Ghazaala wasn't really a lioness who tended to look for the best in people, but most of the time she could at least find something interesting about the people around her, something to keep her from despising them right away. That was how she kept herself polite until they gave her a better reason to like them - or dislike them. At present Ghazaala was still fuming about a lion she'd met weeks ago. He had been a complete and total arse. And that term was far too mild for what the lioness wanted to convey. She just couldn't come up with anything better, even after several weeks of trying.There had been a few people she'd met in her travels since then, and they had gone a good way to restoring her faith in the male sex, but her mind still circled back to that one arse. Some days she was able to see it as flattering, except his parting words had been anything but, and her mind lingered on those more than she wanted it to. It wasn't really flattering, but it also wasn't her fault. The lion had been an arse and that was all there was to it. She just wished she could get him out of her head.
And she really wished she didn't seem to be a magnet for creeps and jerks. There wasn't much she could do about that, but she had decided it might be time to visit one of her friends, a strong, independent lioness named Gintare. She'd not seen her in several seasons because they were both wanderers, but she could really use a dose of Tare's sharp-tongued sassiness and casual attitude toward men.
The problem was that Tare could not be depended upon to be in a given place at a given time. She was a confirmed wanderer who didn't really even have much of a home base. Ghazaala knew that Tare used to spend time hanging out around the Ukuucha'Wafalme because she liked to tease the young pesars who were out to become pads with banu to subjugate, as Tare put it, but Ghazaala didn't really want to go there. She'd had more than enough lions like that in her life lately. So perhaps going in search of Tare was not the best plan given Ghazaala's current frame of mind.
Ghazaala yawned and stretched, digging her claws deeply into the ground and making deep grooves in the soil. It was a silly thing, but seeing the depth of the mark she was able to make made the dark eyed lioness feel very proud of herself. She liked to imagine that it showed she was a strong, powerful lioness when she did that, instead of the somewhat large and out of shape lioness she knew herself to be in reality. An active fantasy life was a large part of what kept the lioness going.
She continued to look at the grooves her claws had rent in the ground but she looked without really seeing them. Instead her mind had traveled to some of the other rogues she knew and had come to become friendly with over the course of several accidental encounters and interactions. Most notably a pair of twin siblings came to mind, Muscardini and Gliri. Gliri was painfully shy, but she was clever and funny like her brother, who was among the most charming lions she had ever met.
That was exactly what she needed. Some time with Gliri and Muscar. The last time she had gotten together with the two of them things had been very congenial, and Muscar had seemed pretty friendly. At the time she hadn't given it much thought because she'd been fixated on the lion who had occupied her thoughts almost constantly since the first time she met him. But now that she no longer had that particular veil over her eyes it seemed to her that maybe there could be a chance of something more happening between her and Muscar.
Finding Muscar and Gliri would not be difficult. The pair had lived in the same place for some time now and she knew how well they liked it. The last time she had come passed through their territory Gliri had confided in her that she had recently met a young lion that had quite tickled her fancy and stolen her heart. Not that Gliri had put it like that, of course, but Ghazaala was not stupid. She could see the way Gliri looked when she spoke about the lion. Perhaps by now the shy lioness would have found the courage to act on her infatuation.
Ghazaala had already begun to walk as she considered the many possibilities of what might happen when she got together with Muscardini and his sister. She looked forward to exchanging gossip and finding out what had happened with Gliri's crush. The other lioness had been very reluctant to tell her twin brother about it, even though usually the two of them shared everything. Gliri had been under the impression that Muscar would not approve, and that he would be angry with her for hiding things. Ghazaala suspected Gliri was correct, but she doubted things would get better if Gliri waited.
And how would Gliri feel if her brother and Ghazaala became involved romantically, Ghazaala wondered. She did not obviously seem to be the sort to be jealous or unpleasant, but Ghazaala would be the first to admit that she did not know the pair all that well. She was just operating based on conjecture and a little bit on hope, even though she knew hope was a foolish thing to rely on. At least that is what her past experiences had told her.
"It will not go with Muscar and Gliri as it went with that arse from before," Ghazaala assured herself. "Neither of them is that sort of lion."
It would be a journey that would take many days, possibly even weeks depending on the weather, but Ghazaala did not mind that so much. She had a goal, a purpose, and more importantly she had a spark of hope that this time things would be different and better. This time things would work out and it would be just like in the stories.
