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 Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:13 pm
Ahlsen kept to one side of the cave. Yaariq kept to the other. Now and then, he would lift his head, fidget, and consider apologizing. Yaariq would turn her own muzzle away, put a paw over its end, and make it very clear that she was not interested in talking. And poor Lakisa would be trapped in the middle.
This morning, the clouds had broken and began to inch away from one another. Rich blue filtered between them, and the sun glinting against the water-streaked ground made Yaariq squint while the trio walked.
The white female walked a ways ahead of the pair, eyes mostly on the ground though occasionally focusing on the scenery. Between accidentally tripping and making conversation with Lakisa, Ahlsen's eyes were on his ex-mate's body. His mind was feverishly going over ways to make his terrible falter up to her. Nothing seemed to be good enough.
Around them, the world was flooded and full. Water coursed down hillsides, running rivers muddy. It formed in pools, dripped down rock escarpments and left several trees and their limbs in the lions' path. Yaariq jumped over them silently, on a mission to nowhere, and Ahlsen hauled himself over, grunting, the far less agile of the pair.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 7:27 pm
Winza was just one of many. She didn't breathe a word of it to either member of this bickering couple — pardon, Not Couple — but she had sought the prince out while they slumbered with full intent to lambaste him for his misdeeds, followed by a round of knocking some sense into his thick head. She'd make him see reason and help that cub somehow, no matter the risk.
She was an old lioness now. Her best days were behind her... and so were the awful ones, the boring ones, the ones worth living. If not a plague, age would take her soon. By whatever means death acquired her soul, she would be reborn again, just like the Mtaishi had taught her.
Her murmured talk with Ahlsen brought back memories of her homeland and its lions. So many had perished in those rushing waters, though he had not been there for it. She did well to remind him of this, somehow sounding simultaneously grateful while taking a jab at his already guilty conscience. "It's just fortunate you'd already left us. I lost nearly all your brothers, and who knows what became of poor Byu. He was such a fragile thing."
Speaking of his siblings, something had nagged at her about the female with the cub and she wondered if Ahlsen had noticed it: The mark on her leg bared a striking resemblance to the one his mother's bloodline often had. She could have dismissed it if not for her choice of company. The grandson of Nsundu and a female whose coat just happened to resemble Hari's?
Odd. Odd indeed.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 7:45 pm
It stung. Ahlsen swallowed down the guilt, though it stuck in his throat. His muzzle twisted as Lakisa spoke and his ears fidgeted forwards and back while he tried to figure out which way to hold them.
"I'm sorry." Sorry about his own brothers. Like Yaariq, Ahlsen constantly fought away guilt for leaving. When news of his daughters death had reached him, part of him had been certain that it was punishment. Perhaps he should have died in that water; been reduced to blanch colored bones.
"It must have been horrible." Ahlsen's feet itched and a terrible throbbing in his head would not go away. Stress, Lakisa would likely tell him. Thankfully, she had not been informed.
"We should stop for a rest!" He hollered ahead, more desperate to escape Lakisa's morbid conversation than he was of seeing Yaariq's passively spiteful eyes and downtrodden expression.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:07 pm
"It was horrible," she mumbled, then Ahlsen bellowed to his wife and she looked to Yaariq.
Many had rightfully accused Lakisa of being wretched lioness with a veneer of kindness, and to them it may have been so. On the matter of her enemies, she could fire off malicious gossip with the best of them, but to her kin she only went as far as to inflict guilt. This onslaught of rain had a malign influence upon her, leaving her more irritable with him, the inclement weather, and everything that wasn't Yaariq. It seemed the lioness could do no wrong.
"Do you want to stop?" she asked, empowering her with the choice that Ahlsen had not himself provided.
Lakisa looked haggard, made worse by her damp fur and dour expression.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:22 pm
Ahlsen's bellow had not stopped Yaariq, but Lakisa's wearing voice slowed and halted the white lioness' steps. Panting heavily, she twisted her body sideways. The path ahead of them was long and endless, behind her stood two sopping lions: one hopeful and the other looking more than her age.
Yaariq's tongue swept out to wet her nose before she slowly nodded. When she stepped towards them, her shoulderblade jerked as though having to snap some heavy draw that had kept her moving forwards.
As the lioness neared, her weeping eyes were apparent--a product of a lack of sleep and the bright day. "Let's rest," she breathed out at Lakisa when her right shoulder is in line with the old female.
"Are you okay?" Ahlsen blurted out when she past him by in favor of the cool breeze spreading out from the canopy surrounding a murky river.
