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 Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 2:38 pm
The raven, Moma had settled down to roost in the tree overhanging the temporary home of the odd little rogue family. Her bright eyes - strangely piercing - were half-lidded with sleep and her feathers were neatly fluffed up to capture the warm air that the sun had gifted to her before it had made its descent into twilight. Now, the sky above her head was aflame with reds, yellows and oranges, stretching as far as the eye could see. Her wings - long and slender - were tucked firmly to her sides and it was clear that, no matter how beautiful the sky was - she was settled for the night. Settled or not, however, she still had not found sleep. Sleep, sadly, did not come easy for the raven who had left her flock to accompany the lioness who had led her brother down the path that had led to his death.
She dreamt of him. Her dear brother. Once her advisor and friend. Now...lost to her forever. And why? She had not gotten a good answer from Mchawi and she knew she never would. That did not mean, however, that she wasn't going to get to the bottom of it. She would. Oh, yes she would. And when that day came, someone was going to pay.
She closed her eyes tightly and tucked her head slowly under a wing: shutting out that beautiful sky. Shutting out the world. Sleep would come eventually.
Patience.
Beneath her, lying on her stomach with forepaws outstretched and head up in 'sphinx' position, Mchawi looked positively content. In fact, she could not remember a time when she had been so happy. She was alive. Msiba was alive. And he had brought back a cub for them to care for. She would never have her own children so having Ilizi here was the closest thing she'd ever have to a daughter. Whether or not she deserved to be a mother, however, was questionable, but she cared little for the opinions of others. Ilizi was a good girl and a fast learner. She had the best of both of them: Msiba's charm and her lack of conscience. Mchawi could not have been more proud.
She glanced up at the roosting raven and the smile became something malicious. Moma was not what Nondo had been. She had the intelligence and the ability to plot and scheme. She would not be so easily manipulated which could be dangerous or an asset, depending on the situation. Even still she did not regret her decision in persuading the raven to follow, though she was surprised at how easy it had been to do so.
Yes...that raven was plotting. That was the only reason she would have agreed to come after knowing what had happened to her brother.
Well, she thought to herself. Let her plot. A raven cannot harm me and she'll never discover the truth of what happened to her brother.
From the undergrowth came Ilizi, small but growing, her rounded belly and sparkling eyes nothing but a picture of health. In her mouth she carried a baby bird covered in the downy fluff which would have made flight impossible. With a squeal of delight, she threw the dead bird at Mchawi's paws and grinned with pride.
"Look, Mchawi! Look what I found! I killed it myself, I did!"
Mchawi crooned. "Well done, child. You're doing marvellously. Your father will be very proud of you...Speaking of which. Where is he?"
"Um..." Ilizi blinked and turned to glance over her shoulder.
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Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 5:30 pm
Msiba hadn't thought he would ever come across a bird that he could consider too ambitious. Too much greed, too much desire to move up the hierarchy. Just too much. He condoned ambition, but he was beginning to see that Wemusa could, at times, take it a little too far.
It was problematic, to be sure, and somewhat worrying to imagine that the vulture might one day attempt to upstage whatever it was that he was doing. If Wemusa began to get his own ideas... Well there was no telling what might happen, but the pale lion decided that perhaps it would be best to keep in mind a pending termination of their partnership.
Then again, perhaps it would all work out. Somehow, he doubted that fate would be quite so kind to any of them. As he pondered his situation, the sound of familiar voices came to him. The happy squeal from Ilizi, some faint words from Mchawi that he couldn't quite make out...
He appeared through the brush as Ilizi turned, and he found himself gazing into the bright, jade-colored eyes of his young daughter. One of... many, he supposed. Msiba was under no illusions that his activities away from home might not have resulted in the eventual birth of cubs. He even sought some of the females out again from time to time, to see if she had and if he might spirit one or two away to bring home.
But Ilizi was... different, and it had little to do with the fact that she was half leopard. He didn't mind that so much, though he wouldn't lie and say there weren't brief moments when he wondered what it would be like if Ilizi had been a lioness. She was different because she was so very much like himself, like Mchawi, like Mach, even. She was like a combination of all of them, and because of that, she was every bit as much his sister's daughter as she was his. That was why he had picked her.
"Here I am," he said with a smile. The child had that uncanny ability to make him happy. "What have I missed?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 2:09 pm
Ilizi gave a small squeal of delight as her father came into view, leaping forwards to scoop up her captured prey before bounding across the short expanse to show it to her father. She smiled around the tiny body and then dropped it to the dirt with little care at all.
