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His last conversation with his mother had not gone according to plan, but then Kiek hadn't really had a plan. He hadn't intended to have that conversation at all. His mother had more or less cornered him and forced him into it. It had been a good thing, ultimately, but it left him with some intimidating things to take care of. The most important of these things was, of course, to tell Gliri about his revelation.

Probably it would not come as much of a surprise to her. It hadn't been a surprise for his mother, and he had no doubt that Gliri was every bit as perceptive as his mother. For one thing, she had never gotten him mixed up with his twin. Not even once. She claimed that was because she was a twin herself and until her brother's mane grew in the two of them had been more or less identical. Kiek preferred to believe that she was observant. No one could possibly perceive as many threats and potential threats as Gliri did without being observant.

There was no sense, he felt, in putting off what must be done. Indeed, he hoped that she would be amenable to his feelings, even if she didn't reciprocate them, and allow him to court her properly, and he'd like to get started on that as soon as possible, so after the talk with his mother he set straight off for Gliri's den.

It was always a pleasure to see Kiek walking toward her den. He was not her only friend, although she suspected he believed himself to be such, but he was easily her favorite lion in the pride, and not just because he had saved her upon their first meeting. She wasn't really very fond of recalling that instance, to be honest. It reminded her too much of the way she had been when she was, well, Kiek's age. That is, the age Kiek was when they met, not the age he was now.

In any event, Gliri was glad to see him. She had been out hunting the day before with a group of lionesses who weren't bad sorts, overall, despite their tendency to ignore her because she rarely spoke to them. She had been hunting with them before and found them easier to work with than male hunters. They were less interested in glory and showing off, and more interested in simply making sure everyone was fed. Gliri was only a show-off when she told stories, and she only told stories to very small, select audiences. She hadn't told a story aloud since before coming to the Pridelands, other than when she told Kiek and his family about how she'd ended up here in the first place, and that hardly counted.

"Gliri!" Kiek greeted her the moment he caught her scent. She was better at hiding and sneaking than he would ever be, and he knew that if she didn't wish to be seen, she wouldn't be, and that most of the time she was at home she wasn't actually in her den. That was too predictable. In her estimation it was better to be somewhere nearby, watching.

"How have you been?" he asked the air, giving the impression that he was addressing an imaginary friend. Even though she wasn't obviously present, it was plain for anyone to see that he was happy to be around her. Now that he was accepted as a hunter in the pride and becoming known in a small way for being good at it despite his relative youth, Kiek had less free time to spend with his friend, particularly since he still practiced fighting, which took up time, too.

"You were hunting with Mfike's party yesterday, weren't you? Did that go well?"

"Well enough," Gliri answered, dropping down from the low tree branch she'd been occupying. The tree itself wasn't an impressive specimen, being mostly dead, and so the only way she could really blend in was if she kept very still and silent. Fortunately she was good at both things, and thus able to make a hiding place of the tree against the odds.

She was aware that her answer was ambiguous in that she had not made clear if she was doing well or if the hunt had gone well, or both of those things were the case, but she enjoyed doing that. It also gave her a few extra moments to collect herself when she wasn't dealing with people she knew and liked. Not that Kiek was such a person, but the habit was there.

"How have you been?" she asked. There was something different about the way Kiek was carrying himself today and because he was not a particularly subtle lion the best way for her to find out what it was was to ask.

When Gliri emerged from her hiding place - this time a tree Kiek never would have tried to use in that way - Kiek's ears perked up and his tail swished twice with pleasure.

"I'm glad," he told her. He guessed that she meant that she was well and that the hunt had gone well. "As for how I've been, well, I've been just fine. Healthy and all that. Probably I'm going to be allowed to lead a hunting party soon."

While Glir congratulated him Kiek did his best to collect his thoughts and put them in some kind of order. He had never told a lioness that he liked her before, and he wasn't sure he was going about it in the right way. Before he met Gliri there had been a few lionesses his own age that he'd flirted with, but he had allowed those flirtations to lapse as he spent more and more time with Gliri. They just didn't seem as important.

