[JRP] The Whole Set (Timorien & Skremmende Galning)

[Princess_Feylin]

Galning was poking about the forest where he really shouldn't have been. The part of the forest he was exploring was one that had been unofficially designated the home of the warlord's other family, his b*****d children and their mother and aunt. They weren't off-limits, per se, but for whatever reason no one really went there if they didn't have to. They said the place was creepy.

Galning was okay with creepy. Actually, Galning thought it might be cool to meet something creepy. Or someone. Or maybe just one of the warlord's b*****d daughters. They were all attractive girls, if a little bit scary. But they couldn't be nearly as scary as that hippopotamus Bilijo. Gods, that one was terrifying.

"Ghosties!" he called into the forest. "Ghoulies! Scary spirits of the forest! Where aaaare you?"  

[bipolar bee]

Timorien had been traveling a long, long time. A really long time. His mother had been rather worried about her son, Isti, even though he'd left of his own volition. Tulia had known full-well that her sons would likely have to find homes elsewhere but it hadn't been easy on the lioness. When it had come time for Tim to leave home, Tulia had begged with him to seek out his brother and cousins. With a little moping and a lot of complaining, Tim finally agreed that he would do so. He made no promise to stay, however; no, Tim had the wanderlust and it was unlikely that he'd ever want to settle down in one place.

He lost their trail for weeks and weeks; finally, after a happenstance meeting with a lioness who knew of his cousin, Timorien was back on the trail. Thankfully. By this time, Tim had decided that the wanderlust was a horrible thing and he would much rather settle down thank you very much.

Finally he caught a familiar scent; it had changed, this smell, but he recognized it nonetheless. At least, he hoped he did. He'd been clambering through the forest for the past three days, so it was nice to know he was getting closer. When he heard a voice that sounded vaguely recognizable, Tim hunkered down in a bush to watch and to wait. If it was his brother or even one of his cousins, excellent. If it wasn't?

Tim wasn't sure what would happen.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Not receiving any response from the spirits he'd been trying to provoke, Galning began to grow bored with his game. He hadn't seen anything even remotely creepy around here so far. Of course, he also hadn't seen or smelled any signs that he was in the correct part of the forest. Which, in fact, it wasn't. If it had been, there would have been sachets, fetishes, and charms to be found, which there weren't.

"Ghooooostiiiiiies!" he called again. "Aren't you supposed to be doing something to keep me away from here?"

He stood on his hind legs to peer into the crotch of a tree, just in case there was something interesting or spooky to be found there. But there wasn't. How disappointing. Why did people think that family was so weird? He just didn't get it. Not that he'd spent a lot of time around them, but still.

But still...That was a neat trick. They had somehow made the place smell like home. His old home, that is. He almost imagined he smelled one of his brothers. He was used to his cousins' scents, but this one was subtly different. There was no reason he ought to be smelling a sibling so far from home. Did spirits even have scents?

"Oh, no!" Galning exclaimed. "Does this mean they're dead? I'm smelling their dead spirit? Tim! Siki! Anane!"  

[bipolar bee]

...okay, so this was probably going to be the best opportunity that Tim would ever have to mess with his brother in the best way ever.

And he could not turn it down.

Stifling a loud laugh, Timorien did his best to throw his voice. Of course, he'd never had practice in doing such a thing, so it probably didn't work as well as he'd hoped. Even still, this was going to be amazing if it played out the way Tim pictured it in his mind.

"Yes, Isti! It is I, your brother Timoooorien~ And I am dead and I am, like, haunting yoooouuuuu~"

Oh man, this was awesome.

"And, like, I'm a ghost and stuff! I've come to eat your soul!"

The bush that Tim was hiding in rustled obnoxiously as he trembled with laughter. This wasn't the way a normal lion would greet his long-lost brother, but then again... Tim wasn't what one could call a normal lion.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Galning whirled at the sound of his brother's voice, but he couldn't quite place it. As he looked frantically for some sort of clue beyond olfactory and aural, his blue eyes grew almost impossibly wide, darting every which way so quickly it was unlikely he saw much more than a blur anyway.

