Rasul crouched low over the ditch as he lowered the lizard into it as carefully as he could. The critter seemed terrified, skittering first left then right. The maze he had constructed was meant to confuse, but he hadn't anticipated this initial shock. It was trying the same thing again. Disappointing. He would have to fine a more intelligent animal to test it on next time, a rabbit perhaps. As a bit of a motivator he tapped the lizard's tail with his paw, urging it to turn the right direction and enter the maze. It wasn't cooperating, instead it seemed to be trying to scrape its way back up the walls. Shame, he'd spent a lot of time on this one. "Failure," he sighed to himself, lifting it out. As soon as he placed it on the ground it tore away, leaving a trail of dust behind it. Maybe he'd give a food incentive next time.
Heaving her weight mightily and bearing down on the strap gripped tightly in her teeth, Lithophoro tore at the ground with blunted claws, pulling herself and her cargo forward. She had wrapped a strip of hide around her precious find a few times, and now the stray ends were tucked in her jaw so that she could pull it along. It was strenuous work and slow going, but she had been doing this sort of thing since an early age, and barely noticed the fatigue. She wouldn't rest until she had brought the discovery to her mother and added it to their collection.
At least that was the plan. But as she raised her head for the first time in an hour to check the terrain, what she saw brought her to a halt. She dropped the straps to take in heavy breaths, and blinked in puzzlement. There was some sort of lion up ahead! He was busy staring at something on the ground, it seemed. Not having had many friends in her life outside her own family, Litho wasn't sure how to react. Was she in his territory? Would he chase her off?
The adolescent had noticed the sound of the cargo scraping along the ground but decided it was in his best interest to ignore it for the moment. He wasn't sure who was approaching and it was always beneficial to wait. Acting too quickly could skew the results and what fun would that be. Instead he pretended he hadn't heard, laying down on the dirt as he began to methodically even out the walls of his dug maze. The lizard had scratched it up, he wouldn't want the next participant to get confused by all the marks and abnormalities.
Litho watched the younger lion for a long, nerve-wracking moment, but he didn't look up. He must've surely heard her. She was making a racket, what with the rock scraping along the ground in that horrible crunching sound that she had somehow come to love. Instead his attention was firmly focused on digging what appeared to be an odd decoration in the ground. Curious, she trotted forward to get a better view, leaving her cargo where it lay. The lion male had dug out strange shapes like she'd never seen, nothing like the messy digging tactics her mother had taught her. But it was digging, and she was fascinated. She came forward to peer over his shoulder so she could watch.
She was harder to ignore now. A female at least, he had noticed, and quite a pretty one at that. Probably not the sort his father would approve of, much too forward to approach him as she had. With an odd little smirk on his face he hunched down a little further, scooping up a paw full of dirt from beside the maze. With a flick he tossed it upward, enough to startle but not enough to get any in her face. "Do you always creep up on strangers?" he asked as he tipped his head to the side to look at her, "It's dangerous you know."
Litho had been so intent on puzzling out the meaning of the dirt carvings that the male's voice startled her for a moment. She ran his words through her head, wondering if it was meant to be a threat. He didn't seem angry, and anyway she was a bit older and larger than him. Maybe she wasn't the best fighter, but she was wiry. She didn't like fighting though, so if he started something she'd run for it. "What are you digging for?" she asked, and she'd caught her breath now, so she wasn't panting as much. She scraped a toughened paw along one wall of the maze in curiosity, feeling for any signs of rocks embedded.
"I'm not digging," he told her, watching curiously as she drew her paw along the wall. She wasn't ruining it yet, so he'd let her continue. It never hurt to teach someone, especially if they seemed interesting. "It's an experiment, I'm testing to see which animals I can train to navigate it and how long it takes." He glanced behind, noticing what it was she had been dragging along, "How about you? That's an awfully big trinket to carry around." There was a hint of a laugh in his voice, there was a female in the pride who collected rocks, they were but more colorful kinds though.
Litho's attention was distracted from the strange carving when he mentioned her prized possession, and she beamed at him proudly. "It's a bone-stone, and a good one too. It looks like an elephant's leg bone, only carved of rock. Took me forever to dig it up." It occurred to her that he might not know what she meant. "Oh, a bone-stone is a rock that looks like the bones of living creatures. No one knows where they came from, maybe the gods cursed some elephants long ago... wait, you're doing what?" She peered from the male to the maze and back again in complete bafflement, the concept strange and foreign. "You're... animals... navigate... what?"
"It's simple," he explained, "It's things I learn just to know them, like you study those." He gestured to the bone-stone, which upon closer inspection looked interesting. He had never thought to dig very deep, he had never needed to for what he did. It looked strange, but she was right, it did look a lot like an elephant bone. "What do you do with them?" he asked curiously, pulling himself to a sit beside it.
Eyes studying over the layout of the maze, Litho was pleased to realize she understood the male's meaning. He explained things so much easier than her mother did, and was a lot easier to talk to than most strangers she met. So, he was like her, a lion passionate about a craft! His craft seemed to be 'knowing things'. She couldn't fathom what there was to know about digging strange lines and putting small animals in them, but it was digging so he had her attention. "Oh, we collect them and teach other lions about them," she answered absently. "Mama knows a pride that thinks they're sacred, so sometimes we carry some to them. So, what do you do with the lines in the dirt? How does it work?"
