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 Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2010 9:12 am
It was another lovely day, though not as lovely as she was. The young Banu walked slowly and carefully, working hard to imitate the easy grace with which some of the adults she'd met moved. It was difficult, but not impossible, and she had to make it perfect. Everything had to be just perfect after all. If she was going to be the best Banu ever, and she would be, then she had a lot of work to do. No time for playing silly baby-games, she was 'a mature young lady' and that was only the begining for her.
Hazina paused, looking carefully around herself with those odd eyes that many found to be so very creepy. Like black pits sunken into her skull, but she liked her eyes. They were her father's eyes, and he was a perfectly respectable Pad. One of the most respectable Pads she was certain. She was one of her daddy's little girls, and that was just about as good as being a princess. So of course, being the perfect daughter of the perfect Pad, she had to find herself a suitable boy to make her his Beybanu. That son of the sultan she'd met had some promise, but there were other so-called fish in the sea...whatever this 'sea' was. Bigger than the lake, she'd been told, but full of salty water. It seemed silly, what good was water that she couldn't drink?
But the world was not perfect, so she'd just have to make do with what she had to work with.
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Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2010 6:20 am
 Another day out of the den and away from his family. Sometimes Mirsajadi wondered if it was really a good idea for him to spend so much time away from home. True, his family drove him absolutely crazy, and the more time he spent around him, the more frequent his seizures and hallucinations became. He preferred to stay away from them, and his visions. But he did have a nagging feeling that he might be missing out on opportunities to impress his father, and that was an unpleasant thought.
Still, his greatest competition, he felt, came from his older half-siblings, the ones his father had sired on his gloomy beybanu. Anwar, for instance, who was far too clever for Mirsajadi's liking. Mirsajadi had no doubt that when he returned from his banu quest, he would bring back something spectacular, and the striped juvenile was not looking forward to having to congratulate him on his success and then figure out a way to top it. He had no doubts that he could do it, but it would take a lot of effort.
Mirsajadi wasn't so caught up in thoughts of familial competition that he failed to notice a bright pink banu walking very carefully ahead of him. Outpacing her would be simple, but he elected not to do that. Instead he simply caught up with her and then fell into step beside her, though it meant shortening his own strides.
"Nice day, isn't it?" he asked. Her eyes and the markings beneath them intrigued him, though he honestly wasn't so sure how he felt about her overall coat color.
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Posted: Mon Nov 01, 2010 8:18 am
Keep her head up, place her paws delicately, ah, but don't tilt her chin like that, it would look arrogant and the perfect banu would not be so... She was a bit caught up in the effort it took to imitate an adult's grace with a child's clumsy paws, but she was hardly utterly oblivious to the world around her. When the stripy male fell into step beside her, it was difficult to keep her eyes forward as they had been, but utterly impossible to keep her ears from swiveling towards him. Especially when he spoke, which was a good thing because it was often difficult for her to remember to hold her tongue until the male spoke first. Sometimes they took too long!
"Yes, it is indeed," she agreed, having been thinking as much herself only a short time prior. "I am Hazina, daughter of Pad Kame'bufuu. May I know your name?" There, that sounded properly polite, right?
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Posted: Fri Nov 05, 2010 9:50 am
"I'm Mirsajadi, son of Vizier Tariq'ra'd," Mirsajadi replied in response to Hazina's prompting.
He knew he ought to have introduced himself first, and without being prompted, but he hadn't been sure if he wanted to say anything more than what he already had said, about the day being nice. At least on a conscious level. The fact that he'd bothered to shorten his strides to keep pace with her, rather than forcing her to keep pace with him probably should have indicated that he had at least some subconscious intention to speak with her. He was a bit young for evaluating things like subconscious motivation though. At this point in his life, just reading others' body language for its more obvious tells was an accomplishment.
"You have very good manners, Banu Hazina," Mirsajadi observed approvingly. "Your father must be very proud."
More likely it was her mother who was responsible for that aspect of her education, but Mirsajadi didn't really care one way or the other how banu felt about things, by and large. After all, it was far more important that a person's male relations were pleased by their comportment than that their females ones were. What say did a female have? For that matter, what say should a female have? Mirsajadi didn't mind his friend Arezoo speaking her mind, but sometimes he would even remind her that she was only a banu.
"Before I came along, what were you up to?" he asked.
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Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 5:18 pm
Hazina might have puffed up just a little more at his words, her chest swelling slightly with the warm feeling. Proud. Her father must be proud, yes. Proud of her. She was, after all, a perfect daughter. Quiet, polite, and ever so smart. Perfect, even if most Pads did not desire a female who could be clever as they were. They would learn, in time, to appreciate the gift that she was. The treasure that she was. Daddy called her a treasure, and so it must surely be so.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mirsajadi," the pink Banu replied, keeping her pride to herself. It was rude to flaunt how much better she was than many of the others her age after all. Mean. She was not rude, she was perfectly polite.
"Oh, I was just walking," Hazina answered, not intending to tell him that she had been practicing walking. It was true enough without that one little word added in. No need to tell him that she wasn't this perfect naturally, no need at all... "I do hope I'm not keeping you from anything?" she added after a moment, wondering if that question would prompt him to tell her what he had been doing. She wasn't sure it was properly polite for her to ask him outright, didn't want to show him that she was curious, didn't want him to think she was nosy or anything...
