fall in love with him, and then it would've taken an age for him to convince her to do the deed. Or so Muscar saw it. And there was no way Gliri would have agreed to have sex with a guy before introducing him to her brother and getting Muscar's approval. That was the only way he could imagine this happening, and he honestly doubted it would ever happen for Gliri.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:04 am
"Muscar, I do know how cubs are made. I'm not stupid. Really." Gliri sighed in exasperation. Her brother was probably going to go into overprotective mode in the next few seconds if she didn't come up with something to forestall him.
"I did have sex with someone. A lion. You don't need to worry. He was very considerate and took care not to hurt me. It was wonderful." She giggled, realizing that this was hardly the sort of thing her brother needed or wanted to hear about.
"Sorry. But I did. It was...fun. I don't think I'll see him again, though." The thought made her a little sad. She would have enjoyed meeting up with Al-Hattal again. He was a very handsome lion, and he really had been a considerate lover. It suggested a lot of experience on his part, but Gliri wasn't about to complain about that. Not considering how pleasant his experience had made her experience.
"You don't have to worry about it, Muscar. I can do this. I know I'll be a great mother, even if I am a little young. And you'll help me, won't you? I know you will!"
She stepped quickly toward him, a skip in her step. She even bounced a little with enthusiasm. This would be wonderful. She couldn't imagine anything better than raising cubs with her brother's help. And unlike her mother, she would always be there for her cubs. They would never have to worry about protecting themselves against the wild at an early age. She and Muscar would provide for them.
"Please, Muscar. I don't want to bring these cubs into the world without knowing they'll be better cared for than we were, and so I'll need your help. Please."
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 9:35 am
Muscar's astonishment passed beyond the realm of the verbally expressible. He gaped openly and backed up a little from his sister. His sweet, innocent Gliri. Gods. How could this have happened?
"How did this happen? When did this happen? Why didn't you tell me about it sooner? Is this why you've been vanishing for the last couple nights?"
The questions practically tripped over each other in his haste to ask them, which kind of amazed him. After simply hearing from Gliri that the experience had been wonderful, he didn't want to know any more details. Except that he did. It was sick, but he did, because just as he couldn't have imagined Gliri ever having sex, he'd never really thought that he would, either. He had to care for Gliri, after all. He'd never thought she would be the first.
"Sorry. I...don't really need to know the details, but those questions are kind of important. I mean, I need to know how long it will be until you...deliver. But please don't tell me anything about the details."
He took a deep breath. So the guy who'd done this wouldn't be around. That was probably just as well. Muscar didn't think he'd be able to stop himself from going at the guy with claw and fangs. He was willing to be a surrogate father, and he thought he might actually enjoy helping Gliri raise her cubs, even if he disapproved of the way she'd conceived them a tiny bit.
"You know I'll stay with you no matter what. I just finished telling you how much I love you. Any cubs of yours can't be anything but sweet. But we'll have to find a safer place to live. So tomorrow we should probably move on."
He was in something like a state of shock, and relatively certain that by the light of day he would be less enthusiastic about all of this, but he didn't want Gliri to think he was angry at her. Because he wasn't. Not at her. At that b*****d who had had his way with her.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 10:33 am
Gliri shifted uncomfortably, but couldn't repress her grin. She shrugged and said, "Well, it happened in the usual way, I guess. I saw him, he saw me. It was kind of like this instant attraction. I don't know..."
Her tail twitched with pleasure at the thought of Al-Hattal and their brief period of time together. An afternoon was really all it took. Had it really been only...
"Three weeks?" she said, answering the next question in the barrage. "I didn't tell you sooner because...I don't know. I didn't know how you'd react and I didn't want you to be angry at me. I know it was irresponsible of me, but he was really very handsome, and I didn't think it would end up this way."
This way being that she was pregnant, of course. She was pretty certain they'd end up having sex from the time she saw that come hither look in his eyes. She came. Hither, of course. She grinned wickedly at the direction of her thoughts. A little sex had really done something to her it seemed. It was an exciting thought. Thrilling.
