Chane's ears pearked at what he'd come to recognize as a nick name. He pulled himself to his feet and padded toward the sound of her voice."Beyhas?" he called out ears swivling about as he looked for her.
She was surprised when he stuck around. Usually her aparitions didn't stick around this long. Not that she was complaining, of course. She welcomed the company, especially since this apparition was rather nice to her. He was unusual though. He was always talking about how he wasn't an apparition, and how he was just trying to help her. She didn't understand what he was talking about half the time, but it was nice to hear someone else's voice."Apparition!" she called, smiling wide as she looked around for him.
"Over here!" she said, her smile widening. "Look, I found you a present." She gestured toward a lone flower she had stumbled upon. "I think it will look uite nice in your mane!"
He slowed as he approached her almost hesitating as he came close enough to touch her.
"Oh thank you," he said, looking over the flower she'd found. "It's beautiful."
He wasn't so sure he wanted it woven into his hair.
"Isn't it?" she beamed proudly. Trotting over to it, she patted it to make sure it was really there, then gingerly bent down to pick it with her teeth. "Can I put it in your hair?"
He nodded, biting his lip and doing his very best to look anything but horrified by the idea.
"If you'd like..." he tought of telling her it would be a shame to kill the little flower but realized it was sort of too late for that thought now.
Grinning, she moved forward to carefully put it in his mane, jauntily behind his ear. "There!" she proclaimed when it was done. "You look very handsome, appariton."
"Handsome..." wasn't the word he would have chosen to describe an underweight lion with a pretty flower woven into his mane.
"Thank you... Ever thought of wearing a flower behind your ear?"
"Hm." She shook her head. "No, I haven't." She shrugged and sat down in front of him, eyes staring straight into the other lions.
"You ought to try it sometime," he said. "I think it would be lovely. Any flower really..." he stopped there and glanced away. Why was she staring at him so intently? It felt awkward keeping eyecontact with her for more then a few seconds.
She barely blinked too. Maybe it was because she was afraid he'd disappear af she didn't keep an eye on him. "Maybe I will!" She smiled, her tail swishing happily.
He glanced back at her then away again, shifting back and forth as he did so.
"Yeah, umm... yeah. Maybe we could go look for a flower?" It might get her eyes off him for a few minutes at least.
She frowned a bit, thinking. "Where do you think we can find some more flowers? That was the first one I've seen in a long time!"
"I don't know..." he'd seen more in the jungle but who on earth knew where that was or how long it would take to get there. "You could wear this one if you'd like. I don't mind."
"But its yours," she pouted. "And clearly I can't wear a flower apparition. Its not real!"
He frowned at that, "I am real! And it has to be real too..."
He just couldn't understand where she got this idea from that nothing was real. Perhaps next she'd tell him that she wasn't real either.
"Of course you are, appartion," she said dismissively, turning her head to see if she could see any more flowers. "If you're real, how come you never touch me? Its because you can't!"
"I can so touch you!" he said, eyes widening. "I ran right into you the first night we met!"
Really! It wasn't this line of reasoning that frustrated him so, it was how she refused to let it go and insisted time after time to bring it up.
She paused, as if considering this information. "I probably hurt myself and now conjured you up. I'm glad i did though. I like you, apparition."
"You were hiding in a hole in the rain!" he said, sounding defeated already. He knew well that she could do this forever. "Something real would have had to bump into you..."
She frowned at him. "Why are you doing this, apparition? You're always making my head hurt. I don't like it when my head hurts."
Getting to her feet, she stomped away from him. When she was a distance away, she plopped herself back down and started to talk to some nearby plants and leaves.
Chane lowered his head looking quite dejected. She'd just blown him off so easily, and blamed him for a headache to boot! He knew he could help with that but why bother? Would she even thing his remedy was real?
tbc~
