[PRP] Familiar Face (Azi and Urd)

[AnimeChickie]

Sitting underneath a tree in the Mizimu lands, Azize'erevu stared out at the cubs and the minders playing around with each other and minders teaching lessons in the distance. It was just another day with the minders; Azize spent all of his time around them and learned everything from them. There were cubs that stopped by once in awhile but very few that didn't have parents to go home to. Azize did have his siblings but they all seemed well adapted without parents.

The cub pawed the dirt on the ground making strange shapes as he tried to humor himself. It was just a boring day. Azize didn't know where his siblings were and he didn't feel like playing around with one of the minders today. He didn't have too many friends outside of his family.  

[Annchen]

Urd was one of the lucky cubs with a family to call her own, but she was still spending a lot of time with the Minders to learn how to be a good Sacrifice. And to be honest, being a Sacrifice wasn't all that bad. The only part she didn't like was some of the attention. She was old enough to realise that having half a spirit meant that she was a bit of a curiosity, and that some of the lions in the pride seemed to look at her funny because of it.

It wasn't really a problem to handle the looks (ignore), or those that tried not to see her (ignore!), but she despised being pitied for having an incomplete spirit. Some lions, especially some of the older minders, liked to corner her and tell her that it was such a shame that a nice girl like har had only half a Spirit. Then they would usually say more things like "poor thing" and sigh an awful lot until she ended up trying to comfort them when they were supposedly trying to comfort her. What was up with that?

Some days she envied her brother who could shake off almost anything and just take it in stride. He was playing with some of his friends nearby, she was sure, but Urd didn't feel like joining Ilo today. She craved calm, and decided to go sit and think under her favourite tree. However, a familiar sight caught her attention and she changed her mind. Some lions were worth talking to.

"Azize," she called just loud enough for him to hear without getting the attention of every cub in the area. Then she lowered her voice a bit more as she got closer. "What are you doing?"  

[AnimeChickie]

Azize knew what it was like to get those funny looks; from the moment he could realize, pride members had always given him strange looks because of his parents or from what he could tell. Since the beginning, nobody would say anything to him about who his parents were or what happened to them. Eventually, he just stopped asking and accepted the fact that he and his siblings were without parents. He tried not to think about it and had grown very close to his siblings; he also had made friends with some of the other cubs in the pride.

Azize heard a voice calling his name and he looked up from his dirt drawings. He had met Urn a few times before when she was at the minders but they hadn't spoken too many times before. "Hello Urn." He took a quick glance at the drawings and then looked back up at her. "Just drawing in the dirt." Azize quickly rubbed the dirt drawings away not wanting her to see what he had been thinking about. "What are you up to?"  

[Annchen]

Urd never got a chance to see what Azize had been drawing before it was erased, and she couldn't help but feeling a bit hurt that he would keep it from her. Not that they were best friends or anything, but Urd didn't have many friends and those she had were important to her. But she swallowed her insecurity and sat down next to Azize.

"Oh, not much," she said, "I was going to go sit under a tree since everyone is so noisy today."

She paused and pawed the ground gingerly, not quite ready to let go of what Azize had been doing. Eventually her curiosity got the better of her and she took a deep breath before speaking.

"What did you draw," she asked in a small voice, hoping he wouldn't be angry at her for asking.  

[AnimeChickie]

Azize was a relatively private cub and he didn't even tell most of his siblings things about him. Looking down at the ground, he had gotten used to doing so because eye contact made him nervous. In general, there were a lot of things that made him uneasy and he preferred to just stay quiet most of the time. He liked observing the other pride members and cubs because it told him a lot about each of them. Even though he hadn't met most of the pride, he knew a little something about a lot of them. Pausing, Azize glanced up at Urd wondering why she had come over here. "Oh. It was nothing... I was just drawing some of the minders and cubs over there..." It wasn't very good. They were mostly just scribbles and whatnot and he didn't want her to think he he was strange or anything.  

[Annchen]

Urd looked from the dusty ground to the minders and cubs Azize had indicated and then back at the ground again. She couldn't imagine how to draw their likeness in the dirt. The only thing that looked like anything when she tried was paw prints, and anyone could do that. She pressed her paw into a soft mound of earth and removed it carefully to get a good imprint. Part of one side caved in as she removed her paw, but the rest looked pretty good.

"I can only make paws," she confessed, "Like the slaves and masters have on them."

Making paw prints wasn't a very useful skill, so she didn't tell Azize that she sometimes practiced making perfect paw imprints when she was alone and bored. It was even more difficult to get it right on fur, she had found when she tried. Skuld hadn't been too happy to find her children covered in muddy paw prints that day, and Urd wasn't eager to try it again.

"Have you played master and slave," she asked, "We do it sometimes but Mom gets real angry when we use mud."  

[AnimeChickie]

He didn't like it when people looked at his dirt drawings because they really weren't very good. Azize didn't feel comfortable sharing most of his personal things with others yet. "Paws are pretty too..." Everything he said was quiet and meek and just speaking like this made him relatively nervous. He was always worried about saying the wrong thing or making a fool of himself...

