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Well, this was embarrassing, and a little bit scary, too, which only made it more embarrassing. Kivi was a Stormborn with iron in her blood, and so she wasn't supposed to get scared when things like this happened. The problem was that Kivi had never been lost before, and it was scary not to know where she was or how to get back to familiar territory.

"Hello!" she called into the trees surrounding her. They all looked the same to her, and she couldn't see the sun or the moon or the stars, or any way to navigate. "Is anybody out there?"

It actually didn't occur to her to be afraid of the ways it could be dangerous to call out in the woods. She was too much a Stormborn to think that there could be any sort of threat to her. Technically she knew she was still in the Stormborn lands, and so there wasn't any way she was in real danger.

Unless she couldn't get un-lost and starved to death. Or was gotten by the ghost in the woods.

Burzum was not where he should have been. He should have been in or around the den with his family, but that wasn't very interesting. He felt dangerous, and he wanted to be dangerous, and it was difficult to do that when everyone around was related to him. Not that he wanted to hurt anyone. Just scare them a little. And he always got in trouble for doing that around the den.

So instead the white cub had crept into the forest, heading for the main body of the pride, what was called the Stronghold. He didn't intend to leave the forest. He just planned to go close enough that he might encounter a wandering Stormborn and then scare them. There had not been any consequences for that so far. Though he had also never tried it before, so maybe there were and he just didn't know it.

He had been about to give up and go home, though, when he heard a high voice asking if there was anyone there. It had been hours and no one had come by. But now someone had, and despite the fact that the speaker was obviously youthful, the voice didn't belong to anyone in his family. Yes!

"Eeeeeoooou!" he howled.

Frustrated and more afraid than she would have willingly admitted, Kivi hissed, drawing her lips back from her sharp teeth in an uncharacteristic snarl. A few of her siblings snarled very well, and both her mothers were good at it, but Kivi herself was usually much too pleasant to bare teeth to anyone. If she hadn't been so thoroughly spooked by the ghastly noises that seemed somehow to be coming nearer, she might have gone her whole life without ever snarling.

"Stop that!" she said again, though she didn't expect to receive any more obedience this time than the last time. Especially since her voice did this little squeaking thing that made her sound far more tremulous than she was.

Thinking that another tactic might be more successful, Kivi added softly, "If you're hurt or angry, or there's something else wrong, there's no need to howl about it." The idea was that if she spoke softly, the howler would have to be quiet to hear her.

Kivi's second idea turned out to be more effective than her initial attempts to quiet Burzum. He'd been very pleased with the effect his howling cries were having, and not inclined to stop making those noises, except he wanted to hear how scared she was, and when she spoke quietly he couldn't do that.

The fur down his back and around his shoulders fluffed out when he realized that she was trying to be nice to him. Nice! His own lips pulled back in an expression of disgust. He had no use for that particular adjective. He wasn't nice. There was a darkness inside that even his parents had seen. Why else would they give a white cub a name that meant "darkness?"

"Get out!" he hissed, not trusting himself to speak in his usual voice, which was too squeaky and high to ever be intimidating. "These woods are ghostly haunts, and no place for silly sun-cubs."

Kivi was, for a Stormborn, a very nice, soft-hearted lion. She was not stupid though, nor was she a pushover. Having now seen the cub she suspected was the source of the horrendous noises and heard him claim to be a ghost, she was not credulous enough to accept his claim without proof.

"Prove it then. Do something ghostly."

Not that Kivi really knew what ghosts did. They floated, maybe, and they could vanish and reappear at will. Since she didn't see how he could have gotten into the tree without floating, it seemed plausible that he could do that, but he had definitely seemed to be sitting on the branch, not floating over it.

"Disappear," she commanded. "That way I'll know you're a ghost."

Burzum frowned through his scowl, which was harder that he had expected. He was also getting tired of holding his face that way. Who would have thought it actually took muscle control to do that? Not Burz!

"What do you know about ghostly things?" he snorted. "Silly sun-cub."

Her demand that he disappear intrigued him though, and he wondered if he might give the illusion of disappearing. He knew the grown-ups in his family could disappear, or nearly so, because they were so good at moving quietly and blending in, but he wasn't that good. Not yet anyway.

"I'll disappear though. But when I do, you have to leave, or else I'll come back and I'll eat your spirit." That sounded appropriately scary and threatening.

"Hey, what's it like to be a ghost?" she asked, but the ghost had vanished.

She had been watching him the whole time, and then he just took a step forward, as if he was going to start walking in the air (which would have met her floating requirement nicely) and she couldn't see him any longer. That was both startling and spooky. She hadn't expected him to actually vanish.

"Hello?" she called. "Are you still here?"

When he didn't respond and the fur on her back didn't lie flat still, Kivi got the impression that she might have pushed her luck too far with this ghost, and that if she didn't go away as he'd ordered her to he actually might eat her spirit. Ghosts might need to eat spirits to remain in existence. Everyone needed to eat, after all.

The thought was creepy and uncomfortable and yet she would not simply run away, because that would be cowardly. Instead she turned around and sauntered quickly in the direction she'd come from, hoping it would eventually lead her home. Because she was still lost.

Burzum did his best to quiet his breathing so that it would be as if he wasn't there at all. This meant he didn't have to answer the question the sun-cub had asked, which suited him anyway. He wasn't really a ghost, and he didn't think he'd better do more than he had in pretending to be one. The real spirits of the forest might get angry at him, and he didn't think he'd enjoy what happened then.

After a while of pretending he wasn't there, the sun-cub finally took the hint and cleared out. Not as quickly as Burzum thought she should have, and not in the direction Burzum would have taken to reach the main body of the pride, but it was not his responsibility to make sure she got home all right. He had done his part in keeping her out of his family's part of the woods.

On his way home Burzum reflected on the experience. Perhaps this was what it was like to be a reaver on sentry duty. If so, he rather enjoyed it. But reavers also had to fight, he remembered, and he wasn't sure there was anyone in his immediate family who could teach him to do that. Maybe his Odd-uncle, who went back and forth between the pride and the forest. He would ask the next time he visited.