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 Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 1:17 pm
The hours just before the creeping onset of dusk had always been favored by the lioness that stood watchful upon the highest reaches of dens. It was the reason her father had chosen a den others might consider dangerous, to please his little princess. Now it hardly seemed to matter to her, she felt no express danger nor any twinge of affection from the slanting bluffs that led away from the mouth of her usual den. Her father had felt comfortable raising his cubs in it, perhaps the danger was imagined. Thoughtful on the matter she found herself leaning over the bluff, glancing sidelong at the sloping progression of the rest of the dens. Strange though, that others rarely came up to share this one with her. Scared maybe, or just not wanting to spend more time than necessary with Zsaria herself. A pinch of indignity hit her and snapped her out of her trance. No, it wasn't any of that. It was just coldest up here, surely, and some of her fellows had already begun their families. Best interest then, something she knew all too much about.
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm
Uss D'mzil had learned a thing or two about those so-called best interests herself. She was sure, positive with no room for error, it was in Taraxa's 'best interest' to learn to swim better after he'd almost drowned. A lot better. Her next problem would be convincing him to let her help. The first, finding him to begin with. She hadn't really made it past phase one yet.
All the steps of her well-meaning endeavor were, bottom line, for both their sakes. For both their 'best interests' - hers, too, yes. Zilly didn't care for Taraxa in the way most would have. Not like she maybe should have. He served as a unwitting barrier between her and the hurt. The sadness. The loss of her mother and her life before now. If he had died, or if he were to be killed before she could find him somehow, she would go on. Undoubtedly, she would latch onto Gunnar as reparation.
But Zilly didn't know that about herself. She didn't realize that her feelings were shallow and should have been carefully considered - or even just considered at all. To her, there was only Taraxa. There was only the today in a present where the past was too much to think about. There was only the feeling of sameness his presence had that kept her grounded. Put simply, he was her distraction when all she needed was to be distracted.
She couldn't reason him being gone and she didn't want to. Yet had he gone, she'd have been no more obligated to mourn him than he would have been to feel guilty over bedroom antics with other lionesses. And there were a lot of pretty lionesses out there.
There were a lot of pretty ones here, for that matter.
Zilly wasn't romantically interested in females - males, either, as far as she knew - but she'd never had a problem just stating fact. She thought to herself Zsaria was easy on the eyes when she first caught sight of her, after she'd climbed up to that very same den in search of Taraxa.
She, however, looked a mess; her fur was wet, knotted and matted. The way her coat lay flat and ragged made her scars and wounds still left over from more recent incidents all the more visible. Her eye - the right one - probably looked infected. It probably was infected.
"He's not up here," she noticed woefully.
No matter what her actual feelings were, other lions were bound to start thinking things if she kept chasing him around like that.
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:45 pm
"No, they're not..." Zsaria trailed off still lost in her thoughts, the statement somehow leading her to memories of her brothers. Wait, she wasn't alone anymore. Her shoulders stiffened as she turned to face Zilly, a sudden look of shock coming over her face as she laid eyes on what she could only describe as the rattiest lioness she'd since since herself on the day her brother died. "What?" The question was short and curt, almost whispered as she tried to get ahold of what was standing before her. "You're-" She wasn't sure how to follow the statement without obviously offending and instead offered the other a small sympathetic wince. "Who's not up here?" She asked finally with a short drawn in breath. Certainly this one wasn't looking for anyone she knew, no one she knew would associate with, well, that. It was dishonorable at the least.
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:55 pm
She shook off the excess drops of water and already started to look a little more presentable. Sort of. For a stranger like Zsaria it was hard to tell if she'd intentionally stayed far enough away no water would hit her or if she'd just been that distance by chance. It would depend on if the observer was the type to believe the best or the worst in others.
Zilly believed neither, given 'good' and 'bad' were not concepts she was all that familiar with. Her mother had made her teachings seem right and things that went against them as wrong. Not good or bad. Not evil or otherwise. Just 'this is expected of you' versus 'this is unacceptable of you.'