"Master and slave? I've never played that. What is it?" Tilting his head and looking at her curiously, Azize really didn't play many games with his siblings or anybody actually. "Why did she get mad?" There were a lot of things that he was unaware of and even though he spent a lot of time around the other cubs, Azize didn't really socialize much.  

[Annchen]

Being in the spotlight like this, even if it was only one other cub with her, was very unfamiliar to Urd. Usually someone else did all the talking and explaining, so she started off a little hesitantly. Since Ilo wasn't here she would simply have to do it, even if her own voice sounded almost unfamiliar in her ears. When nothing scary happened she dared to talk a little bit louder and made fewer pauses.

"Umm... Master and slave is a game," she started, looking at her paws, "One is master and one is slave, like... the slaves and masters in the pride. And then the master tells the slave what to do. It has to be boring things I think. I don't know. Mostly fetch this and do that."

She paused, and looked up. This wasn't all that bad actually, so she volunteered some more information since he had asked. This time she watched his paws and not her own. It might not seem like much, but it was a big step for Urd.

"She got mad," she swallowed, wondering if Azize would laugh or think badly about them, "She got mad because... Um... I guess it started since we played and wanted marks like the masters and slaves. We found some almost orange mud and I made a mark on Ilo since he was master and then we tried to find green mud for me, but I don't think there is any green mud. Have you seen green mud?"

She was almost rambling and started to derail from what she was telling him about, but she wanted to tell the story so she tried to get back on track. She watched the light swirls snaking up his legs and tried to remember exactly how they had ended up completely caked in mud that time. Mom had been SO mad.

"Um... Anyway," she continued, "Ilo wanted to try making marks too so he used some dark mud on me when we couldn't find green, but he got it all smeared out so he had to try again. And then I put some more mud on him because I think he was doing it on purpose and... Um... It got really messy. Do minders get upset over messes too? Moms can get really upset over messy things..."  

[AnimeChickie]

Games were not something that he did often mostly because the minders were always too busy and he never really was around his siblings long enough to play a game. He thought about the rules of the game and then Azize tilted his head curiously, "That sounds... strange. Why would you want to be told what to do and how would you come up with tasks to do for the slave?" The concept and purpose of the game was eluding him and then he heard her mention playing around with mud. "Oh. Well that sounds cool. Kind of like painting. And I can see how your mom would get upset. That seems like something a mother would feel if her cubs got dirty. The minders don't really care too much because they have to watch so many cubs at once and they just tell us to clean up ourselves."

Having a sibling to play around with sounded fun... Azize kind of wished that he was closer to his siblings so that they could play fun games together. Shrugging off the thoughts, he had come to accept the fact that there were a lot of things that he would never have in life; he wasn't the type to dwell on things that he did not have.  

[Annchen]

"We had to help clean ourselves," she said and made a face, "Orange mud is really, really icky tasting... Did you know?"

It was easier to talk about the icky mud than to explain why one would play master and slave, but Urd had started to get used to talking so she grabbed the opportunity to talk some more. She almost danced around now, apparently not able to stand still when explaining more about playing. She couldn't understand what was strange about 'master and slave'. She had seen other cubs play it too, not just her and Ilo.

"It's not that I want to be told what to do," she said, "We do like the grown ups do. It's just like playing hunter and zebra. It's no fun to be the zebra when someone bites your tail, but next turn you get to be hunter and it's fun to play! And sometimes Skadi plays zebra and that's really fun 'cause she's a grown up. And she's not even a minder!"  

[AnimeChickie]

"Mud sounds like it would taste really gross in general. Heh..." Azize had played around in the mud before and it was fun... until you had to get it out of your fur. There were parts of his body that he couldn't reach so he would have to roll around in the water until he could clean himself completely. The cub liked drawing things with the mud and it was fun to throw mud on the ground and guess what it looked like.

As she explained the game, Azize nodded his head in understanding. "That's true. We still play those games even though it's no fun getting bitten on the tail." Shrugging, Azize thought about her last comment about how the grown ups play master and slave. He couldn't help but wonder why they played that game. Grown ups were a lot more serious than cubs so they must have a reason? Shaking the thoughts from his mind, Azize didn't want to think about things outside his realm of understanding quite yet. "So you still want to play master and slave? Or we can just try to paint things on each other with mud?"  

[Annchen]

"It's different kinds of gross when it's wet and when it's started to dry too," she said with the wisdom of experience. Urd was grinning for some reason she couldn't quite put her paw on. Perhaps just because it was unexpectedly fun to stand here and talk about mud and other things with Azize. Much better than the loud and rowdy play she would have had to endure had she stayed among the larger group of cubs and juveniles. This was nice. Really, really nice.

When he asked she didn't really feel like doing something as ordinary as playing master and slave, but the other suggestion... She had sworn off mud play after the incident, but when Azize suggested painting themselves with mud it sounded so forbidden and fun she had to hop a few times where she stood.

"Mom would be so mad," she said, eyes shining with mirth, "Let's do it!"