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 Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:25 pm
Needless to say, their relationship did not merely stop at the end of our last glimpse of them. This was partly due to the very deep grief that Marcor still felt about his tragedy, but also due to their tentative getting to know one another. Both matters were slow to progress, however. They remained at the scene of the slaughter for a full week, during which he told her all about the chicks.
"You see," he began, the day after she had appeared, "none of us know where their mother went off to. The way I found them was nearly a disaster itself." She had watched him closely as he spoke, and was pleased to see that recounting this tale was easing some of his sorrow, rather than further increasing it. "It had poured rain for three days previous, during which I had stayed dry, if cramped, in an abandoned cheetah den. After the rains tapered off, I was ready to kill and eat the first thing that came into sight, be it crocodile, vulture, or leopard!"
His soft chuckle gave lie to the words, though it was clear he had indeed been ravenous. Be that as it may, he was not in the habit of eating other felines. He firmly believe in predator to predator respect, and would not break that by feasting on a feline under any circumstances. So she smiled and made a noise in her throat to encourage him on in his story, her orange eyes fixed unerringly on his face.
"Before I'd had time to hunt, however, I heard this dreadful racket. Tiny voices, lifted in fright and pleas for help!" His ears had pinned a little at the memory, but he continued on. "I bounded to a rushing stream, and what should I see (and hear) coming, but a flotilla of bedraggled chicks! There had been so much rain that, though the stream wasn't very deap, it was running quite swiftly." A paw drawn across in front of him intimated the stream, and how fast the water flowed. "Here they came, all clamoring for help. Hungry as I was, I couldn't let the poor things drown."
He paused to meet her eyes intently. "I hope you know, I'd not be so callous as to save them merely so I could eat them." His statement was so much in earnest, she didn't dare chuckle at him. Not everyone had the strict scruples he did, and would not have hesitated to use this opportunity for a quick snack. But she had been raised to value life, in all its forms, and so she nodded soberly. "A noble intent," she agreed solemnly, tail curling primly around her forepaws. "Please, continue."
Satisfied that she believed him, his eyes once more defocused, imagining the flailing chicks speeding towards him down the stream. "I couldn't think how to catch them all, for there were more of them than I had paws. It was unthinkable to be content with only saving a few of them, while the rest were carried on to who knew what doom." He grimaced as his heart twinged at the doom that they had met anyway, but pressed on. "So I did the only thing I could think to do. I laid myself in the stream."
To Samishai's surprise, he sprawled himself on the ground at these words, pantomining how he had blocked the water. She put a paw over her muzzle to stop the laughter that tried to bubble out, for he now waved his paws about, retelling how he had snatched them up, nearly missing one of the twins, and stashed each of them in his thick mane. He sat up and cupped his large paws together. "Look, here in these paws, I could hold three of them together, they were so small!"
She reached a paw and slid it along the pads that cupped the remembered babies, caressing the strong, gentle paws before looking up at him warmly. "It is amazing that you went to such lengths to save the young ones of another father." More so that they had been avians, not even of the same kind as he. She smiled more, giving his paw a light grip of sincerity. "You are a wonderful person, to care so about others."
Discomfited by the soft but personal touch, he dropped his paws as if he had cupped a super-heated rock, rather than the imagined chicks. He mumbled something unintelligibly, and then occupied himself with picking up feathers from the ground. Bemused but patient, she left him alone to occupy himself while she left to hunt, for he had been neglecting himself and his needs while he grieved. She was quietly proud of being able to feed the both of them, and did so with a will and a light heart.
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Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 1:39 pm
The next day the storm of grief returned. He wept and mourned over the pile of feathers he had gathered the day before, curling his forelegs about the mismatched mound as if they were the chicks themselves, his tears sliding from feather to feather in salty trickles that softened the earth beneath them. For a time she left him to his sorrow, but as the day wore on, she went to him and spoke softly. He seemed oblivious to her presence, though this also meant he had accepted her being there, a part of his landscape now. With her own heart aching, she left him once more.
During that night, his cries grew angrier, and soon the feathers were flying about madly. She rushed up from the nook she had made to sleep in, eyes wide with alarm, to see feathers floating in the moonlight, and him raging about the scene wher eit had happened, roaring and shouting insults and recriminations to the sky. She'd never witnessed such grief, but she knew it must be part of the process. Though she was tempted to interfere, to try and calm him, she restrained herself, and merely sat all night with him, watching over him and ensuring he did himself no harm.
By morning, the weary-eyed lioness was witness to yet another change in her companion. He was once more sobbing, but this time it was with the chains of guilt tearing at him. He was stretched full out upon the ground, moaning as if his innards had been pulled out. Rising, she went to him, quiet paws barely rustling the grass. When she stood over him, he gazed up at her with bloodshot eyes, and groaned raspily, "What have I done? What have I done?"
Touched beyond words by such an idea, she laid beside him, wrapping a foreleg about him and set to grooming his face, which was matted with tears, mud, and the minuscule down of the lost chicks. "You have loved and lost," she answered him softly, nuzzling him in a motherly fashion. "But having been loved, they still live, within your great heart." Through that day, he repeated the question, and otehrs like it, and she patiently answered him, each and every time, in the same way she had already.
It wasn't until the next day that he was able to rise and care for himself again. He groomed the worst of the mud out of his coat, and finally ate something more than a few nibbles. In fact, Samishai went out twice that day, in order to sate his appetite. Thus encouraged, she stayed faithfully by his side, listening when he retold parts of the tale to her that she'd already heard, or even bits of his life before the chicks' arrival. She listened, learned, and stored it all in her heart. It was during this time that they finally exchanged names, though she doubted he'd remember hers just yet. But his... she savored his, letting it echo inside her with a similar hum to that of her visions. Marcor....
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