Ixil had been searching for something interesting for a very long time... Searching, but never finding. Sure, every now and then he'd run into an interesting character on the open plains, but... Geez, was it ever annoying... None could hold his attention for very long, and there certainly wasn't much of anyone who seemed to want to hang out with him. Of course... Even Ixil had to admit that he was difficult to be around sometimes. Alright, difficult to be around often. His hardened exterior to strangers was quite effective. His tail flicked lightly, the only hint anyone would ever be able to gather that he was restless... He tended not to show such things to just anyone. This, though, simply had to come to an end, he couldn't take it anymore!
Ixil leapt from the tree in one smooth movement and stalked off, seemingly unnoticed. His stride was ever-so-slightly stiffer than normal.
Inari, too, had run into a similar snag. However... It wasn't that people didn't want to hang around with her, it was that they actually wanted to get to know her. Most of them annoyed her. Ears folded back and tail whipping side to side, Inari padded away from her last irritation- a great yellow form that she (hoped to have) left on the horizon never to see again. Why the hell do I get hit on so much? She demanded to herself, or any gods that might be listening to her thoughts through some form of trickery. Her face formed quite the scowl, as if she'd demanded the question aloud to the fellow back there... What was his name again? Didn't matter, and she didn't remember either.
He didn't seem to be following, though, for which she was grateful. A quick over the shoulder with an accompanying smirk confirmed this suspicion and her pace relaxed. Just as quickly as her anger had boiled up, it calmed down and vanished.
This was, in part, due to a very familiar scent on the wind... Someone upwind... She would never mistake that scent for anyone else. "Ixil, can it be?" She asked herself in a whisper.
Ixil, of course, was a friend from the past.
It was a small community of rogues. Any size, species, whatever you could name was accepted. They weren't a pride, per se, as members were free to come and go as desired, and there were no variety of restrictions of religion, hybrids, anything of the sort. In fact, they didn't share kills. Just a popular area in the North for rogues to settle, it seemed. There was a source of water, and almost always fresh preybeasts coming and going.
Inari (literally) ran into Ixil as a cub and the odd pair hit it off. Over the years, they remained the best of friends... But nothing ever truly amounted of it. Despite both sets of parents' hopes, they both went silently on their separate paths when they hit adolescence and never returned.
However... It seemed that their paths weren't so separate after all. As Inari approached, she became quieter and quieter, more stealthy all the while.
Ix had thought he heard something, but upon a quick whip of the head towards the offending source... Only to find no sign of anyone (Inari had had to duck quickly there!) He gave the area another couple of seconds of his scrutiny before turning again and heading into the wind. "This aimless meandering..." he whispered out loud, is getting quite tiresome, he finished in his head. The corners of his mouth turned downward the slightest bit.
She could see it in his gait- the leopard was not exactly in a good mood. Something, (trivial, if she knew him at all,) was weighing on his mind. The boy was probably pondering something with more significance than it deserved... The slight flicks of his tail confirmed it. Ixil wasn't his usual laid-back self.
After having to dodge his glance as quickly as that... Inari doubted her ability to continue following him completely unnoticed. She'd better use now as her chance- leave well enough alone.
She stopped where she stood, glad that he was in earshot, and said at just the proper volume, "So, Ix, what's gotten you so agitated?" She smirked, knowing before he'd even reacted that she'd hit the nail on the head.
Ixil didn't jump when the voice reached him. He had had a feeling someone was behind him. He did doubt, however, that the voice belonged to who he thought it did. He turned to see who it was... Could it really be her, after so long? Who else would be able to tell he was agitated, though?
"Inari?" He asked, tone somewhat flat, "'sat you?"
Of course, the question was rhetorical. Both parties knew that, luckily. A smile formed on Inari's face in response, and Ixil couldn't help but allow the faintest smile form on his own muzzle. He trotted over, meeting her half way. Under his fur, he blushed again. He always blushed when he ran into Inari... But luckily that wouldn't be able to be seen.