Gliri's smile was genuine as she congratulated Kiek on his accomplishment. She understood that anyone could gather a group of lions and go hunting, but for males especially it was a big deal to be asked to pick a party of lions and lead a hunt for the first time. She had never lived in a large pride like this, and so the custom seemed a bit strange to her. After all, she had been hunting on her own or with her brother or her brother and his family for ages.

"I'm so happy for you. I'm sure your family will be impressed, too." There was something else though. He was still full of restless energy of the sort that bespoke unshared news. "What's the other thing?"

He was, she realized with a start, younger than her brother's cubs. That was strange for her to think about. Most of the time he seemed so much older, when in fact he was barely out of adolescence. It usually only showed at times like this though. Otherwise Kiek behaved more like an adult. A charming, confident adult. His mane growing in had made him seem more grown up, and made his current excitement sort of entertaining.

Kiek didn't waste time asking Gliri how she had known there was something else he wanted to say. She did that all the time. It just lent credence to his conviction that she was more observant than she was willing to admit. As if that would have surprised anyone who knew her.

"The other thing is that I fell in love with you some time ago and have been working ever since then to make myself into someone who could protect you and provide for you and generally be the sort of lion you might want to be with." He hadn't meant to say it quite like that. He had gotten the feeling that a direct declaration would have Gliri fleeing and hiding so thoroughly he'd never find her again, or even leaving the pride completely since she didn't have a great many things or people keeping her here.

May as well be hanged for the goat as the kid. "Before you can start in on how you're an old lady, you're not that much older than I am, for one thing. And for another, in the Pridelands we have a lot of cross-generational relationships. It really isn't that out of the ordinary here."

"Gliri blinked once. Twice. A part of her wasn't surprised by Kiek's declaration, but most of her was uncomfortable with it.

"It's not just the age thing," she told him. "You really know very little about me. How do you even know whether I want somebody who can protect me and provide for me? Perhaps I prefer to be solitary and independent. For that matter, if everything you've said and done has been with the aim of becoming what you think I want, how do I know what you're really like?"

She had a past. There were even parts of her past that she couldn't remember, a time when she had been very sick, Muscardini had told her. Something had happened then, and before that, but she had no memory of it. She had a family, for the gods' sake. She had never considered taking a mate without Muscar's knowledge. Without his approval, certainly, but the idea of being with a lion Muscar had never met was just so strange to her.

Kiek had thought himself prepared to counter any argument Gliri might offer, but he had been too focused on her age. Her concerns about how well they really knew each other were more irritating than anything else, since he was certain that they were meant to be with one another, but he didn't know how to prove it.

"Gliri, do you love me?" he asked, deflecting her questions and putting to her the most important one of all.

If she told him she didn't, he wasn't sure what he'd do, exactly. He could either leave and never come back, or try to be friends with her, or try to persuade her. He knew he couldn't be content with just friendship, so it was either never see her again or be with her. Everything depended on how she answered him. The way she paused was not encouraging, but he made himself wait without fidgeting.

That was a difficult question for her to answer. She did not have a lot of experience in loving males. Not unrelated males, anyway. There had been Shazidi, for whom she had been willing to give up her twin and who had not been there when she went to find him. And the striped lion she'd met directly afterward, Mirsajadi. Theirs had been a startling instant connection that still unnerved her when she thought about it. If pressed she would say that Kiek reminded her more of Shazidi than of Mirsajadi, but she didn't know if that was a good thing.

"I care for you. You're my friend and I love you in that way, but I don't think I love you in the way you would like me to," she finally answered him. "You should really find somebody your own age."

If he did that, it would mean that she saw him even less, but perhaps that was for the best. She had never intended to stay in the Pridelands this long anyway. Perhaps it was time for her to move on. It would be easier than dealing with this, and in her experience she wasn't good enough for the males she cared about to come after her.

Kiek suddenly seemed to be watching himself in third person as his head nodded and his voice said, "I'm not interested in anybody my own age. Only you. And I think if you weren't so afraid of whatever it is that's frightening you now, you'd see that we would be so good together."

He watched as his paws stepped closer and his head lowered so that he could touch his nose to hers. "Take a chance on me. I won't let you down."

It caught him completely by surprise when her paw shot out and struck his ear. While he shook his head and tried to make sense of that Gliri vanished somewhere, leaving him with the parting warning, "But I might let you down."