"Father, father! Look!" She puffed up her little chest with pride and glanced up at him with unwavering adoration. "I stalked it and caught it and killed it. All by myself!"
Mchawi, standing and stretching slowly, padded over to join them. "A promising child, your daughter is." Her tail flicked thoughtfully. "So young and talented." And for all her faults - of which there were many - she was at least genuine in her praise for the little one.
"That's because you teach me good!" The cub replied, glancing between her father and her aunt. "Maybe tomorrow I will catch another one!" It seemed that, if she continued like this, the surrounding lands might be void of baby birds. "Can I? Can I?"
Mchawi, rolling her eyes, sat and ran a paw across Ilizi's ears, fluffing up the fur atop her head. A somewhat rough and unpractised gesture of affection, but better than nothing. "Practise makes perfect." Her eyes snapped back to Msiba. "What do you think, Msiba? Will we be lingering here for long?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 5:57 am
Msiba lowered his nose to nudge at the his daughter's handiwork with pride. So young, and already, her mind was scheming in all the best ways. It made perfect sense to the pale lion - if you couldn't do something through the proper channels, find better ways. Or better yet, skip the proper channels altogether. He was a firm believer in the idea of working smart, not hard, and innocence had nothing to do with it.
"Wonderful, love," he praised, bending to touch his forehead affectionately to Ilizi's. Unlike his sister, gestures of affection came as second nature to Msiba. He liked to consider them occupational hazards; there weren't too many females that would spend the night based on clever words and a charming smile alone, and the physical elements of those one-night stands had made their way into his habitual interactions as both affection and praise.
And Ilizi certainly deserved praise. Not only was she smart, but she was also ruthless, and barring any horrendous mistakes in her upbringing, it seemed as though she would grow up to fill the shoes of her father and her aunt quite nicely. "Of course you can catch another. So long as you keep in mind that what comes easily deserves to be taken."
Because that was the way things were. Theirs was an utterly selfish existence, but only because that was the very nature of the world in which they lived. Nothing came of its own volition; it had to be taken, all of it, and more prepared Ilizi was to realize this, the better she would do in life.
He sat as well, and shifted his gaze to Mchawi with a ponderous smile. "Long enough, I suppose." There had been a time when he might have wanted to push on, to keep moving. Migration had become a painkiller, dulling the aftereffects of their disastrous stint with the Aka'mleli, but that had been but a brief chapter in their lives, long ago. Long enough ago that Msiba had decided that the time had come to leave it behind.
Of course, he would never completely unshoulder the burden of the events that had transpired then, but it was time to shift his focus onto something else. Something better. The future. And let the thoughts revenge stew silently in the back of his mind. That time would come, but for now, he had something more.
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Posted: Tue Feb 15, 2011 12:10 pm
Luckily, Ilizi was a quick and eager learner, probably helped by the fact that she didn't have siblings to compete with. She had their full attention when they chose to give it and thus received all of their teachings. If she was at all sad or worried about leaving behind her mother and siblings she had never suggested it, which probably meant that they never came into her mind. After all, why would they? She had everything she could ever want here.
At her father's praise, the little cub puffed herself up with pride. "Of course, Father!" She chirped in response. "I'll remember." She paused, her eyes drifting to the side in thought. "Take what I want, when I want." The thoughtful expression returned to her usual smiling face and she stepped forwards, rubbing her head and side against her father's forepaws, purring lightly. His views on life suited perfectly that of a lone and spoiled child. She would take that which deserved to be taken without question or care. After all, it was a dog eat dog world.
And, now that she had permission to continue her stalking of the flightless birds, she was already planning her climb up into the tree. Maybe this time she'd push the whole nest out rather than just nudging one baby. After all, if the adults weren't there to protect them it was their own fault.
"Hunting here seems good, at least." Mchawi responded to Msiba, seeming happy with the choice. "It will be good to rest and build up strength." She paused, folding back a tattered ear in thought. "However, what worries me is my lack of visions." As far as seers went, Mchawi was not very powerful. Her visions were hard to read - always had been a probably always would - and they came sporadically with no trigger that she could make out. Random glimpses of not so random events. She was concerned, however, that the lack of visions meant that they were dwindling from the path that had been set out from them. Maybe they were breaking away from their true destiny? She sighed, knowing such thoughts were idiocy, but concerned nonetheless.
