Umu =
Bia =
Coryth =
Litho =
Umuthi'johari was wandering out of Tandu's sight once again, not as far as she normally did, but she was still wandering away, juvenile paws taking her out of the vicinity of her father and brothers. Thankfully, Umu's new shadow, Bia, a female waterbuck, was close behind to make sure the lioness didn't get herself into too much trouble. The last thing she wanted was to save Umu from a life and death situation once again, like she did the day they had met.
"Umuthi stay close! You know your Dad's gonna worry if we go too far," Bia huffed, puffing out her thickly furred chest in agitation at the little lioness's need to explore every new place they traveled to.
"You could have stayed with Daddy, Bia. Or even Arlo," Umu retorted with a teasing sound in her voice. Arlo wasn't always the most fun person to be around, sometimes even mean. Umu was pretty certain that at some point Arlo would eat Bia instead of listen to her ramble on about how doing this is too dangerous or doing that is too dangerous.
As the two wandered around in the new patch of land they were going to call home for the time being, a scent hit Umuthi's nose. It smelled familiar to her, something she hadn't smelled in a very long time, not since... the sand den! She knew this smell now, as she shoved her nose into the ground, almost as if she was a hyena or a wild dog, "Bia! Mommy's been here! Mommy's around!"
Some ways away, sloughing through the underbrush with determined steps, Coryth led her little troop along with tireless effort, legs strong and sturdy after years of digging. She heaved snorting breaths when she could, for she was dragging a construct of hides and poles, weighted down with rocks, and the leather strap tight across her chest kept her winded. The poles slid along with a rasping sound as they scraped over the dirt.
Pausing at the crest of a hill to take in the view, she decided to halt for the moment and recuperate. The scenery was lovely, if not the optimal location for finding bone-stones, and surely her little family could use a rest. She loosed the strap, letting it fall, and turned to check on her daughters... only to cluck her tongue in disappointment to only see one of them. Now, she had told them not to wander off. They still weren't old enough to be on their own just yet.
Weaving back and forth across the gouge marks left by her mama's cart, Lithophoro threw her weight into her own little bundle, a loose wrapping of hide covering a single rock, the ends gripped in her teeth. It was her own pride and joy, her very first bone-stone that she'd dug up on her own, cut loose from the rock on her own, and by the gods she was going to carry it herself wherever mama took them.
That didn't stop her from immediately flopping down and gasping for breath as soon as mama showed a hint of stopping, though. The things you had to do for the sake of a rock! "Mamaaa," she whined, as soon as she had breath to do so, "Do we have to go much further? Let's make den here and just pretend we kept going until dark, nobody will know different! It's not like there's not rocks here!"
"Mommy?" Bia stated rhetorically. The female waterbuck had heard many stories of Umuthi's missing mother from the little lioness whenever she felt the need to pine for her. The thought that she may actually be meeting the woman who Umuthi idolized so much for her intelligence and ability to focus on something for more than several seconds was a little exciting to the waterbuck. Perhaps she would advise Bia upon how to handle three on-the-go lions when they were pulling and tugging in all different directions.
"Yeppers!" Umu chirped, opening her mouth to the air and testing it for her mother's scent. She breathed in heavily in several directions, trying to find the strongest source of her mother's Scent. It took her several minutes to find a good pick-up point for it and began to follow, a thicket of brush and what seemed to be an uphill slope as their route.
Breathing in sharply, Umu gave off a hardy mrowl, the call she used to give her mother when she was still a wee cub, something she hoped her mother would never forget. Incase it had been so long that her mother didn't recognize it, she decided to also call, "MOMMY!! MOMMY WHERE ARE YOU!?"
Bia followed after Umu, trying her best to keep up with as they trotted through the thicket of brush. It was much harder for the waterbuck than for Umu, who had wider paws and could steady herself better. Bia's hooves were digging into the ground and slipping in places.
Settling down to rest her haunches, Coryth sighed, eyes on the terrain for signs of her two missing cubs. "I suppose we should wait for the other girls to catch up with us. Surely they didn't go too far.." She perked up as she heard a voice calling for her, and slowly got to her feet again. "Ah, there we are, there's one of them. Take a breather, Litho, I'll round them up and then we can get moving again."
She made her way towards the sound, and soon came in view of her daughter. "Silly thing, you should know better than to wander to far while we're on the move." She padded right up without a qualm and nuzzled Umuthi gently, but then took a step back to look closer. "Now wait a minute, something's wrong here..." she looked over the juvenile carefully, but couldn't put her paw on what was different.
Litho, meanwhile, was a little confused by the voice, which didn't sound like Dunia or Nitapata. What was mama doing now, following strange voices? It did sound awfully familiar, though. She eyed her rock worriedly, concerned with leaving it and the rest of the baggage unattended. But no, no one outside her own family would try to steal a rock. It just wasn't something "normal" lions cared about.
So she retraced her mother's footsteps out of sheer curiosity, tired by not too tired to pass up a mystery. She soon spotted her mother with the cub, and felt an intense shock and disorientation at the sight. That wasn't Dunia or Nitapata! "You came back!" she shouted gleefully, and dashed down to join the reunion, tackling her long lost sister, trying to play rough her up in her excitement.
"It's me, mommy! It's Umuthi!" She said enthusiastically, rubbing her head against her mother's body, taking in the feel and smell of the lioness who birthed her. She hadn't seen her mother in so long, and she was so excited to finally be able to see and touch her once again she didn't notice as Litho shouted came barreling down towards her, dragging her down into some rough and tumble play.
Giving out an unladylike sound, Umu went down with Litho, eyes widened in sheer glee as she noticed which of her dear sisters it had been. She shrieked in absolute joy and clung to her sister as they played on the ground, almost as if she had never left in the first place.
"Litho! Litho! I've missed you so much." She chirped happily, rubbing and rolling and pawing at as if she had never even left.
Bia caught up halfway through the reunion, and quirked a head as Umu and Litho played about on the ground, a little confused by it all. Felines were so odd at times, it was hard to think they were much different from the hyenas or wild dogs in some of their mannerisms. Looking back up she spotted Umu's mother, Coryth, and gave the big lioness a smile, hoping she wouldn't attempt to snack on her by accident.
"H-hello," Bia said, trotting slightly towards Coryth, "Y-you must be Umu's mommy."
Coryth finally placed what was unusual about her daughter, and her jaw gaped in awe. The sheer luck, to cross paths again! She had never known where Tandu had taken her other offspring, but now she had found them again. She leapt into the fray to lick her daughter all over, purring with delight. She had kept herself distracted by rocks and hadn't noticed until this moment, but she had missed the little one terribly.
She was distracted when she spotted the herbivore so close by, and for a moment her eyes dilated and her head cocked in a very predatory fashion. Prey? But she paused long enough to notice how comfortable the creature seemed with her daughter, and realized she was being addressed. Ah, it was one of those animal companions she'd heard some lions kept with them. "Yes, hello there... hoofed one..." she replied hesitantly.
Litho was too busy tumbling with her sister to notice much else. She was taken right back to her youth, to those days when it was seven of them to a tiny den, and they'd get into fights, oh the fights. She thought she'd been miserable, so cramped and getting beaten at her own bullying by her brothers, but now it seemed almost fondly remembered, those nostalgic days.
She did pause to glance around at that thought, though. "The boys aren't here, are they?" she asked, glancing around with teeth partially bared, looking for them. She'd never gotten along with the male cubs in her family, maybe because they called her on her bullying. Had she been a bully? It seemed so long ago, and she'd ended up channeling most of that aggression into her work, helping mama dig up the stones.