"You look great..." he commented, unleashing himself a little bit. It was true, though... her looks were the first thing to strike him. She'd grown... well, beautiful. Errr, no. He thought to himself, getting back on track. "How's the savannah been treating you?" he asked, reigning himself back in, tone flattening out again. "I don't care much, mind you..." he muttered, turning his glance from her to the ground off to her right, eyebrows furrowing a bit. Aaaand cue explosion.
She let an arrogant smirk quickly take her face as he asked his silly questions out of disbelief as if the last time they'd met was just yesterday.
However, same old Ixil- of course he'd find instances like this somewhat awkward. He always was kinda awkward when they first got together for any meeting. However, a greeting of how she looked was very strange for him.
Strange and unwelcome, honestly. She'd just gotten a load of that from another lion. She tightened her lips and gave him a cue- wrong line. And yet... She stored that memory away to revisit on some cold, lonely night when she needed some solace. And just like that, he was back to his normal, more calm self. She'd gotten used to seeing himself pull himself back behind that barrier he'd built around his feelings.
She opened her mouth and was about to answer his question truthfully... That is- until he muttered something completely audible since she hadn't yet started to answer.
And just as he'd guessed.
"What do you mean, 'I don't care much,' you jerk!" She yelled, temper blown. "If you didn't care, why did you ask?! You know how I hate useless talk like that, and I know that you know that I know you're lying anyway, you do happen to be curious, don't you?" She demanded, poking a single extended claw (the blunt back of it, of course,) into his chest at various points in her lecture.
Ixil watched her lose it. For some reason, he always felt much more at ease after she'd lost it.
Well, not always. Back when they'd first met, he always thought she was picking a fight when she yelled, but after he'd gotten to know Inari better, he came to realize that her little explosions were perfectly harmless and could actually be taken to be quite amusing. And it usually took a little explosion for him to loosen up.
Though he never made the connection, and he wouldn't for a long while, it was only around Inari that he let down his walls.
He found himself chuckling at her jabs, and sat back on his haunches, grin becoming wider with each progressive exclamation she made until he was laughing out loud.
"Yes, alright! You win! I actually care, ok? Ok! Calm down, now?" He asked between chuckles that slowly faded into a more plain smile. Had she been what he needed to pull himself out of this slump.
Inari sat down too, tail flopped un-neatly to her side and a victorious look on her face. She almost always won their little one-sided spats. "Well... Fine. But I'm not calming down because you told me to," she said with a slight glare to get that point across. Of course, Ixil nodded with a sigh- he had seen that line coming, apparently. Perhaps he knows me too well... she thought to herself quickly before getting on with it.
"Well, the savannah's been ok," she said uncertainly. After a skeptic look, she continued- "Well, alright, I'm bored out of my skull. We used to have adventures, Ixil, I thought there'd be something even more exciting out there, but I have yet to find it..." her voice was more serious and her gaze at his feet, disappointed. "I thought there would be something greater out there to find... Something more dangerous, more exciting than anything we'd ever encountered, but there's nothing but boring peaceful rogues and set-in-stone prides. They're either way too harsh, or way too boring... "
"Yeah! I'm suffering from the same thing! It's so boring out here, for me. I need... an adventure." Ixil said, honestly not having expected that reaction of his friend. He'd predicted a variety of, "Oh, I got in a fight" or something... And scars, he expected scars. Somehow, he was surprised that her lost temper didn't get her in more trouble than it did. Obviously, she'd run into all of the right characters- something he was grateful for... He didn't feel like having to hunt other critters down, but he swore to the gods right then that if he needed to, he would. Of course, he himself was just a leopard... But he was a leopard who would more likely than not walk away from this encounter with a lioness partner.
"Say, Inari. If we're both gonna be bored, why don't we go be bored together? Certainly two can get into more trouble than..." His words cut off because he sensed something coming. The lion had made a mistake and crackled some grass, Ixil wouldn't have noticed him but he moved to duck- that gave the lion away.
