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Anyone from the Tuait'tekem looking at Tay would hardly have recognized the dark-coated lioness. Once she had been effervescent and optimistic, but no longer. Not only was she thin and scruffy and filthy, but she carried herself like a lioness who had lost all hope and simply waited for death.

In fact, two days ago Tay had come to the decision to do just that. She had stopped eating and ceased to look for sources of water. Now she simply wandered the rogue lands from the time she woke up until her body dropped from exhaustion.

The band had traveled a long way from the pride in search of new peoples to plunder, but so far they had met with not a soul. Not even a random rogue. Most of the band was becoming short-tempered and irritable because of this, but not Ru. He was still short-tempered and irritable, but for a different reason. It was simply too bloody hot.

"Nothing," he had reported back to his captain early that morning. "Again. We're heading into desert territory. We're not going to find anyone."

His captain had snarled. He was too proud to admit that he had been wrong in choosing this direction and certainly too proud to acknowledge that the young reaver he'd taken with him because he'd heard of his talent as a scout and point guard had been right when he said two days ago that they wouldn't find anything. He had ordered Ru to keep looking.

Ru snarled and obeyed.

Tay's paws were raw and bloody from days of walking over hot sandy ground, and then hard stony ground. Her legs moved as though weighted with lead and trudging through wet sand. Her tail dragged on the ground and her nose nearly did the same. She stumbled over nothing and lay where she fell, breathing raggedly. Tay thought today might be the day she died. That wouldn't be so bad, she mused as she closed her eyes.

With her eyes closed Tay was assaulted by a veritable montage of memories. All the reasons she'd left home, the moment she walked out on the lion who was supposed to be her mate but who never saw her leaving, and the lie she told her family about wanting to go into the desert to meditate for a few days. This was not how her life was supposed to go.

"Sut," she whispered miserably. "Why?"

In the desolate wasteland that surrounded him, Ru had no difficulty discerning the sound of someone's voice in misery. It irked him, because that meant that he had been incorrect in telling his captain earlier that there was not a single sorry soul in this gods-forsaken patch of land, which meant in turn that the band would be out here for several days yet.

Unless he pretended not to have heard it. But that could so easily backfire. If, for instance, somebody else detected that other lion, his own reputation for being a superlative scout would be tarnished. That was unacceptable. So it seemed he would have to at least investigate.

Fortunate - or unfortunately, depending on how one viewed it - the source of the sobbing noises was nearby. As he drew near the noises ceased and Ru wondered if perhaps the lioness had died.

Tay tried to ignore the scent of a lion carried to her on the weak breeze. She heard no footfalls, even after her traitorous ears brought her the lion's tenor voice asking if she was still alive. If she just lay there, surely he would believe her dead and leave her be.

Unfortunately, playing dead just earned her a prodding, and when she didn't respond to that a heavy paw held her down while another one hovered just in front of her nose. She didn't think quickly enough to hold her breath, and so in a matter of moments she was discovered. Well. Maybe he would kill her.

If he was going to kill her, he was going about it slowly she thought with some irritation and also the first hint of humor she'd expressed in more than a season. It seemed first he was giving her a fairly careful going-over, as if he were studying her. Maybe he was.

"I'm trying to die here," she tried to say, but her voice was hoarse in her dry throat.

After examining the lioness fairly closely and determining that she was not dead yet, Ru stepped back to decide what he wanted to do about that. Whether he wanted to kill her and have done with it, or make a thrall of her. In her present condition she would make a sorry thrall, but with time and care that could be remedied.

"I'm....to die here," she rasped. He missed a word in there somewhere, but even if he had heard it, the lioness's wishes in the matter would not have made much of a difference.

"Not today," he told her now that she was showing signs of life. If she was going to live, then she was going to be a thrall. She would not bring him much glory.

Tay opened her dark eyes reluctantly and did her very best to glower at the lion who was bothering her, poking her and prodding her, and telling her she was not going to die today. She was not very good at glowering, having had very little practice at it so far in her life.

It seemed to her that she was near enough to dying from privation or exhaustion that if she didn't die today, it would be soon unless this lion interfered, as he appeared to be inclined to do. In truth, the reason she bared her teeth at him when he took her by the scruff of her neck to shift her was nothing to do with defending herself, but irritation at him for thwarting her plans.

"Please," she whimpered. "Let me die."

Ru put her down for a moment to tell her something vitally important to her future. He wasn't sure how well she would remember it in the condition she was currently in, but Ru had always preferred to explain things to the thralls he captured, at least superficially.

"I am taking you with me back to my pride, the Stormborn, where you will be a thrall. A thrall is a worker. You will obey the command of any lion above you, which for the time being means me."

He waited, his emerald eyes watching her hematite ones for the moment when understanding and acceptance dawned. When it came he nodded and continued to hold her gaze, this time with the masterful expression of a lion who was naturally dominant. Funnily, that was only half of who he was, but he had only shown the other half to Kazul.

To his thrall he said, "You do not have my permission to die."

Tay found herself compelled by the green-eyed lion who had picked her up, dragged her a short distance, and then put her down to inform her that she was to be a slave and that she would not die. Because he would not permit it.

"I...I will try," she promised. "To live."

She didn't know what it was about him that soothed her. The prospect of being a slave ought to terrify her or anger her, but in reality it was freeing to think that her life was no longer her own, and that from now on she would not have to think or feel, just obey.

"You will do better than try," Ru told her firmly.It was not without an ironic grin that he told her, "In fact, there are those who would say that today is the first day of the rest of your life."

True, the rest of her life would be slavery, drudge work, and the gods only knew what else, but Ru thought he could turn her into something of value once she was cleaned up and filled out. She would make a good gift at that point, perhaps even fit for the Warlord.

At any rate, Ru intended to do his best to see to it hers was not a bad life. It seemed to him that her life had recently been difficult enough. Perhaps it was time for her fate to change.