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 Posted: Tue Dec 21, 2010 7:17 pm
Jakyra perched on a low-hanging branch of a sprawling tree. Her mother had moved the family again, and then quickly taken off to do some hunting. She was spending more and more time away from her cubs as they got older, which was nothing new.
In point of fact, Jakyra preferred when Gintare wasn't around to supervise, because it meant she could do as she pleased. Frequently she preferred to spend her time with her big brother, Riddiq, but Riddiq had vanished early that morning and so Jak had opted to relax a bit and take a break from her daily training.
Many days Jak would practice fighting and hunting with her brothers, or with her sisters if she had to, but she preferred to practice with her brothers. Vaako was very serious about it, and could be a bit of a killjoy, but at least he didn't make her feel quite as inadequate as Riddiq managed to do.
Gintare actually approved of Jak's training, and when she was around she helped, pointing out tactics a smaller fighter could use against a larger opponent. But that was when people were around, and at present none were, so Jak could laze as she saw fit. She couldn't help hoping, though, that one of her siblings would happen by within pouncing range, so she could leap down on them and surprise them.
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Posted: Wed Dec 22, 2010 6:38 pm
Kofie didn't much mind the moving. It was just as well anyway. The dark cub bored easily, and the new places served to keep her entertained--for a while, anyway, and of course, she only really explored at night. The daytime held none of the same mysteries for her.
But that wasn't to say that she couldn't enjoy the morning. Most days, she would be up at dawn and spend time looking for Vaako, but today had been one of those rare days when she had fallen asleep, and she had let herself indulge in this rare luxury.
By the time she had awoken, neither of her brothers nor, in fact, her sisters, were to be seen. Oh well. Kofie had always been a rather solitary child, and spending time alone had never been a cause to worry. She rather enjoyed it, if she was to be perfectly honest, though she never had any conscious ideas as to what she was supposed to do with that time alone.
She rose and padded from the den, squinting at the bright sunlight as she did. For the moment, everything looked still, as if the world itself was holding its breath. Interesting.
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Posted: Tue Dec 28, 2010 6:14 pm
Even when she was resting and relaxing, Jak couldn't help thinking that it was dangerous to really rest and relax. She didn't think Gintare did it, and she was almost positive Riddiq didn't, either. She knew he didn't sleep well. Their mother slept deeply when she slept, but Jak had noticed that when there was a sound Gintare was already awake and able to offer reassurance that there was no danger. At least, when she was around, she was able to do that.
One good thing, Jak reflected, about Gintare being gone so much was that her cubs, Jakyra included, had become very self-reliant. Jak wasn't afraid to be alone, though she would have preferred to be with Riddiq, and she could keep herself well-amused without the involvement of others. It would be better, though, if someone would come by and break up the monotony of her solitude.
As if the gods had heard her little expression of desire, Jak spotted movement from the direction of the den. A casual glance from the corner of her eye determined that she was looking at Kofie, and that Kofie would soon be looking back at her. She made a split-second decision and held very still, using only her peripheral vision to keep tabs on her sister's location and movements. She tried, even, to keep her ears and tail motionless.
Now, if only Kofie would come closer, pass beneath Jak's spot, and allow her to practice her soon-to-be-patented Death From Above attack.
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 9:07 am
Without quite thinking about it, the dark cub drifted toward the shade. She wasn't so familiar with the day, even though Kofie couldn't imagine there being much to know, which lacked the same calming effect as darkness had, even if it was only relatively darker. The spot directly under the tree would lend her some familiarity, as well as some respite from the heat of the day.
The young lioness sighed, wondering why it was that creatures would choose to be up and about now when nighttime offered so much more intrigue and solitude. Still, she supposed that there wasn't much cause for complaint. After all, if more creatures were as nocturnal as she, her time alone would quickly be lost.
She reached the shade and slowly laid herself down, eyes half lidded as she watched the world pass by. She marked the cautious movements of the hare in the distance, the lumbering crawl of the dung beetle a couple paws' lengths away, the erratic flitting of a small white bird. Everything seemed slightly too... alive for Kofie's liking, but she supposed it was something she could slowly grow accustomed to - not that the dark cub was planning on doing so.
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Posted: Mon Jun 20, 2011 1:29 pm
The basic working outline of Jak's Death From Above attack was that she dropped down on an unsuspecting victim while shrieking like a banshee. The idea was that they would be too startled by the sudden shrieking to move initially, giving gravity time to do its thing and allowing Jak to land on them and trap them beneath her. That was the idea. A leopard's tactics might have been more effective, and she would learn that silence was always to be preferred, but she had yet to reach that conclusion.
