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Kurys had been sad to see the lioness who called herself Hari leave. He would have been content, he thought, to stay with her forever. Rather, he would have been content to have her stay with him forever. She was funny and smart and very proud and sometimes fierce. Being around her made him feel alive. But she had another path to tread, she had told him, and another lion that she loved. She could not stay with him.

He had been moping about it for days, but that hadn't kept him from going through the daily routine his family had told him to follow in their absence. The routine gave him something to occupy his time and his thoughts. He needed that right now. It had been a good few weeks while Hari was with him. A wonderful few weeks. But now they were over.

"She's gone," he told himself firmly. "And she won't ever come back. Move on."

Tare sauntered through the rogue lands feeling very self-satisfied. She was well-fed, well-groomed, well-laid and delightfully not pregnant. She had gone for so long in her youth without being pregnant, but then she'd met Arindam. After Arindam there had been cubs. That litter had left her under regrettable circumstances.

Her next litter had been with a smelly lion who called himself a pirate. She hadn't wanted that one at all and had left it with the father. She had no idea what had become of them, and she was perfectly all right with that. She hadn't wanted them. She hadn't wanted the first litter either, but she had cared for their father and wanted to do her best by them for his sake, even though he had left her.

But she was not too self-satisfied to fail to notice the slow, deliberate movements of a lion performing tasks without enthusiasm. She could guess what was ailing him. "Unlucky in love?"

"Something like that," Kurys replied.

He didn't know how it was that he could grow up in this place and barely see a stranger for the whole of his childhood, but as soon as his family left the place was inundated with rogues. Probably they could sense that he was alone here and were considering how to move in on the territory. Well, he wasn't going to allow that.

"Can I help you with something?" he asked politely even though there was a bit of an edge to his voice. He was not really in the mood to deal with strangers. He was definitely not in the mood to deal with strangers who wanted to pry into his love life. That wasn't a subject he cared to discuss at the moment.

"You're pretty touchy," Tare observed with a smirk. "Definitely unlucky in love. I could help you with that."

She wasn't actually offering him sex or anything like that, although he wasn't a bad-looking lion. She was just feeling generous and gregarious and willing to help him with his problems as long as it wouldn't be too difficult for her to help. She didn't want to go out of her way or anything. This was a complete stranger after all.

"I don't actually want anything. I take care of myself without help from anybody. Sometimes I get lonely, but I'm not bad at solving that problem either." She eyed him slantwise.

"You should take me up on my offer. I'm actually very good at advice-giving when it comes to certain kinds of relationship woes." As long as she was not expected to advocate staying in a relationship or one place for very long. That wasn't really something she believed in.

Kurys eyed the lioness with suspicion. "So you just showed up out of the blue to help me with my love life? Somehow that seems completely implausible."

He relented a very little bit when he came to the conclusion that she really didn't want anything from him, even if he didn't believe that she was only there to help him with the matter of Hari. That sort of thing didn't happen. Besides there was nothing to do about Hari. He could have followed her when she left, but that would mean abandoning his family's lands and he couldn't do that.

"If I tell you what's wrong will that get rid of you sooner? I have things to do here and you're keeping me from doing them I'm afraid." He hoped she didn't ask him what things. Explaining that he was following a to-do list left to him by his family. That had amused the hell out of Hari and he didn't feel like being laughed at by anyone else for being a dutiful son.

"I think I can live with that deal," Tare said.

His unfriendly demeanor and attitude was kind of off-putting and Tare was beginning to regret her offer to do good on this strange lion's behalf. She could understand being unhappy with his lot in life and being made unpleasant because of it, but that didn't mean she had to spend time with him.

She settled comfortably with her chin on her forepaws and turned her amber eyes toward him expectantly. He would, of course, oblige her without needing to be further prompted, she expected. It would both disappoint and irritate her if she had to tell him one more time. She would probably just get up and leave if that proved to be the case.

Kurys took the nonverbal cues the strange, unnamed lioness gave him to tell her his story and settled into a comfortable position to recite his tale of woe. He had no idea why he was doing this. Oh, right. To get rid of her so he could go about his lonely business.

"I met a girl a few weeks ago. She had come from a pride that was decimated by a plague, saved by her mother and brought to the rogue lands, but she wasn't doing well on her own. I found her when she was nearly dead from heat exhaustion and privation.

"She stayed with me for a while and we got to be friends. Really good friends, I thought. But then a few days ago she left. She said there was another lion she had to meet, and that she couldn't stay." He hadn't told her that he loved her because he hadn't been aware that was how he felt, but now that she was gone he had no doubt that what he felt for her was love, and now it was too late.

Tare frowned as she listened to the stranger's tale. It was a familiar tale to her in that it resembled one of the many times in her life when a lion had been generous to her in one respect, expecting her to express her gratitude in another. Tare had no problems with physical manifestations of gratitude, but she didn't like it when people expected or demanded them of her.

"So basically you're saying that you feel like she owed you her love and gratitude just because you were nice to her and you happened to fall in love with her. Or something like love, anyway. Is that basically correct?" Tare shook her head with an expression of mixed disappointment and disgust. "Just because you feel something for her doesn't mean she has to reciprocate your feelings. It sucks and it hurts, but that's the way life is."

"And she did tell you there was someone else in her life that she's trying to get to. I assume she told you this before the minute she left this place, so it isn't as though you didn't know any better. I'm sorry that you're disappointed by the way things turned out, but there's nothing you can do to make them better." It wasn't fun being the bearer of bad news like that, but Tare figured it would be good for the lion to hear this before he began to get into a habit of doing this sort of thing.

Kurys was taken aback by the way the dark-coated lioness chose to interpret the story he'd told her. It was not at all the way he had expected her to look at it. It certainly hadn't been the way he had been looking at the matter.

"That's...not what I expected to hear," he admitted when he at last recovered his composure enough to speak without shouting. He really was kind of angry with her for making it out like it was all his fault when he'd imagined himself as the victim this whole time. Even with his instinct to shout firmly suppressed his tail lashed irritably and his ears turned backward like they wanted to lie flat. She had definitely become the enemy in his eyes.

His claws itched in their sheathes and he knew he was going to do something regrettable if he didn't get rid of the presumptuous lioness now, and so with his very best manners he told her, "I'm certain that we have anything more to say to one another. Good day, stranger."

"I'm just telling you the way I see it," Gintare said without remorse. When she was younger it had been a game for her to tease the young pads of a pride called the Ukuucha'Wafalme and try to show them that not all women needed or wanted a man to boss them around and subjugate them.

She was not too stupid to fail to notice the physical signs of the lion's irritation. She supposed it was understandable for him to be angry at having his bubble burst, but why kill the messenger? This was hardly her fault, now was it? She shook her head mentally and returned his dismissal before continuing on her way.

"Good day to you, too. Better luck in the future."

That hadn't been very much fun at all. Oh well. Maybe the next person she met would be better.