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Tomi worried. It was pretty much all he did when he wasn't actually doing his job as a lawspeaker, which took up surprisingly little of his time. He had a lot to worry about though, so it wasn't as though he spent a lot of time being truly idle. To the uninitiated, however, that was probably exactly what it looked like.

For example, he was presently making the pride's herdbeasts nervous by pacing and worrying about Aesir's family. A few of them had ended up enthralled, he knew, and he did what he could to ease their lives as thralls. Some he couldn't help, like Burzum, who had been made to guard one of Njal's daughters as a really nasty bit of punishment. That one had not been pleasant to start with and had grown up to be worse. Aesir probably would have been proud of that grandson, actually.

In the distance Tomi was aware that one of the thralls minding the herds was approaching, probably to ask him to do his pacing elsewhere, but he decided to preempt them and move along.

Kraken was not making very fast progress. He kept stopping to look around and investigate things. It was a wonder his companion hadn't murdered him yet, or at least threatened him with murder. The cub's former pride had been so very different from this one, he found pretty much everything interesting.

"Look at this!" he exclaimed for the sixteenth time that morning, this time fussing over a perfectly mundane rock.

At least that's how most people would have looked at it. Unless they looked closely enough to realize it wasn't a rock at all, but a dry and dessicated dropping from a herdbeast. He had never really seen a herdbeast, having been raised on fish in his mother's pride, and he didn't know dung could get hard like that. He didn't actually realize he was prodding dung at all though. He thought it was a new kind of rock.

"Come look!" he commanded.

"I don't know. Some kind of rock, I think. But I've never seen a rock like it before." Kraken would have stayed and discussed the properties of his coprolite find, but the creepy silent thrall was ushering him and Kjell along. He figured that meant it was either something off-limits because it was bad or off-limits because it was special. Since it was a rock, from what Kraken could tell, he supposed it was probably bad, though how a rock could be bad was as much a mystery as how a rock could be special.

Kraken sighed and moved in the direction Lazarus indicated. The thrall was the worst conversationalist ever, and that was in the considered opinion of a young boy born to a female-dominated pride. In other words, Lazarus was a really, really horrible conversationalist. Kraken rolled his eyes at his brother, reacting to the thrall, then peered ahead to see what made that dark lion over there special enough that people cared what he had to say.

Tomi noted absently that another lion with two cubs in tow was crossing the field, but he did not give the observation too much thought. After all, the pride had a great many lions and many of them had cubs. Sometimes he tried to guess who he was looking at before they drew near enough for him to recognize the markings on their coats, going basically by shape and gait, but he was only one lawspeaker in nine, so it wasn't as if he knew every member of the pride by sight.

There were eight other lawspeakers new pride members could be introduced to to be inducted into the pride history. At times the lawspeakers would gather and pool their knowledge, committing to memory those things that were new so that nothing would be lost should anything happen to one of their number, but no one had called such a gathering for some time. Perhaps he should consider doing it, since the first speaker didn't seem inclined to.

I completely forgot about this. Oops. What were we trying to accomplish here?

"Well, the lioness wasn't grumpy," Kraken pointed out, thinking of the lioness who had instructed Lazarus to take him and his brother to some othe lion. "And she was kind of pretty. If you don't mind her eyes being that creepy color."

He couldn't really argue about the dampness, darkness, or hardness of the ground. Besides, he was distracted by the figure they were being led to, who looked distinctly out of place among all these prey animals, since he didn't seem to be paying the least bit of attention to them. Why would anyone come sit among prey for fun? What kind of a person was this?

"Do you think there are any other cubs around here?" he asked his brother. Because the prospect of a pride full of dour grown-ups was daunting.

At the mention of the supposed ghosts Tomi couldn't help but snort in derision. He had been born beyond the borders of the pride and in all his life he had never encountered a ghost. Not a real, dead one anyway. He had known a few creatures who could move like ghosts, making no noise and leaving no evidence of their passage, but they were mortal flesh and blood.

Tomi's gaze followed Lazarus's toward the cubs. Briefly his brow creased in a frown, but he smoothed it away. The markings on those cubs were familiar. Entirely too familiar for them to be safe in this pride under the current warlord. It was unfortunate that Aesir's markings had been so distinctive, and that he had passed them on to so many of his kin, although these cubs certainly did not have Morrigan's look. Perhaps these were the sons of one of Aesir's cubs.

"I see," he said. The thrall's lack of deference did not bother him in the least. He had been a thrall for a time, and there were still those in the pride who saw that as reason to look down on him. He didn't care. "Did she mention any suggestions, or am I just to come up with something?"

Okay. I'll try to figure out why Tomi wouldn't just keep both of them. XD Perhaps he thought splitting them up would make it less obvious whose family they might be.

Tomi grimaced and his ears flicked with irritation as he muttered, "Of course she has." But he said nothing else on the subject. He had honestly been expecting to get a blank stare from the thrall. This was, without a doubt, the most words he had ever heard the lion utter in such a brief span of time.

Tomi looked at the cubs again, offering them a tired half-smile that he hoped conveyed the fact he did not blame them for this scenario at all. But perhaps that was too much and too subtle for cubs to pick up on. A lion could hope, though, and Tomi was known to do more of that than he really ought to do, knowing the things he did.