"Tim!" he cried, thoroughly distressed.

How could Tim be dead? Sure, he wasn't as clever as Galning was, but that didn't mean he was incapable of surviving on his own. Galning had survived just fine by himself before coming across Asper and Atheris. Tim might not be as talented, but surely he could manage that much. Or maybe he'd lost his battle and died. Possibly at their own father's claws! It would make such an epic poem.

"What happened?" he asked before Tim got to the part about eating his soul. At that one of Galning's eyes shrank into a squint and the other began to bug out. No one was eating his soul. Not even Tim. After all, Tim used to make fun of him for his name when he was younger.

"No way!" Galning shouted, glaring at a bush that had begun to tremble, presumably with ectoplasmic rage or something. "I'll eat your soul first!"  

[bipolar bee]

The laughter that threatened burbled so close to the surface of Tim's lips that he found it ever-so-difficult to choke it back. Control, man. Control! But the sight of Isti almost losing it was pretty breathtaking! Like, in a good way! Part of Tim felt a little bad for playing such a horrible trick on his brother, but... not bad enough to stop, that much was for certain.

"I got eaten~," ghost-Tim crooned softly from within the brush, "they ate everyone!"

Giggle. Isti's eye was doing that thing again.

The bush shifted almost as if the one within the sanctity of the plant was getting comfortable. Tim was, too. There had been a branch digging into his rump the entire time he'd crouched here, but ahhh. No more. He could do this for hours.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Eaten? That seemed...like a pretty bad way to go actually. But that did not mean that Galning was going to be willing to be eaten.

That didn't even make sense, really. If he got eaten, why wouldn't the experience have been so traumatic for him that he couldn't stand to think of eating again. All those flashbacks to being bitten and gnawed and slurped. Galning shuddered at the thought.

"I could kill them for you," he offered, wondering if maybe his brother could be reasoned with. He couldn't remember if he'd ever had much luck with that before leaving home.

"I'm pretty good at that, and I bet Asper and Atheris would help," he added, leading up to his main point: "You really don't need to eat my soul."

He stared twitchily at the bush which had moved before but now gone still. Perhaps his brother's rage had subsided, and that was why the bush was no longer moving. Didn't matter. The bush had become the symbol of his frustrations with his brother, who was giggling at him. Galning hated to be laughed at.

"Hragh!" he roared, leaping into the bush with a mind to do...something. Probably something destructive.  

[bipolar bee]

"No. I need to eat your soul. I do, like. I need to eat it real bad."

Suddenly it seemed to fall quiet. Too quiet. Tim frowned as he tried to peer through the leaves that kept him hidden, now seeing nothing where once he'd had a clear view of his brother. That was strange. Stretching his neck further, he bugged out his eyes just to see if he could pinpoint his brother.

Suddenly, face full of Isti.

"Wauugh!" Branches snapped and leaves lay smattered beneath the lions as they tumbled a few feet. Tim came to a stuttering halt a fair distance from the bush that Isti had ripped him from.

"That hurt!"  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Ouu!" Galning moaned as he crashed through the brambles and branches and leaves. That had hurt a great deal more than he'd expected it to. They were just branches and leaves by the gods.

"Looking awfully solid for a ghost," he remarked as he did his best to pin his brother to the ground. He wanted to get right in his fool face and yell at him for scaring him like that. Not scaring. Galning hadn't been scared. Startling. Tricking.

Jerk.

"What're you doing here, anyway?" He demanded, swatting at Tim's head with every question. "Why'd you do that? What's wrong with you?"

Disgusted, he walked away a few steps, shaking his head. This was exactly why he hadn't been all that reluctant to leave home. He loved his mum, of course, but he'd expected to have to leave her. Leaving the rest of his family, especially his brothers, had been great. They were all coming here just to spoil things.  

[bipolar bee]

"Ow!"

Tim brought his paws up in an attempt to protect his head to no avail. His brother managed to land a few hearty swats, Tim whining between blows as he tried to get in a few good answers.

