Raruo was not sure how long had passed since he had found himself in this cave, with this female, but it must have been weeks. Months? It could not have been that long, surely, and it really only felt to him like a matter of days, if those days stretched into a timeless eternity. It was difficult to gauge, to say the least. Even so, his companion treated him as though they had known each other all their lives and he still had not been able to ask her what her name was.
Or speak at all.
Whatever illness had overcome him, it stole from him all his consciousness, and all his strength. The first step in recovering was to break the fever, which had happened some amount of time ago that Raruo could not guess. After that, his body adjusted to the idea that it was not ill any more, and drove the lingering symptoms from his beleaguered body. Then his mind slowly drifted back to him, with his memories and awareness, his ability to feel things other than pain and heat. He relearned in a short span of moments how to breathe easy, how to smell the air, how to feel the coolness of the cave around him under his fur. Things he had not known he had forgotten, and had not really. He had just been forced into separation from these sensations.
The next step was to get his strength back, but that was slow in coming. He barely had the strength in a whole day to eat once before wearing himself out, and that was without even lifting his head. Each day he grew more capable, with the gentle coaxing of his companion. Today he woke feeling the strongest he had so far, and he was resolved to speak with her at long last.
He was a lion of few words on the best of days, but this was a little ridiculous.
She came in as she often did around this time, though he didn’t know it, humming a kind song that he could almost hum along to now, he had heard it so often. He lifted his head up, grunting as he did so. She looked at him and smiled at the sight, hurrying over to support him with her own head. Pulling back once it seemed he was going to be able to keep his head up, she beamed at him. “You’ve got your head up! You must be feeling stronger. Are you hungry?”
“No,” he managed. It was the first word he had spoken to her. His voice was thick and rumbling, a growl but without any malicious intent attached to it. He simply had a deep baritone that rumbled in his chest naturally. The illness had done little to his throat, at least, and his physical ability to talk wasn’t impacted in that way. It was simply a lack of strength and consciousness that had impaired him this long.
“Well, hello!” She laughed happily, and he could tell from her expression that she was honestly gleeful at this evidence of recovery.
He almost smiled at her, but not quite. All things considered, he was not sure this small show of strength was enough to smile when he had the weight of everything he had been through, all the clouded memories, coming back to him and settling on his broad, muscled shoulders. He was not good at smiling, even when he was happy and things were normal. Now? It seemed all but impossible to find that again, but he tried to focus on this moment, on the simple task of asking her name. The rest would come in time.
Still, she smiled enough for both of them, as far as he was concerned.
“Well, how are you feeling?” She asked, bringing him from his thoughts. He looked at her for a long moment, and she seemed to be in no rush. Maybe she understood that he was still very weak, and it would not be easy to get his muscles working when he had not used them in so long. She would wait all day for him to say two words, if she had to, but thankfully it was not necessary.
“Tired,” he answered, looking annoyed that he had to waste his energy answering what he thought to be an obvious question. Of course he was tired, she knew that, she was the one taking care of him. She probably understood the depth of his exhaustion better than he did, since she had been watching him longer then he had been conscious of it. He took a breath, his neck beginning to feel heavy. “Who are… you?”
A rush of accomplishment moved through him, as it used to when he defeated a foe in battle. The veteran wondered about the silliness in the thrill, since all he had done was ask her for a name and he hadn’t even gotten it yet, but he could not really control the impulse. He watched her for a long moment, then felt his eyelids drooping. She must have seen it before him, as she was already moving, putting her head under his so when his head suddenly dropped from the air his chin landed in the softness of the fur on the back of her neck.
His eyes fluttered, then closed.
The lioness, whose fur was a soft purple, and who had an intricate marking on her shoulder that he had not had enough time to examine in depth, smiled as she felt his weight on her back. He had nodded off again, and she wondered about him. His voice had been a surprise, and she imagined in the coming days he would be able to keep himself awake much longer, and talk much more. He was making good progress toward recovery, and she felt her own, private rush of pride and hope at the idea. But unlike with Raruo, who she heard was now snoring softly, she was not about to pass out from the excitement of it all.
Though, it might not have been a bad idea. She was stuck as his pillow at the moment, after all. Sighing against the stone floor of the cave, she closed her eyes and smiled, settling her body down more comfortably and letting the big, scruffy older lion sleep.
She would introduce herself when he woke.
(Word count: 1,069 in Word)
