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Lutum was a loner in a pride that clung to what community it had. They lived together, loved together and died together. In his time here, the brown lion had seen the depths of love give way to the abyss of sorrow. The light of joy darkened by the shadow of loss. The-

-he cut off that chain of thought as getting far too flowery and poetic. He was no longer totally clueless about how most creatures thought of each other or the relationships they had, but it was still very much an outsider looking in. Mainly, Lutum failed to see why those bonds were so desirable.

He'd had one - a warped one, to be sure - with Aestivus. And just look at how hurt he'd been when the older lion had dumped both Lutum and his sister Eione in the Kitwana'antara without even a word of farewell! Why someone would put themselves in a position to be hurt like that again and again...he didn't understand it. Especially not in this pride, whose numbers were kept small by the disease.

The lion kicked a rock as he walked. It just made no sense!

The last time he and Eione had spoken at length, Lutum's sister had been debating about becoming a Healer. His love of her was the only emotional connection he'd had and maintained all this time, and so the brown lion had been as supportive as he could, allowing that Eione could do anything she put her mind to and all that. He really felt that way. It just...seemed like a useless task in a pride like this. He had to wonder if Aestivus had known just what sort of place he was leaving his kids.

Truthfully, there was a lot to wonder about his father, Lutum at least admitted that much to himself. To this day, neither he nor his sister had any idea about their mother. Nawiri had tried to put herself in that position - he felt that Eione had accepted the grey lioness in that role, probably somewhere in the time they'd spent preparing Eione for a rule they now knew would never happen. Lutum, on the other hand, had never been quite that comfortable with Nawiri.

Hell, if you put it that way, he'd never been comfortable with anyone in this pride except his own sister! The brown lion sighed and kicked another rock out of his way.

The high voice alerted Lutum to the fact that he was far from alone. The lion looked around for the source and his eye fell on a blue cub nearby. It wasn't someone he'd met - which was as surprising as the sky being blue - and he sighed as he went over to the small lion.

"Sorry," he apologized shortly. "Didn't mean to hit you."

Nawiri had drilled it into him moons ago that he should apologize to people that he hurt or inconvenienced, especially if it was an accident. Which this certainly had been. If he'd known the boy was nearby, he'd have kicked the rocks in some other direction.

"What's your name?" He was asking more out of idle curiosity than any real interest, but again, Nawiri had spent a great deal of time trying to get the idea of a proper conversation into his thick skull.

Kua, huh? Nice, simple name. But the attitude...Lutum felt himself frowning and tried to blank his expression. He didn't want to scare the little cub!

"Don't apologize, you didn't do anything wrong," he told the blue cub gruffly. Was he so fearsome that this kid kept stuttering? Or maybe the boy always spoke like that...he thought he'd heard Nawiri saying something about people who stuttered at one point. But the Queen was a Healer too, and she knew a lot about all sorts of different conditions people had.

"I wasn't trying to hurt anyone," he replied mildly. "So I am sorry if I hurt you." The boy seemed rather afraid of him, and Lutum had no idea why. Apparently one or both of the rocks he'd kicked had hit little Kua, but he didn't think that should make the cub so terrified. It certainly wouldn't have done the same to him at that age, but then again, he was still quite different from anyone else in the pride in many ways.

"It's not that I like to kick them, they were there, in the way, and I was focused on something else," Lutum admitted. He hadn't really noticed them either. That was how deep in thought the brown lion had been.

Grey eyes widened in surprise at the abrupt change in subject. It wasn't that he'd expected to carry on a philosophical discussion with a cub, or that he doubted the boy's ability to be distracted, but he found the new direction somewhat unexpected.

And funny.

Lutum couldn't help chuckling at Kua's observation. It was funny! Maybe that was why the adults of the pride didn't mind having cubs around the way his own father seemed to. Certainly there was no way to predict how they would react to anything!

He finally managed to stop laughing and respond to the boy. "Yes...but I wasn't always this size. I was just about your size when I was your age," he informed the younger lion.

"Well, that's what happens with little cubs," Lutum explained. Amazing how one completely random question had the effect of making him feel so much more comfortable. And happy! "Little cubs, like you and your brothers, grow up into big lions and lionesses. So you can't really judge what you see when they're born because they always grow up into something totally different."

Okay, he had to admit it. The cub was cute. And if Kua was a good example of what a cub was like, well, maybe it wasn't such a bad thing that they seemed to be so prevalent around here.

Not that he'd admit that to Nawiri.

"It does take time," Lutum admitted, watching the cub. "But...not nearly as long as you're thinking. Mostly because you'll be grown up before you know it." He smiled as he spoke, remembering some of the escapades he'd been involved in at various ages between Kua's and his own. They had certainly seemed to make time fly!