"Once Ilizi is old enough, perhaps we should form a new plan of action. After all, we were meant to be more than just travelling rogues." She huffed. "Perhaps we can rekindle the idea of finding others to serve us. What do you think?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2011 9:31 pm
Msiba bent to caress the top of Ilizi's head with a responsive purr. Fatherhood seemed to suit the pale lion perfectly, which surprised nobody more than Msiba, but he was more than happy to take up the mantle of Parent now that he had realized how simple and fulfilling it seemed to be. That judgment was, of course, based solely on Ilizi's upbringing, which had come more easily than it could have been. She never questioned, only absorbed and learned and grew better with each day. What surprise was it, then, that she was the apple of her father's eye? She had never done anything wrong by his standards, and because of that, she never would do anything wrong in his eyes. That was just the way things worked - with Msiba, anyway.
"Yes indeed," he added. "The world stops questioning when you stop asking for its opinions." Although there were times when the world fought back. Namely, those dreadful lions in the valley... His eyes narrowed slightly at the very thought, until he remembered that he had decided to banish them from his immediate memory. The images of their failure, of his brother's death, of Hisia's face faded.
He turned to his sister, whose voice broke through his brief reverie. So it seemed that he wasn't the only one that was worried. But Mchawi's troubling lack of visions seemed more real than any of his own concerns. This was like writing it out in stone, physical proof that something was not quite right. And they needed to right themselves, quickly. This seemed a suitable place to raise a child, but not for what he and Mchawi had had in mind. It was too quite, too... peaceful. And damn it all if he wasn't going to do something about that.
"I think that would be a brilliant idea," he nodded. They were destined to be rulers, after all. From the day they had been born, the two of them had been meant for greater things, of that Msiba was sure. Things that would make up for their disastrous turnout thus far, and then all of their failures would be forgiven.
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Posted: Sun Jul 10, 2011 2:38 pm
"Perhaps we should find another pride to shake up." Mchawi suggested with a small shrug. "Or...keep travelling until we're back on our rightful path. This peace and quiet and...nothingness...it makes me nervous." In truth, Mchawi would much prefer to be throwing herself into dangerous situations than sitting back doing nothing like any ordinary rogue.
They were not ordinary, dammit! And life was too short to take for granted. She'd rather go out in a blaze of fire than sizzle out quietly with no one there to take heed.
With a languid stretch, she reared up onto her hind legs, dragging her claws through the bark; turning it to ribbons. Above her, the dark shape of the raven stirred slightly and, with a smirk, she reached up and shook the branch. The avian startled, screeching angrily and swooped down from the branch to land on the ground.
With a squeal of delight, Ilizi pounced onto her, pinning her to the ground.
"Now, now, Ilizi, dear, play nicely. Moma is not a toy."
"Aw, no fair." The cub released the raven who promptly pecked the cub hard between the eyes and flew over to perch on a column of rock. Looking angry and ruffled, she took a moment to preen her feathers back into place.
Ilizi stared hungrily after her.
Dropping back to the ground, Mchawi smoothed the dust and, with an extended claw, drew a rough map of their current 'territory'. "Let's pick a direction, shall we?" She gave a look towards her brother. "Since I have no help from my visions, perhaps you should choose? You were always the lucky one." She smiled.
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Posted: Sun Sep 04, 2011 7:17 pm
"Come, Ilizi," Msiba smiled, reaching to run a paw reassuringly over the cub. "We will find you another bird to play with." He made a mental note to look into the idea of finding a pet for his daughter, bird or otherwise, though he imagined that a creature capable of flight might last a little longer in Ilizi's hands. Still, if Moma wasn't a toy, and if Wemusa wasn't a toy, then perhaps it would be wise to find her a bird that was a toy. An unfortunate fate for the creature, but a necessary cost.
Turning back to his sister, he nodded carefully. "You're right, something must be done about our current... situation." It was certainly anything but ideal. Much as he had enjoyed the recent family situation they had come into, it was all far too ordinary. Too ordinary for him, too ordinary for Mchawi, and far too ordinary for a child like Ilizi. She had such promise. His daughter would grow up to be something spectacular, and it was up to him to help her.
"If our rightful path is set, as I'm inclined to believe it is... then we will come back to it when the time is right." He said finally. "Since we haven't, I suppose that means that the time has yet to come, so our next best option... would be to raid some more prides in search of seers. Maybe we'll get lucky." He glanced down at the map. "We've been heading away from the Aka'mleli for so long. Perhaps it's time for a change of direction." He pointed toward the west, though why, he couldn't say for sure. "Maybe something good lies out that way."
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