"Taraxa." Her voice was casual and hid nothing. "But it's all right."
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 8:45 pm
The scarred lioness almost let out a loud laugh, looking at Zilly now with a cruel smile. She had heard of this one she thought, nothing particularly fond though for the life of her she couldn't find anything worth admonishing just yet. "I should doubt he would be," she admitted, "We are fellow reavers, nothing of a salacious nature that would require him to visit my den." Mean perhaps, to joke of something like that around a lioness she had been told was quite fond of Taraxa, but if this one was to be considered a fellow reaver she would need to be as tough as one. "Has he offended you in some way? I could help you look."
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:01 pm
Salacious... what?
A deaf man couldn't be offended by insults whispered behind his back, and Zilly couldn't take offense to implications she couldn't understand. When she mulled the entire sentence over instead of just the one word, the suggestiveness hit her. Softly. If it hit her like a sack of bricks, they were foam bricks. His romantic affairs didn't concern her any. As long as he kept coming back, kept tolerating her when she was in his company what he did when he wasn't was nothing to be jealous over.
It didn't match up with her feelings toward Xi, which had in turn spawned all sorts of contempt and the most vicious level of jealousy toward her brother. But Taraxa wasn't Xi, and again, she cared more about having someone around than who that someone was.
And, all that aside, Zilly really didn't think he was that smooth. He'd bagged someone to have those cubs, yeah, but it wasn't like she saw him roaming around with a lioness clinging to all four legs.
--Actually, that would have been hilarious.
"No, he didn't do anything." Zilly pawed at her infected eye and ratted on the poor guy without a second thought (or a first), "I need to teach him to swim, but I can't find him."
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:09 pm
Zsaria seemed even more confused by the explanation. Swim? Surely all Stormborns could swim, how else could a parent ensure the strength of their cubs than by pitching them off a bluff or two and seeing which fought there way back up. Perhaps Taraxa's parents had been lax. Either way, she found herself shrugging it off as a strange and slightly embarrassing situation. What came to her immediate concern instead was the state of Zilly's eye. She cringed openly at it now, watching as the lioness pawed at it. "Is that hurting you?" she asked with a hint of disgust, "I've got herbs inside, they're good for all sorts of wounds." After a moment she added, "What happened?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:20 pm
"Is that hurting you?"
"A little bit," Zilly answered. She didn't hesitate. Maybe Gunnar or Taraxa or both would have scolded her for 'whining', but she didn't take that into consideration. She didn't sound like she was bemoaning her fate. Just telling the truth.
"What happened?"
A more challenging question met with just another blunt answer. No mind paid to how it could make her look in the eyes of someone else.
"I'm not sure." Then she wrinkled her nose and asked, "Do they smell like mint?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:26 pm
Probably a fight, Zsaria decided in response to the nonanswer, it was always a fight or something of the sort. Not that she disliked fighting, she had grown to enjoy it in a way, she simply knew the dangers and how to avoid them. Like, for instance, keeping ones eyes out of harms way. "They don't smell like mint," she assured her with a nod toward the mouth of the den, "They smell like themselves and they'll help clear that up for you." She paused, considering the implications of such a promise should it turn out worse. "If you clean it each day with the beach water," she added for good measure, offering a sympathetic smile. As painful as it was sometimes it was hard not to appreciate the healing properties of the surrounding ocean. She didn't know why, she had never been schooled in medicine, but she knew that it worked.
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Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:44 pm
"I can do that," Zilly promised.
The problem would have been keeping water out of it with as much as she'd taken to swimming lately. She had to do something while Taraxa was gone and she'd thought about when he was coming back until she couldn't possibly wonder it any longer without going mad. Even she could only play the role of broken record before so long. That's where the ocean came in. And humming. Zilly loved humming.
She seemed ready to enter the den, but subconsciously refused to do so before Zsaria. Her actions - or lack thereof - could be taken as those of someone who did not like having their back turned on someone else, but no. Xi had her programmed to walk behind her, and that habit transferred to other lionesses.