"Mama made me! -- OW, Isti, stop! -- and I only came lookin' for you so that I could keep on goin' but then my feet started -- STOP, ow! -- hurtin' and so I figured that I'd just stay here with you! And if you don't stop hittin' me I'ma tell Asper!"

Yeah! Like... for whatever good it would do.

"He's older!"

That was true. Out of all of the siblings and cousins, Asper was the oldest.

"Didn't you miss me, warm nose?"

That sent Timmy into a fit of giggles.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Balls she did!" Galning said scornfully, being deliberately vulgar to shock his brother. He had never dared do that at home. It would've upset their mother. He twitched his tail as if trying to shake off his gross brother being gross.

"You are so immature. This is a pride of warriors. Non-warriors aren't allowed. You'd be lucky if they called you a freeborn."

He was doing his best not to attack Tim for calling him warm nose, but it was really, really hard. He had to remind himself that he was a Stormborn reaver, and that it didn't matter what outlanders said. But he hated his name. Like, really hated it.

"The only way they'd let you in is if me or Asper or Atheris admitted you're family, and I don't think Asper wants you here any more than I do. Probably Atheris doesn't either. So maybe you should think about being nice if you want to stay?"

His eye was bugging out again.  

[bipolar bee]

Tim's eyes grew big as saucers as Isti said the cuss. What a cuss it was, too! He couldn't help the way his mouth pursed in a little 'o', eyes growing larger and larger and larger at the fact that Isti had ... had said a cuss! Mama would be so mad and luckily for Isti, Mama wasn't around.

He wasn't bright enough to make comment on the fact that Isti was calling him immature. A smarter lion might have brought that up, but not Tim. Never Tim.

"You can't turn me away," Tim grouched matter-of-factly, shoving his brother away with a rather unimpressive paw. "If you do, I'll just find Asper. Asper will let me stay. He'll have to."

Tim gave Isti a look as if to say gotcha.

"Because my feet hurt."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Galning was pleased at the effect of his cussing on his brother. Yeah. That'd show him he wasn't anyone to be pushed around. He had grown up. He was a reaver. There were consequences for calling him names now. He could get into fights whenever he wanted, and no one thought poorly of him. Gods - they approved of fighting here!

"I can turn you away if I want. But I won't. Because I have grown up and gotten more mature, so I won't hold it against you that you are a complete moron who makes no sense," Galning informed his brother.

"You can't call me Isti though. That's not the name they use for me here. I was re-named Skremmende Galning," he said. This was a condition on which he would not budge, and if Tim wouldn't agree to it, Galning wouldn't admit they were related. Proudly he added, "It means 'Intimidating Madman.'"

"Why should I care if your feet hurt?" he muttered. "What does that have to do with anything?"  

[bipolar bee]

Tim pouted for a quick second as he thought about how much more mature his brother was. Maybe Isti - no, Galning - was right. Maybe Tim needed to learn how to be more mature like his brother was.

"I'll call you Galning," Timmy whined, edging closer to his brother. "Just... don't make me walk anymore. I wanted to explore and stuff but..." he paused and shuffled his paw in the dirt.

"I ain't a moron, Galning," he almost-blubbered, the name feeling foreign on his tongue. "And I told you my feet hurt so I can't walk anymore," he whimpered, but the tone of his voice insinuated that his brother was a complete idiot.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"So...what? You want me to carry you back to the pride?"

Galning knew he wouldn't have denied his brother's claim, really. Not if he was truly interested in becoming one of the Stormborn. As long as Tim was serious, and wasn't doing this as part of an elaborate hoax set up to make Galning look bad. Galning wouldn't put it past him, but he was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because they were family and because he could always kill him later. Or at least fantasize about it.

"You have to make it another mile or so, until we get back to the main part of the pride and I can introduce you to the warlord or a lawspeaker to have your name added to the pride."

He did feel a little sorry for his whiny brother, but only a little. The implication that he was an idiot didn't sit well with Galning, and so he reminded Tim, "They care about family here, you know."