"Death from abooooove!" she crowed as she sprang from her perch to launch herself in the direction of her hapless sibling.
It was a bit farther down than Jak had thought it was, and about two thirds of the way down her body came to the conclusion that this had been a bad idea and began to try to reverse its decision, which was more or less futile and only resulted in her toes being splayed and her fur fluffing up, perhaps in an attempt to create more drag to slow her descent. It was not very effective...
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Posted: Mon Jun 27, 2011 3:57 am
One moment, (relative) silence; the next moment, huge commotion. She had been on the brink of deciding that she could some day come to enjoy being outside when it was so bright when what seemed, for all intents and purposes, like a war cry startled her into action.
Kofie's head whipped upward just in time to see her sister plummeting toward her, fur puffed and toes splayed. Her eyes widened, and a thought came into her head that perhaps she should... move. GO GO GO! Too late. She shoved off the ground, only to feel Jak's weight pulling her down again mid-leap to safety and in the next instant, she was sprawled on the ground.
"Nnnrrrrghhh..." she managed to say, awkwardly managing to roll onto her back. How that was supposed to help, Kofie wasn't sure. She shut her eyes against the glare of the bright sky, lying still for a moment to recuperate from Jak's ambush. Now, that had certainly not been what Kofie had expected out of the day.
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2011 8:43 am
"Gotcha!" the dark brown cub proclaimed proudly, already beginning to skitter away from Kofie and behind the tree in preparation to be either chased or attacked, or chased and then attacked. After all, what sort of warrior would meekly submit to having been so thoroughly pounced without seeking retaliation?
Jak was looking forward to the retaliation, but as seconds passed and her sister did little more than grunt - or maybe it was more of a groan? - Jak grew curious and impatient and peered around the trunk of the tree to check on what her sister was doing. It was a risk, of course, because Kofie might have been lying in wait, but it was a risk Jak was willing to take for the sake of fun and adventure.
To her disappointment, Kofie was just lying there on her back with her eyes closed. Utterly disgusted with her sibling, Jak stomped back to her side and prodded her ungently with one paw to get her attention.
"You're supposed to get up and fight back or something," she informed Kofie. "That's how the game is played."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2011 8:27 pm
Kofie simply breathed, at the moment quite annoyed at the glare that was still shining through her closed eyelids and the fact that getting rid of it would require moving. What a nuisance. It was getting in the way of all her playing. Not that Kofie had intended to play.
Her ear twitched to catch the sound of her sister stomping back over, and she cracked open an eye to see Jak looming over her, head blocking the sun. "Sure," she agreed, then promptly shut her eye again.
She let the moments tick by slowly, breathing in.... breathing out. It was all very meditative and nourishing and whatnot. She could feel Jak's presence beside her, could picture her sister in her mind, where she stood... how she stood.
Then, in one swift motion, she rolled her legs beneath her and sprang.
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 9:26 am
Jak made a face when Kofie agreed and then shut her eyes again. Their mum did the same thing sometimes and it drove the cub absolutely nuts. Not only was it kind of like lying, but it was also dismissing her as too unimportant to even pretend for. It made Jak want to bat her mother across the muzzle, but she couldn't because Gintare was her mum. She could do it to Kofie though, who was only her sister. But that wouldn't be nice. Her eyes weren't even open to see it coming.
In a few moments Jak came to regret not swatting her sister as her sister sprang suddenly at her. Then it was all she could do to skitter sideways and hope that she'd moved far enough and in a direction that Kofie hadn't predicted. She nearly swallowed her tongue trying not to squeak with surprise. Riddiq never squeaked. Of course, Riddiq was never surprised either, from what Jak could tell. She wished she was more like him.
Well, that's why she was practicing, she reminded herself. And this was good practice. Maybe later she could get Kofie to tell her how she'd known where to jump. Sure, she'd opened her eyes briefly, but Jak got the feeling she might've been able to do it even without having looked. That was like something Riddiq would do. Maybe he'd even be impressed if she learned to do it, too.
"That was pretty cool," she said once she'd caught her breath. "How'd you do that?"
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Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 9:37 am
Even while she had been breathing, Kofie had known that her plan would be difficult to execute properly. Mid-spring, she realized just how difficult, as Jak scrambled sideways and just out of her immediate pouncing range. Damn it. The black cub compensated by flailing out with a paw, hoping to catch Jak somewhere, and the next moment, she hit the ground and skidded to a stop.
