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 Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 1:23 pm
 Pride rock was crowded with cubs these days, and sometimes you just needed a bit of rest from it all. Dayo was hanging around near the safety of her family but still far enough away not to trip over all her siblings. The grass in the area was flattened by many paws, and insects had nowhere to hide from cubs honing their hunting skills.
Dayo wasn't play hunting now, however. She was too busy watching a curious pit in a sandy area. There was something down there in the middle, and she could swear she'd seen an ant slip down there and vanish. She tried to catch the scent of whatever it was but with so many lions living in the area it was hard to scent much else.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 2:03 pm
 Imara couldn't make up her mind.
Did she lie down over here, or over there? See, in one spot there was shade, which was nice, but sometimes she wanted to lay in the sun. Besides, there was a bit too much grass under this particular tree, while over there the grass was just too flat.
Which left the lioness to do a rather strange, ridiculous looking ritual, whcih consisted of yling in one spot, then standing, and walking to another spot, and lying down. and repeat this a few times, before she decided she wanted neither spot, really, so she just sat down and scowled at the world for not providing her with an ideal spot to lay down.
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Posted: Sat Jan 21, 2012 2:20 pm
A dark lioness pacing nearby was diverting Dayo's attention from the curious ant-eating sandpit. She cocked her head and tried to figure out what the lioness was doing. She seemed to be afflicted by what her mom used to call "ants in the fur". The young cub cocked her head the other way as the adult sat down scowling. Wow, she looked really mad about... something. The sand pit was forgotten and Dayo padded over to the lioness, sitting down in front of her and looking up at her face.
"Why are you mad," she asked bluntly, "Did you miss the zebra?"
It was a perfectly valid question according to the cub. Last time she had been down it was because she missed out on tasting a chunk of zebra that her daddy brought back to them. Missing naptime could also make her a bit grumpy, but she was rarely as upset as this lioness looked.
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Posted: Mon Jan 23, 2012 6:08 pm
Imara was too busy being angry at the world's cruelty to really notice the little cub, until it outright talked at her. An ear slowly swiveled in the cub's direction, followed by the dark lioness' attention. The scowl softened slightly, but it remained there, mostly because it was her default expression.
"What zebra? No. I didn't miss a zebra."
Suddenly Imaa realized she was talking to a cub, and she wasn't a friendly looking lioness. Crap, she might get in trouble for this. "I'm not mad. Where are your parents?" She asked, curling her tail around her paws and flicking her flame-colored tail.
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 5:07 am
Oh, ok. No zebra. Dayo supposed there could be other reasons to look like that. She tilted her head this way and that, trying to figure out what it could be. Her gaze stuck on the colourful tail tuft and she followed its movements for a while before looking back up at the lioness. Still not looking very happy.
"Well you don't look happy," the cub said, "Does your tummy hurt? My mom says I shouldn't be all frowny because my face might get stuck that way. Did you get stuck like that?"
She hadn't answered the question but her head was filled with questions of her own and that made her own attention span suffer. She didn't mean to be impolite and ignore questions from a grownup, but sometimes she did since everything she was supposed to do didn't fit in her head at once. Some things got lost on the way.
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Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2012 7:19 am
Ugh, Imara really had no idea how to deal with cubs like this. And she wondered if she should start taking offense at all the comments on her face! "My 'tummy' doesn't hurt." She said, forcefully using the childish expression. Tummy! Had she ever even said such a word? Her ears laid back uncomfortably, which just made her look even moodier.
"Faces don't get stuck." Imara was doing a terrible job of proving this, though, since she had hardly lightened up since the cub had appeared. "Where are your parents?" She asked again, because the dark lioness was okay enough with repeating questions if they weren't answered.
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Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 12:15 pm
Dayo didn't look entirely convinced that faces couldn't get stuck. The lioness did have more than one expression so perhaps she wasn't completely stuck, but the two choices seemed to be "grumpy" or "grumpier". The tiny cub beamed at her to try to see if she would maybe smile a little.
"Oh," she said at the question, "Over there somewhere. I'm Dayo. I've got a mom and a dad and looooots of siblings. They're the ones making all the noise."
She waved her paw in the general direction of her family, still smiling up at the dark moody lioness. One of her brothers play-growled in the distance, but she couldn't hear which one. Yeah, her family was nearby and all was well. She nearly asked the lioness where her parents were, but she didn't know if she was too old to have parents or not so she had to think up something else to ask.