He nodded, feeling like he'd gotten a good grip on what she meant. So they were learning tools then, he could appreciate that. "Once it's all set up there's only one way out," he said, gesturing to the narrow ramp at the end of the maze, "You put the animal here at the start and count how long it takes for them to make it out to the ramp. Some animals take longer that others on average, like bugs. Some, like the lizard I just had, don't try so I have to find another."
Pacing around the edges of the maze the get a better look at it from all angles, Litho saw what he meant about only one exit. So, he put an animal in and then they had to get out on their own, and he did it with different types of animals. "But... what does it do? They go in, and then they come out? And some are really slow?" She sat down to contemplate the idea. "And... the smaller they are the longer they take, is that it?" It must have taken him a very long time to build this line carving. It couldn't possibly be just a roundabout way to tell how big an animal was, could it? "Except some don't try, you said. Maybe if you used an animal you could talk to, like a genet, it might work faster," she mused. "You could tell them what to do."
Rasul thought about what she was saying, it made sense, but he felt like she wasn't quite understanding yet. "Well, it's not so much about how big or small they are, and if you tell them what to do it sort of defeats the purpose," he explained, "Like, I can tell them to navigate the maze but the part I want to know is how smart they are, how soon they can figure out the way out. A smarter animal will notice the detours, you know? A dumb one like that lizard will just try to climb out, or run into the same dead end over and over." It was hard to explain why it interested it, but it did. He would have liked to try it with something larger but he didn't know how he would construct it. Perhaps he could try an different method, something nonphysical. A mental maze.
"Ohhhh," LItho crooned. Now she got it, it was about telling how smart animals were. She understood perfectly that some lions were smarter than others; she'd was convinced some of her brothers were as dumb as the dirt she worked in. It made sense that other animals would have varying levels of smartness as well. And this lion male wanted to know what those levels were, it seemed. A curious goal. "Why would it go to the same dead end over and over?" She laughed. "They must be really dumb lizards." She tried to picture herself as tiny as a lizard, trying to find her way through the lines, and wondered if she'd be able to find the way free. Surely she wouldn't have any trouble. She was a lion, after all. "I'm Lithophoro, by the way," she added. "It means 'I carry the rocks'. Which I do. Which animals have you found that are the fastest?"
"They forget," he told her, remembering an incident where a rat had gone into the same spot till it had nearly dehydrated itself, "Some mice do well, and the brown lizards I find near my home. It's all desert there, there's different animals. Probably a lot of bone-stones too, lots of regular rocks and dry spots." He banked the name in the back of his mind, it was a unique one so he didn't think he'd forget but it never hurt to repeat one over and over for good measure. "I'm Rasul."
Litho cocked her head to one side and the other. Mice did well? That was odd, but interesting. She wondered why. "I wondered what would happen if you put an animal that can talk well in and then didn't tell it what to do. Like, a klipspringer. Only no, they'd probably be too big. You'd need a huge line carving." She tried to calculate how long it would take her to dig one big enough to fit a whole lion. Wouldn't that be something! "Your home is very dry? That's good digging for bone-stones, mama usually sticks to dry areas. I bet if I dug in your home I'd find all sorts of stuff. Is it far from here?"
"Not far, just south of here," he explained, giving her an odd smirk, "It can be a rough place for ladies, but there are a lot of things to keep you busy there if you'd like to come. I know there used to be some tribes there that buried their dead, I bet you could find them too." He wasn't sure how far her interests extended, but he found himself getting excited as he thought about it. He had never considered the science of rocks and bones, it was silly of him to exclude so much knowledge.
His mention of the dead was appealing, and she pictured herself digging up very old bones, to see how they looked in comparison to bone-stones. This new male Rasul was putting all sorts of new ideas into her head, where before she'd just been satisfied with her passion of digging up the bone-stones. Now she wanted to try things, like maybe build a giant maze carving for him. Could it be done? Maybe if instead of digging she set up lines of giant rocks... She glanced over at her stranded bone-stone, which waited to be taken to mama. Well, she could always get more bone-stones. "Could I stick around, and maybe watch you put more animals in the carving?"
"If you'd like," he agreed, scanning the horizon for a new test subject, "But only if you agree to come back with me." It was odd but he couldn't manage to look her in the eyes as he made the bargain, knowing what would happen once she crossed into the pridelands. He liked this female, she was intelligent, and she would suit him fine as a banu. He didn't like not disclosing all the information but then she had never asked. It would all be explained in time once they got back, and maybe she would want to stay anyway. If not, well, he might have to ask his father for advice.
Litho was surprised at his condition, and she glanced again at the abandoned bone-stone where it lay curled up in its strap. Go with him? Mama probably wouldn't agree to that, she was wary of most prides. But... Litho was well aware that she was now the same size as her mother, had been for a little while. All her siblings were gone off to other places now, it was only her that stayed. Mama barely noticed her, she was so wrapped up in her work. Maybe it was time Litho found her own way. With this clever male for a companion she certainly wouldn't be bored! "Okay," she said firmly, and felt a wave of excitement as she made her decision. New lions to meet, new sands to dig in. And she'd get to see how this maze thing worked. "Yes, I'll go to your pride with you."