Clearly, she required a little more practice. But that Jak seemed impressed was good enough for Kofie. At least somebody appreciated her efforts, which by definition meant that her energy had not gone to waste. Good.
She grinned and raised her brow. "I just did what I'd do at night," she said, invoking her preferred time of day. The nighttime lacked the brightness of the day, making it harder to actually see things. Being a bit of an insomniac had taught Kofie to rely less on her vision and more on everything else she had been blessed with. "Could hear you, could smell you... but most important, could feel where you were. You have a... presence, y'know? So you just kinda feel around for it. For the energy."
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Posted: Wed Jul 06, 2011 8:26 am
What she'd do at night. Right. Kofie did tend to come out more at night, now that Jak thought about it. Being a somewhat more normal sort of cub than most of the others in their litter, Jak was very much a "sleep at night and be awake during the day" kind of lion. The fact that Vaako had strange dreams that kept him up, Riddiq had bad dreams that woke him up, and Kofie didn't sleep didn't mean she had problems sleeping. She just had lots of siblings who did, and they tended to wake her up. Fortunately, she did have a gift for falling asleep quickly, so her siblings' sleeping problems did not become hers.
"I can hear and smell you, too," Jak pointed out. "Doesn't mean I could do what you did, probably. I mean, I can feel you if I'm touching you, but you weren't even touching me."
She didn't know what to make of Kofie's talk of her having a presence. If anyone were to ask Jak about people in her family having presences, she would have said that her eldest brother had one, but it was the sort you could only feel when he wanted you to. She doubted Kofie would have been able to feel his presence if he didn't want her to. He was too good at sneaking up on people for that to be the case. And Jak had no idea what Kofie was talking about when she started talking about feeling around for energy.
"Um. Sure. Energy presences. Right," she said uncertainly.
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Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 7:31 pm
It was a sort of mental map of her surroundings, only not. More like an unspoken, intuitive understanding of all the creatures around her. The sounds and smells coming at her from different directions were clues that built an idea of what was out there and where, and from there, the feeling came.
Jak didn't quite seem to understand. Kofie frowned lightly, wondering how best to explain it to her sister. It wasn't easy, putting a feeling into words, but perhaps... it would be simpler to rely not on words but on that very feeling. Her ears perked as an idea came into her head.
"Okay, well... if you hear a hare and smell it, you turn around to see where it is, and then you know, right? Only now, you take out the last part. No more seeing, just... knowing." Another small frown. She wasn't altogether sure that that made a lot of sense.
"Alright, how's this, close your eyes for a second."
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:58 pm
Jak knew what Kofie meant, but that didn't mean she could do it. She wasn't that kind of person it seemed, as much as she wanted to be. Maybe someday she would be able to do that, but today she would rather charge around or wrestle than sit still and try to sense things when she could just open her eyes and see for sure where they were.
"We can do this some other time, right?" she asked abruptly. She felt stupid just sitting there with her eyes closed and wanted to be moving around. Maybe she could learn how to do this by watching Riddiq. Sometimes she was able to do that. Learn by watching. Or at least get an idea of what she wanted to learn so that she could practice it in private. Then when she was good enough to do it in front of her oldest brother he would have pointers for her.
"I don't think I'm really in the right mood for it right now and it'd just waste both our time if you try to show me now." Her expression said that her attention had already shifted to something else anyway and that this wouldn't cross her mind again for a while.
"I'll race you back to the den. One, two, three...go!" And then she was off, not watching to see if Kofie followed or not.
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Posted: Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:36 pm
Kofie shugged, putting down the paw she had been prepared to wave about in front of Jak's closed eyes. "If you want," she said, glancing around her. Functioning the way she did gave her a huge advantage in the night, but she could understand why Jak didn't feel the same need to learn how to sense things without vision. Jak was a daytime creature, and when there was sun and light aplenty, there really couldn't be much wanting for a skill that didn't need to involve vision.
She stood and watched for a moment as Jakyra turned, racing back toward the den. Kofie herself had never been too rambunctious a cub, and racing simply... wasn't her thing. She considered letting her sister sprint off on her own; there was little doubt in her mind that Jak would find something else to do in the absence of her company, and that way, Kofie could find herself a nice lizard to watch or something of an equally sedate nature.
But it occurred to her that this was one of rather few moments in which the two of them were together and Jak wasn't following Riddiq. In the grand scheme of things, Kofie knew that soon enough these days would run out too. They were all growing up, and one day they would cease to be together. And they were sisters. With a small shake of her head, the dark cub launched herself after Jakyra's receding figure. If nothing else, she would be happy to spend some time racing or tumbling about with her sibling.
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