Males were different. She had always refused to walk anywhere but beside her brother, Nym, desperate to prove herself his equal in any and all ways. From the utmost serious issue of their seer abilities to just walking.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 11:47 am
This one was peculiar, Zsaria decided with a slightly false smile. Maybe she'd been hit in the head a bit, she seemed to act like a thrall at times. It wasn't her problem at any rate, it seemed to be Taraxa's, and that thought amused her. With a lilt that could be perceived as a shrug she moved forward into the den, making her way to a rock under which she kept healing herbs. She hadn't picked many of them herself, the priestesses had shown her and given her a few, but she was determined to keep them good as long as possible. After all, some of them were quite soothing after a spar and she couldn't justify wasting such luxury. "Had you gotten anything in your eye?" she asked, her question more specific this time. She'd need to figure out some sort of cause before she'd know what to give her. "Or scratched it too hard?" For a moment she felt a strong wave of discomfort, realizing that this peculiar female was one of the first in a long time to actually come into her den.
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Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 1:45 pm
Once they were in the den, Zilly sat and watched her. Very, very closely. Likewise, Zsaria was the first female she had spoken with in a while. Maybe girls didn't like her. Maybe she should spend some time with that daughter of Taraxa's whose eyes didn't match. That was the weirdest thing, and she was her favorite among those tiny little miniature lions because of it.
Speaking of eyes...
"It wouldn't open earlier so I used a rock," Zilly informed her. She might have groused about pain, but she feared it as little as any of the rest of them, from the looks of things.
'Things' being her eye. The look being disgusting and infected.
"I thought it might help."
It didn't.
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Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2010 4:45 pm
"A.... rock?" Zsaria asked, fearing she'd misheard. Of all the things to try and remedy a bodily problem with, a rock was certainly out there. "How long had it been stuck shut?" She added, as if it would be more justifiable had it been an exhaustive time. Perhaps the female had tried other options before deciding on the rock. As she spoke and contemplated the peculiarity of the situation. Were the female's endeavors with Taraxa this blunt and confusing or was it simply a question of familiarity? She wasn't sure she wanted to get familiar. Ah, there it was. A sprig no longer than one of her claws stood out incredibly dark against the rest. She wasn't sure what it was called, but a priestess had told her about it in her youth, when she had had aspirations for the craft. Now she simply focused on how to use it. "Take some of this and rub it around your eye," she instructed, pushing the sprig out from the rest of the pile, "It should numb it and help it heal."
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 12:17 am
Zsaria's insouciant guest quickly complied. No debating to be heard, to grievance to be had. Her fight with Gunnar had already provided support for any insinuations she was lowly enough to rue any harm done to her person, yet she didn't so much as wince - um, more than once - smearing the remedy across both eyes just in the name of caution. Not that Zilly knew much about the word, but she did know some.
Fussing at a stranger she'd never meet again was one thing; she'd have never deplored the aftermath of a battle within hearing range of someone who mattered. Not intentionally. Her flaws were many, including but not limited to forgetting her vows, so she did slip up and let a grumble escape every now and then. Her mother had caught wind of a couple, much to her chagrin.
No one else here would, though. Not as long as she kept remembering to bite her tongue.
"A day," she would tell the other lioness when her medical chore had been accomplished and the spotlight gleamed only on them. "It was the only thing that worked."
Rocks were Zilly's duct tape.
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Posted: Fri Nov 19, 2010 5:42 am
"A shame then," Zsaria decided as she placed the rock back over her collection and came to sit near her visitor. It occurred to her that she really didn't know anything about this lioness, though she had so easily let her into the den. Come to think of it, she hadn't really seen her before. "Are you an outsider?" she asked with an audible curious excitement, it had been some time since many outsiders had made it into the pride. Unless she was a thrall. No, she didn't really seem the type anyone would decide to capture, she must have fought her way in.
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