"So what does this mean?" Luthe looked down at Tory as he traced a line of his writing on his wall. Her head tilted, something he was starting to understand as her thoughtful face. It was endearing and he couldn't help but smile over it."First hunt... You went down the mountain with your grandmother for your first hunt and..." Tory trailed off with a snort. "You failed three times before you two came home?"
Luthe chuckled and nodded his head. "I did. I was really bad at it in the beginning."
She joined him in a laugh and he didn't feel like it was at his expense. It had been an amusing time in his life, his memories of Nyanya fond and untainted by neither her loss, nor the fact that she wasn't actually related to him. His amusement was probably why he didn't see Tory look away, didn't see the smile fade from her face.
Tory stood and left his side, hearing his mirth die in he air around them, felt his eyes on her as she moved deeper into the den, further down the wall of his history. She stopped, her paw touching the picture of four little cubs with his nyanya. There were marks below them, the one below Luthe the same as the medallion he wore. Below that, there was more writing. No wonder she hadn't seen more of the other three cubs on his walls.
"You lost all of them?" She felt her throat closing up. His shoulder touched hers and she leaned against him, waiting for his response.
"I did. I've been trying to find them ever since Nyanya passed away. My mzaa and I have started looking again now that she's found me, but we're still working on it." Unable to stop herself, Tory turned into him and curled close, trying to lend her support to him. He hadn't asked for it, hadn't even held any emotion in his voice when he spoke of it, but still. She couldn't help but think he would appreciate it.
"You'll find them." She felt his sigh against her fur as he pressed his cheek to hers.
"Thank you, Tory. You-"
"Luthe? Altair says someone was asking about Atlantis, what- Oh..." Tory jerked away at the sound of a female's voice at the cave's entrance. A very beautiful, even graceful looking lioness stood just within the entrance, her eyebrows raised. She had a perfect white pelt with a curly blonde mane that covered half her face. Two birds were with her, Altair and a large secretary raptor she hadn't heard of. She obviously knew Luthe, but how?"Mzaa, what are you-" Luthe's jaw snapped shut when he realized his blunder. Sure, there were lionesses who had cubs at a young age, hell, he'd been born when Mzaa was just old enough to have cubs. But there was no hiding the fact that his mzaa didn't look a day older than him. His teeth grit as Tory moved away from him.
"Mzaa? This cannot be your mother." Altair tilted his head as he looked from Luthe to Tory.
"Tory looks jealous, Mama-shi," he said, earning him a cuff from Hermes' wing. Tari was watching Luthe with one eyebrow raised in questioning.
"Hush up, Altair. You want us to leave so you can deal with this, babe?" Hermes asked, watching as Tari shook her head, though her eyes never left her son and the lioness with him.
"Does she not know, Luthe?" Luthe sighed at her question and shook his head. Tory continued to frown fiercely at the situation.
"She wouldn't believe me if I tried. She is adamant about Atlantis, but she doesn't believe in you and the others."
"It's rude to talk like I'm not here," Tory growled at the pair of them and didn't miss the harsh look from the secretary bird, Hermes. The female gave her a look that didn't make any sense, it was a look her aunt used to give her when she was a cub. But this female was barely old enough to be her sister, much less her mother.
"Oh, hun, I know. I'm sorry. Neither of us are used to company and I have a bad habit of talking over others. Comes with the territory."
"It's true. She does it all the time with me."
"Oh for the love of, shut up Altair," Hermes said, giving Altair another cuff before stalking over to a pile of furs where he could settle down.
Tory watched as the lioness sat down, curling her tail around her paws."Tell her, Luthe. She'll believe." Luthe sighed and Tory's attention turned to him. He looked... uncomfortable, and unsure of where to start.
"The symbol, the first one I explained to you, the one you wear around your neck. I told you it meant demigod, when a god mates with a mortal. You told me gods don't exist."
"They don't," Tory replied with a frown.
"They do." The response came from every other creature in the den, every single one.
"That symbol is on my wall because it's my birthright. I'm a demigod, as are my brother and sisters. Tory, this is my mzaa, Tarishi. The goddess of messengers." As he said that, Tory turned to look at the other lioness and watched as a haze seemed to shift over her, like a fine mist. As her form solidified, nothing about her had been altered, but now she had large golden wings like some giant bird on her back, much smaller ones on her back feet. She still looked so young and yet her eyes seemed ageless.
"I'm definitely not as young as I look, but I wasn't very old when Luthe was born. Younger than you are now."
Luthe cleared his throat in what sounded like embarrassment, which became even more evident when he slowly stressed, "Mzaa..."
The goddess smiled, the kind of smile that said while she knew what she had said no doubt made her son uncomfortable, that didn't make her regret saying it.
Tory, meanwhile, was still trying to wrap her head around this. Now that she looked at them, the similarities were unmistakeable and she realized that she had been completely ignoring them in favor of her own assumption. They had the same blond, curly mane, the same blue eyes, the same row of dots beneath each eye, the same snakes twined around a gold band. Or, in Tarishi's case, around what looked something like a straight stick marking on her shoulder. Of course, she seemed a lot more bubbly than her son, but then Luthe always talked about his grandmother raising him, so that could explain for him not sharing her mental quirks.
"You're a god..."
"I am a god," the older lioness replied with an encouraging nod.
"And Luthe is your son."
"Yup!"
"You're the one that knows about Atlantis, aren't you?" Altair had said she, after all, and the bird seemed to know Tarishi just as well, if not better than he knew Luthe. That question made the goddess' eyebrow raise and Luthe took a step towards her.
"Tory..."
"No, Luthe, it's okay. We've trusted her so far, no reason she can't learn this as well." Tari stood and moved closer to Tory before flopping back down. It was far less dignified a position than one would have expected from a goddess, but then it seemed like there were a lot of expectations that Tari just dashed away. Almost as if she caught on to Tory's difficulty deciding how to act around her, she smiled in a rather affectionate manner and said, "Relax, hun, I'm not expecting you to bow or anything. Now, when I was newly born, even before I was weaned, before Hermes was even hatched, we were taken by my mother to a secluded, hidden pride. This pride, known as the Neled Orod, was known among some of the gods as being a place where we could be raised, a place of safety and care. They were a very intelligent pride, very clever. In stories told without, they were often called Atlantis. I was still rather young when I left, determined to find my father, so I wasn't there when another god attacked the pride. Not that I would have been able to do much good, we tend to be very limited in our powers and I've never tried using them on another god before."
She paused for a moment, slowly shaking her head.
"The pride was decimated, my home destroyed. It wasn't until recently that I learned that some of the pride had survived, had found one another and had found a new home, taking on a name similar to another pride, one that had lived there before. If you really want to see them, I can take you, but..."
"But I won't be joining you. The journey is long and I don't wish to be so far from my home," Luthe finished for his mother, standing and walking over to the side entrance to his den. Had there been... pain in his voice?
Tory watched as Luthe stopped just in the mouth of the cave, watched him pause before he shook his head and left.
"My son is right, it would take many days to take you there. They would accept you with my blessing, though, of that I'm sure." It seemed like there was a but at the end of that sentence. Tory couldn't help but wonder if Tari wasn't meddling in her son's affairs just a little bit. Knowing that it was far away and that Luthe would not be coming... For some reason it did give Tory pause.
"Will you tell me more about the pride?"
"Of course, dear. Come, lie down and I'll tell you all the stories I know."
(WC: 1,993)