"Who's that guy?" he asked abruptly and flatly, pointing a claw lazily towards the other lion's position. Someone else was here, and he'd never be seen so open in front of anyone but his friend alone.
"... Oh great. I just got away from that guy," Inari explained. "I... JUST. got away. He's another stupid lion saying "Oh, what a pretty tail you have," and chasing after it." She said, quite sarcastically with overly exaggerated little cuddly motions.
Usufii wasn't ready to give up on that prize yet. He was quite certain he could convince this... Inari, right? to like him. Enough for him to spend a night and go, anyway. But he'd been spotted by some leopard? "Whoa whoa whoa babe, seriously?" He asked with a chuckle. "You'd rather have some little leopard than me? C'mon, let's go somewhere more private to discuss..." Usu said, wedging his way in between the two cats. He ignored Ixil's slight growl, and the scowl on the female's face.
"Look you," Inari hissed quite angrily at being interrupted, and then separated from her friend. And she had been all ready to accept Ix's offer. But... It wasn't to last. Each and every fur stood on end as her anger rose. "What you're doing right now is more than rude, and if you think I won't cut you to freaking ribbons, you've lost that pebble of a brain you had, GOT IT?!" She yelled, every tooth exposed.
And despite her threats and loudness, she was being quite effectively herded (she walked sideways, the way he would push in hopes that he'd fall over- how comical that would be.) But when she noticed this, she continued- "Look, pal, you're starting to piss me off!" She unsheathed her claws, gave a quick side-hop to face her attacker, and prepared to give a blow- tail lashing wildly, practically spitting from all of the growling. And yet... Something appeared in front of her.
Ixil had joined the fray, cool completely gone from himself, too- only, he showed it in a different way than Inari. Where she was loud-mouthed like a firecracker, he was more... Silent. Eerily so. No hissing, now growling- simply puffed up, tail lashing, teeth exposed accompanied by a look that could kill. He saw Inari jump out from behind him to his side, and she lashed out wildly and without warning at the lion's side. The moment he saw the beginning of movement, he went for the stranger's shoulder.
"Hey hey now!" Usufii said with genuine shock. That leopard was there to back up the lioness so fast he didn't really have time to react- only just enough time to hop backwards to evade the two slashes. "I know how to pick my fights-" He announced, hoping they wouldn't go in for a second slash. "See ya!" He said before turning and running. And Tahka had always made it seem so easy, to corral a girl. Maybe he just got a crazy.
"Serves you right, you a**!" Inari hollered after him, deflating considerably before turning to Ixil and starting to chuckle. The pair of them chuckled, then laughed out loud for a little while before calming down again. "Ixil, I can't find trouble anywhere except around you, it seems. About what you were saying, I'd be more than happy to go with you." She said with a smirk.
Ixil smiled at her response. "It seems it's the other way around- if I had my say, I'd say trouble follows you, not me! But yes, that was the most.... excitement I've had in a while. We could have some good fun." He said. "So it's a deal." And with that, the both of them knew they were traveling together from here on out. "The sun's setting, we should find somewhere to stay the night. I was hanging out by a tree over there," He offered, with which his friend gave an a solid concurrence. They started to walk towards it together.
"Inari... Are you shaking?" He asked, concerned. He'd noticed it in her gait.
"Wha, who me? No, not at all-"
"Inari, you're shaking." He said more flatly, practically screaming that he noticed it and there was no turning back. "You cold?"
"Cold, yeah, I'm cold." She was still shaking from having been herded. She knew she wouldn't have stood a chance against a lion alone- that prospect had been scary. But she was far too proud to admit that. Luckily, they were to the tree in question, hopefully he'd drop it. "Well, I'm tired," she said as she flopped down quickly with a yawn. "Busy day. Night, Ix."
"Night Inari." Ixil stayed up for a bit longer as the lioness drifted to sleep- keeping an eye out for that yellow lion. After a couple of hours after sunset, he decided all was clear and padded over to Inari. She was shaking a bit, still... He curled up next to her so that only their spines were touching, and drifted to sleep.