"Where's your mate?" she finally decided on, since she knew adult lionesses could have mates, even if they were old.
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Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2012 3:21 pm
At the cub's beaming, Imara grudgingly tried to soften her face, which didn't seem to work too well. It was hopeless, at least when she was trying to look nice, the dark lioness seemed incapable. "It is good they are near. Uh. Stay out of trouble." It was an awkward and perhaps unwarranted suggestion, but it seemed what one would do with a cub.
At the next question, Imara sputtered pathetically. "Wh-my mate?" What kind of a question was that? Had she ever indicated she had a mate? "Nowhere, I don't have a mate." She scowled, confused. "Why?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 6:50 am
Stay out out trouble. Why did grown ups always say that? All it did was make Dayo think about what would be considered 'trouble' and if it was somehting she might want to get into. Every time daddy said 'don't do that' or 'don't go there' her paws got all itchy to try whatever he was talking about. And sometimes she missed the "don't" part since she got distracted by something, and couldn't understand why adults got upset at her for waddling in the mud when they had told her to.
"What kind of trouble," she asked, just to check if it was something she ought to try. And besides, it looked like a good idea to change the subject because the lioness started looking really weird after she asked about her mate.
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:05 am
Since it was advice given without any true objective, Imara was forced to think up the sort of trouble the cub should out of. She gave her the example he had been given at least once before. "Getting killed trouble." Parents here weren't this harsh or blunt with their cubs, but all the lioness had to draw from was her own experience.
"Like hyenas biting off your head." Imara offered, perhaps unhelpfully. Her tone was neutral as she said it, so hopefully the cub wouldn't get scared or anything! She didn't want to scare her.
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:13 am
Getting killed didn't sound like something she needed to try. But the cub had no real concept of death and wasn't sure what kind of trouble could result in getting killed. She knew hyenas were bad, of course. Everyone knew that, duh! But never before had she learned that hyenas were bad and also had wicked awesome skills.
"Cooool," Dayo said, "Can they do that? I can only bite the head off really small things like crickets and maybe mice if I get to chew on them for a while. Can you bite the head of a hyena? A small one maybe? I think my dad could. He's a scout and he was away before when my old siblings were small but now he's here all the time!"
It was all making sense in her head so naturally the lioness would get what she was talking about. Right?
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:20 am
"Some hyenas can." She shrugged, not bothered by the cubs' strange interest in it. Kids where she had grown up were alright with danger and stupid things.
"Big ones. And your head is pretty small." It was true enough. Dayo was a little cub, and, naturally, had a little head. Hyenas had very big mouths, and they were also very strong mouths. Biting a cub's head off probably wouldn't be a problem! "I can bite the head of a hyena, yes. But not bite off." No lion was big enough to bite off the head of a fully grown hyena. No mortal lion, anyways.
"Well, maybe a hyena pup."
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:24 pm
Dayo nodded at this. Compared to an adult, and probably to a hyena too, her head was pretty small. She wanted to see a hyena for herself some day, but she did not want her head chewed off so she figured it might be best to wait until she was bigger and less bite-able. She knew hyenas were bad and had heard stories from when the hyenas tried to kill everyone. That was before she was born, of course, but the stories were scary-exciting.
"Have you ever done that?" she asked, "Did you kill one when the hyenas came to fight?"
Her dad hadn't killed any hyenas, but that was because he was somewhere else when they came. She was pretty sure daddy would have killed hyenas otherwise.
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:43 pm
Though she'd had to chase hyenas away a couple times as a rogue, it usually was no trouble. Hyenas were a lot smaller than full grown lions, and Imara could be quite mean. Meaner even than she looked. But that was in the past.
"I never killed a hyena." At elast she couldn't recall ever killing one. "And I wasn't in the Pridelands when the hyenas came to fight." Or else she might have killed one.
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Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 3:55 pm
"Me neither," she said and giggled, "It was before I was born. And my dad wasn't here either, but before that he was here and met my mom and made my siblings and then he came back after. I have a at least a thousand siblings!"
Dayo wasn't that good with numbers, but she knew she had a lot of siblings so she used the biggest number she knew. She had decided that she liked the dark female, even if she was a bit grumpy, and she was enjoying having a conversation with an adult. Or rather... talking her little head off with an adult. And she knew stuff about hyenas and about biting heads off so that was cool too.
"Where did you live before," she asked, "I always lived here. And my mommy Mzuza too, but my daddy Rei came from somewhere else."
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