"I think that will be the plan. That, and splitting them up." Now the look Tomi cast at the cubs was apologetic. Theirs was an unenviable position. "I will say they are ghosts from the mists if asked." Furs, especially for the cub with wing markings was a good idea, too. The other one, with Aesir's facial markings, there wasn't much to be done for him.

"What are your names, ghostborn?" he asked the cubs.

Kraken had never played any games that involved biting grown-ups except their half-sister Lysende, who was always temperamental anyway, though more so with their sisters than with him and Kjell. He got the feeling she kind of secretly liked her younger half-brothers, him and Kjell, that is. So he shrugged back at Kjell.

"They're going to split us up!" he observed in whispered horror. To illustrate his opinions on the subject he bared his tiny teeth at the new lion, who he had been prepared to like until he started talking about taking him away from his brother. That would be unbearable.

"My name's Kraken, and I'll bite your face off if you try to take my brother away," he warned the adults. What did they mean about their pelts, anyway? Rude!

So, have Laz leave both cubs with Tomi and then make it Tomi's problem to dispose of one of them, shall we? (Syntax what?)

Tomi looked after Lazarus' retreating form and called, "Thank you for bringing these ghost cubs to my attention."

He hoped that the thrall would remember to tell his mistress that the cubs would be treated as if they had been left by the ghosts. Knowing Nadezhda, she would have no problem keeping to whatever story became the official one. She was devious like that. Tomi just wanted to be sure she knew what the official story was. Slightly more important at the moment, though, was dealing with the hostile cubs he'd had dumped upon him.

"Look, you two. Kraken and...brother. This is not something you can argue, cry, or bargain your way out of. You have markings which could get you into a lot of trouble in this pride because they look like the markings of a leader that has been exiled. If people think you're kin to him, you'll be exiled or made into slaves. Maybe even killed. If you're raised by different people, maybe you'll be less noticeable. Does that make sense?"

He wondered if it was too late to spirit them into the forest and see if Kazul or one of her relatives would take them. Probably.

At least the remarks about their pelts made a little more sense now, but still not a lot. He and Kjell looked like someone unpopular and so they might be killed? What kind of place had their mother brought them to? Had she really done it on purpose? Was this what befell all of the males born to that pride? With an effort he calmed himself. Now, to calm his brother...

Kraken stepped on his brother's tail to get him to shut up. "Kjell...What if he just told us how to get out of here and we went somewhere else? We could do that, right?"

From the look on the older lion's face, he didn't think that his idea would fly. It managed to be a definite "no" even though he hadn't said a word. Kraken's face fell and he looked at his brother with a hopeless sort of "what now?" expression.

It wasn't as if Tomi particularly wanted to separate the cubs. He could understand that they were alone but for one another, and that fact by itself was enough to make him reluctant to separate them, but the separation truly was for their own good.

"You'll be able to see each other," he said, his words carrying the weight of a promise that he didn't know he would be able to keep. "But you can't live together and measures must taken to disguise or conceal your markings. I'll talk to your caretaker about it."

Which left him the matter of what lucky soul would end up with cubs that could get them into a great deal of trouble. Someone who could handle it, or who would simply not be noticed would be ideal.

"Both of you can stay with me for a few days while I figure out who will take the best care of you. And after that you will come to me for lessons in the pride's ways, and I expect you will be able to see each other then."

"I don't like it...but if you promise I'll be able to see Kjell..." Kraken trailed off and realized dejectedly that he had no way to finish that sentence. He had no threat to issue that would force the older lion to change his mind, nothing to bargain with.

He made his disgruntled face. He didn't like the direction this conversation was taking, or how little control he and Kjell had over their future. He would have to grow up fast so that he could take charge of his own future.

Augh. How do we end this?

Kraken nodded in mute agreement with his brother. He had used up most of his fight already, and the bleak future before him and Kjell was sapping his strength and will to do battle. He was determined not to give in, but there was nothing inherently wrong with not fighting all the time.

Later that night he would probably wake Kjell to see if between the two of them they could plot a different outcome, but it would be stupid to try it right this minute with their captor? Caretaker? With this person looking on. He'd just tell them they couldn't do that and remind them that it's for their own good.

"Right. I'm glad we've got that cleared up," Tomi said with sarcastic cheer. "Things will probably look a little better after some food."

At least they were in the general area where the kept herdbeasts dwelt, so it would be simple work to have a few thralls catch and kill something for the cubs, although a whole herdbeast would probably be a bit much for just the two of them. Oh well. It wasn't as if the thralls couldn't do something with the rest of the catch. And it wasn't his problem. He was a lawspeaker, and it was his privilege to inconvenience people from time to time.

Why did these things always seem to happen to him? Oh, that's right. Because he had never made any secret of the fact that his personal allegiance was to Aesir and his family and that he felt Njal's actions and policies were wrong. He had actually had a few individuals try to talk him into taking part in an uprising, but he'd talked them out of that stupidity, reminding them that was not the way things were done in the Stormborn and urging them to wait until the next breytast vindar.

"I'm Tuomas, by the way," he said to the cubs, attempting a more cheerful mien.

There. I'm calling that done. blerg.