"Erlendr," Jakyra said as she trotted back into his den. "I'm challenging you for my freedom. Apparently this is allowed because it is the season of changing winds. I hope you will show me the honor of answering my challenge."
After asking around and gleaning all she could from the thralls and freeborn who would speak with her and answer her questions, Jakyra had determined that this breytast vindar thing that the priestess had announced meant that she could challenge Erlendr to a fight sort of like the askorun lions fought to be allowed into the pride.
If she won, she would be considered a freeborn. If she lost, well, she wasn't going to think about that now. She just had to win.
For once in her life, Kyra wouldn't have minded if someone let her win a fight, as she thought it possible Erlendr might do now that she had announced her intentions to him (not that there had ever been any secret that she hated being a thrall). But she didn't think Erlendr would do so. He was too honorable. And besides, she didn't really want to win her freedom like that.
However, it seemed that the point was moot. Erlendr was not in their den. His den, really, but since they both lived there she couldn't help thinking of it with the combined pronoun. Besides which, there was a small, soft part of her that sort of wanted the den to be theirs. Like the two of them were together. Oh, she hadn't given up her misogynistic ways or anything like that, but for Erlendr she would make an exception. He was different. She had found that out very early on in their acquaintance.
Her tail twitched and her whiskers shifted irritably as she turned around and made certain that she had not missed a message or a sign from the reaver, telling her where she might find him. She was not one hundred percent clear on the rules for this breytast vindar thing, but given what she knew of the Stormborn way of doing things, it would not be enough for her simply to leave him a note in those strange scratched symbols he had been teaching her. She had agreed to learn to please him, but in truth she saw little point in writing, particularly in writing the way another pride did, since she was not a member of that pride.
Erlendr had left the den very early that morning, she recalled, leaving before she was properly awake. But he had said something to her before he left. Had he told her what his plans for the day were? She sincerely hoped that his early departure was not because he was going out viking with his captain, Lucivar. Kyra did not particularly like the lion, even though he had a good standing in the pride and was reputed to be very good at what he did. She did not approve of what he did, by and large, so being especially good at it was not the way to impress her. She played nice with him when he came to see Erlendr because she cared what Erlendr thought and she knew her feelings toward Lucivar upset him, but that was the extent of it.
She left the den frowning and walked aimlessly through the pride. She was still a thrall as far as the pride was concerned, but she was a personal thrall, the belonging of a specific freeborn. That allowed her to do most things unmolested. At least by lions who knew whose property she was, and typically even mentioning the name of her master was enough to make most Stormborn back off. Trifling with another freeborn's thrall was an excellent way to get into a lot of trouble. Kyra still was not sure how she felt about that, really. She hated being enslaved and the assumption that females were inherently less suited to fighting than males, and she found it somewhat hypocritical that the pride was so careless about taking things from people outside of the pride and so fierce in the defense of their things within the pride.
Kyra did not particularly want to spend her entire day hunting around for Erlendr or look like a fool by asking everyone who might have seen him if they had, and if they knew where he might be now. She had always been a prideful lioness and being enslaved had not changed that. Not when she was kidnapped as a cub and not now when she was enthralled by Erlendr. Rather than do so, she turned her thoughts to the morning, doing her best to recall what it was Erlendr had said to her before he left.
She had been barely awake, her eyes opened only the merest crack to make sure the movement she sensed rather than heard was caused by Erlendr and not some intruder. He had stood a carefully polite distance from her and spoken in that soft, sort of accented way he had, his speech circuitous and backwards. His day would begin in solitude with a workout, she knew, he would not have mentioned that. He had asked her if she had heard something. At least, that is what she had thought at the time, but it had made little sense to her. She had not been completely awake after all.
Herds! He had gone to watch the herds. She was not sure why, exactly, he would do that, but perhaps Lucivar was contemplating a viking to bring back more beasts and Erlendr had been asked to take a look at the pride's holdings to determine what they could use more of. That actually did make sense. And if nothing else, it gave Kyra a place to start, so she turned her paws in the direction of the pride's kept herdbeasts and began to walk purposefully.
Before too long she recognized the slim golden lion perched on a rock overlooking the preybeasts below. His right paw was moving in the dirt, presumably marking down headcounts. That was one use for his writing, Kyra supposed, but since only they two could read it the applicability was extremely limited.
"Erlendr," she called to him. "I challenge you for my freedom."
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