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Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:57 pm
Mirsajadi wasn't sure what he'd said which had made Hazina happy, but he did know he'd said something which had produced that particular effect, and that made him feel proud and pleased with himself in return, though he didn't give any physical evidence of that fact. As far as being emotive went, Mirsajadi really wasn't.
He was about to compliment her once more on her pretty manners when he realized how close he was coming to redundancy and stopped himself. Only bores and fools repeated themselves like that, and Mirsajadi considered himself to be neither. In fact, he knew himself to be both interesting and clever, which meant it was unacceptable for him to ever repeat himself in that fashion.
"'Just walking'?" he repeated, mimicking her tone a little, but with a smile that made it clear he wasn't making fun of her. "I wasn't going anywhere interesting or important, so you're not keeping me from anything. Perhaps I'm keeping you from something, though. Were you walking to anywhere in particular?"
He would probably walk part of the way with her, if she was going somewhere specific, since he really had nowhere else to be except not in the den, which was a goal he'd already accomplished just by stepping outside, so he was ahead of the game as far as he was concerned, and anything he could find to occupy his time and attention after that was a lovely bonus. If he couldn't think of anything else, and if Hazina proved uninteresting, he could always seek out Zoey.
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Posted: Thu Jan 06, 2011 11:39 am
Was he teasing her? She wasn't sure if she should be offended by that or not. Granted, he was a Pad, or, rather, a Pesar, but that didn't mean she had to like him. She didn't like a lot of the younger cubs. So noisy and annoying. But now he thought she had been going somewhere in particular. She was not going to say she had just been practicing. Heaven forbid, that sounded silly.
"Oh, I wasn't really going anyplace in particular. It was such a nice day I thought I'd go for a walk is all." There. That made sense, right? Of course it did. It was a great excuse. So there. "I suppose I might go down to the lake and then go back to my father's den through the clearing with the flowers." And now she had a plan. There. He could come with her if he liked, but she had a reason and a plan and that was good.
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:57 am
"I was doing the same thing, actually, though my walk doesn't have the same sort of direction yours does. Do you always plan your route so carefully?"
A lion who liked to have a contingency plan for every eventuality, Mirsajadi wondered if maybe he ought to have a little less randomness in his daily activities, and keep to a schedule more like that Hazina had outlined. Oh, not necessarily with the lake and the clearing with the flowers and all that, but with that sort of attention to detail. He liked the way it sounded, to have everything planned out, with measurable goals that could be checked off once they were accomplished.
"Also, what clearing with the flowers?" He was positive he had never seen such a place, though probably because flowers were feminine and stupid and as a pesar he had no interest in them. Just the same, it bothered him that he didn't know where something was in the pride, particularly since it was something Hazina clearly thought was common knowledge. Being out of the loop on something like that could be very embarrassing later on. "I don't think I've ever been there."
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Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 12:23 pm
Was it a good thing that she had a plan? She thought it sounded more responsible, but then she could have been wrong about it... no. No, structure was a good thing. It was like having rules, having structure. And rules were certainly important. So it was good that she had structure.
"I like to know where I'm going," she finally decided as an answer, but his question about the flower-clearing puzzled her for a moment. It wasn't exactly a huge clearing. And there weren't that many flowers. It was just a little clump of pretty plants really, but she'd taken to calling it the flower clearing after spending a day with Hadil, who had been delighted by the little things. Childishly so, Hazina had been far more reserved.
"I suppose it's more like a small clump of flowers. One of the other banu I speak with calls it that. I suppose the name is dess...deceptive."
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Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2011 7:24 am
"So do I," Mirsajadi responded. "It makes things much neater."
It wasn't as though he could order his life to the point where his stupid fits could be predicted and prevented, but he liked to fantasize about a time when everything happened in its time and there were only good surprises, and they were small ones.
He liked adventure maybe a little less than the average pesar, having learned that too much excitement could trigger one of his hallucinatory fits, but he looked forward to the adventures he'd be having when he went out to capture a banu for himself. Not that he was particularly interested in having a banu. Girls were kind of gross.
Not in the obvious way, but in a more insipid way, where they infected people with their girlishness. He was glad he didn't have too many female relatives wanting to spend time with him. It meant he wasn't going to have to worry about being girlified like an idiot.
"Either way," he allowed. "I don't spend a lot of time with flowers, so I've not seen the place, I think. It sounds like a kind of banus-only place, so I'll let you head there." He didn't really want to go look at flowers or anything like that, and so this seemed like a good enough way to get out of doing so.
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Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 11:17 pm
Ah, finally. Someone who agreed with her. Plans and organization, very much good things both of them. Of course, his comment about the flower place...should she not have invited him? It was not as if there were any rules about boys not seeing flowers. It didn't sound like a banu-only place to her. Was it supposed to be just for Banu? Had she broken some rule in offering to show it to him? What rule was this? Why had no one told her?
How could she be perfect if no one told her all of the rules? What was she supposed to do? How? How? HOW? It was so...so frustrating! And depressing! And... and... maybe one of her mothers would be able to help her. Yes. Yes she'd ask one of her mothers... they would know if there were rules about flowers.
"Well then, it was a pleasure to meet you. Have a lovely day," she told him politely, bowing her head respectfully as she'd seen a few other banus do before carefully and deliberately turning and continuing on her way. Mustn't let him know she was worried about some flower rule. He'd know she wasn't perfect if she let him know she'd forgotten or didn't know something. She had to be perfect. Had to. She was one of daddy's little girls after all...
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