"And, yeah, this is where I've been going. Off to throw up. Isn't that lovely?" She grinned self-deprecatingly. "I'll try to barf more quietly in the future, okay?"
She moved closer to him and bumped him with her shoulder. "Thanks, Muscar. I love that I can rely on you and I'll try to spare you the details, too. Unless you're curious, but you probably won't be. It's probably pretty weird to hear your sister talking about this, right?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:14 am
Hearing even those few details made Muscar quite certain he didn't really want to know any more. It was, as Gliri said, weird to hear his sister talking about having random sex with some random stranger. He didn't want to think about it. Perhaps not ever again. It would be unavoidable in the future, of course, as her pregnancy began to show, but for now he thought it might be preferable to simply pretend that there was nothing out of the ordinary going on. That would be best.
"Three weeks. That's..." A long time for her to have kept that secret from him. "...wow."
He wasn't really angry at Gliri for doing this. She was as young as he was, but far more impressionable. She had probably been overwhelmed by the stranger's charm. At least it didn't seem like he had forced her. No, what really got to Muscar was that she had hidden it from him for three weeks. That hurt, and if he was going to be angry about anything, he would have been angry about that.
"I don't mean to offend, but I really feel I have to ask, since it's only three weeks. Are you sure that you're pregnant, and that you aren't merely sick?"
A part of him was hoping she was just sick, which was an awful thing to hope, but he couldn't really help it. The idea of his sister having sex with a total stranger was more than distressing for him. He hoped he would have learned to cope with the idea by the time she started to show, or else things would definitely be awkward between them. Not that there was much reason for things to be anything other than awkward.
"Don't worry about the barfing. That's probably the least distressing thing you'll do as part of this. I'd rather you just kept the details to yourself and tried not to look so...like you do right now when you're thinking of them, okay?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:22 am
Gliri tried not to be miffed at her brother's question.
It was, she reminded herself, a reasonable question. After all, she had never been pregnant before and neither of them had much experience with pregnancy except for when they were born, which hardly counted. Just the same, it was frustrating that he couldn't just accept her word. She knew she was pregnant. She didn't know how she knew. She just did.
"I'm really, certain-sure, Muscar," she said. "There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that I'm going to be a mother. I'm going to be a mother!"
She settled down a little, but she couldn't hide her irrepressible grin.
"All right, sorry," Gliri said, laughing softly to herself as she stood on her hind paws briefly so that she could lick his ears affectionately. "You do know that you're the world's best brother, right? And I bet you'll be the word's greatest uncle, too. I don't know what I'd do without you."
Probably she'd starve. Unless she worked herself into an absolute panic first, or got killed or eaten by something. Either way, she had no illusions about how reliant her survival was on her brother. She could barely even hunt, as had been proven during the period of illness Muscar had alluded to earlier in the conversation.
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Posted: Tue Jun 01, 2010 11:28 am
Gliri's enthusiasm was infectious, and despite his misgivings Muscar found himself smiling at his sister's exuberance. He didn't know how much thought she'd given the matter, but he was sure she'd been thinking about it since she first began to suspect. He just hoped she had some idea of what she was getting into. He doubted she did.
Neither of them did, really, he realized with a start. Gliri had a fantastic imagination, but to his knowledge her experience of pregnancy and birth was as limited as his, and his was very limited. They would both have to learn as they went, it seemed. And he would have all kinds of new responsibilities. He'd have to improve as a hunter if he was going to feed himself, Gliri, and however many cubs she had. He wouldn't have his nephews and nieces wanting for sustenance.
"I'm sorry, I had to ask though. You do have a fertile imagination and a quirky sense of humor. But I guess throwing up on a regular basis would be a lot of effort to go to just for a practical joke, wouldn't it?" He was making light of the situation because he didn't want to spoil Gliri's good mood. She wasn't afraid, in fact she seemed jubilant, and that was a rare enough thing that he wanted to do whatever he could to ensure she stayed that way for as long as possible.
"Well, you're the world's best sister, and I know you'll be a fantastic mother. So we'll manage all right." Or so he fervently hoped.
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