"I'm fine, Ahlsen." Yaariq's response was exasperated and she dipped her head low, squeezing into the underfoliage to find shelter from the muggy air. She snapped several branches more viciously than necessary to clear the way for Lakisa. "It opens up at the water," the once-mother passes behind her at an octave that assumes Lakisa is right behind her.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:41 pm
Yaariq's lackluster facade probably didn't fool Ahlsen, but it definitely didn't deceive Lakisa. Rain? No sleep? Nonsense. She knew a mother's heartbreak ten times over, whether they were leaving for some grand adventure or for the gates Mwokoti had thrice spoken of. She recognized the face of one disconsolate from her own reflection; likewise, she'd heard the voice of a female scorned.
Whatever immunity bestowed upon Yaariq that Ahlsen was not so readily granted, it didn't change the fact, in a sense, he was just another of her sons. Lakisa loved her boys, all of them, and doing wrong was expected. You taught them better for the next time and helped when you could.
She smiled at him in the hopes she might console him and then, utilizing Yaariq's charity, bustled down the cleared path. "You can't blame him too much," she said from beside his wife. "His parents were both horrid. It's a miracle I helped him turn out as well as he did. He's got his heritage and being male working against him."
To her ears, her tone was light as a feather; to everyone else, it was just a hint critical, particularly upon mention of Ahlsen's absentee mother and father, the latter of whom she had never actually met.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 8:56 pm
"How do you make a mistake like that?" Yaariq whispers back, though the crack in her voice is loud enough for Ahlsen to hear. She intentionally pushes further towards the left so that the end of a stick scratches against her side and snaps.
Unless he's cheating. Unless there's doubt in his mind. Yaariq's brows furrow. A pebbled bank touches her toes and she lowers herself down onto the widened embankment. A few trees dip their long appendages into the murky, browned water. Matted entanglements of twigs, leaves, branches, even boulders lie caught within the river, as though rejected and barfed up at a shallow place in the rushing river.
Ahlsen, feeling daring, settles himself down next to Yaariq. Perhaps to keep her from gossiping, or maybe because he's grown so tired of the passive fighting that he seeks a physical means to end it.
Yaariq shifts closer to Lakisa, feigning discomfort in the way her shoulder touches the ground, but does not move to an entirely new spot. For Ahlsen, this means hope that she's considering forgiving his slip.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:30 pm
By having shoddy parents and most of your brainpower directed to a source outside your skull. Lakisa didn't reiterate these points. 'Once to be said, twice to waste your breath.' Her mother echoed this many times, ironically, and finally there was a situation in which Lakisa could agree it should be heeded. Had she wanted to press the matter, Ahlsen's intrusion wouldn't have helped. None of Sen's sons ever learned the concept of quitting while they were ahead.
She did them the courtesy of looking elsewhere and let the pair air their grievances uninhibited had they chosen to do so. Or they could lie there in melancholy silence. With the way they acted, it would probably circle back around either way.
Lakisa almost hadn't noticed a set of eyes breaking the water's surface. An isolated crocodile was no threat to three lions. Even being the stupid savages they were, they would concede a losing battle. Strange to see it lurking around here, though...
Her eyes trailed along until they focused on a shoal the rising water level was due to usurp come the next rainfall. A tragic fate for the various shrubs and plants composing the verdure across the way.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:43 pm
"How are your feet?" Sen's son continued, oblivious to the fact he had ever been ahead at all. Until Yaariq was bumping her head into his and that excitement had returned to her eyes, Ahlsen considered himself left well behind. The question was held high in the air so that both females were invited to answer.
"Okay." Yaariq's toes curled before she tucked her paws snugly underneath her belly. In truth, they were holding up quite well. The pads were soft from the rain, but the ground was muddy and had given readily under her feet.
Ahlsen was so focused on the the longer, coarser blue hair that poked from Yaariq's neck that the crocodile had gone unspotted. Lakisa's question, however, would not go unanswered.
It was a quiet, faint sound, but when the speaking stopped and the trio was subjected to awkward silence, a cry repeated one tiny squeak after another. It did not grow louder, and it paused once in a hiccup. It could have been a bug, in its persistence and the hoarseness of its sound.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:54 pm
A nettlesome insect was a potential culprit. The most likely suspect if not for circumstance, in fact. That crocodile was just as Velrissa's leg marking had been: By simply being, by existing here, it added a factor 'what if' and stirred in her gut a nagging sensation something was amiss beyond what they already knew.
She started to doubt her intuition when nothing came of it. The crocodile made slow and steady process but appeared to be ignoring them. Nothing more.
"My paws are fine," Lakisa replied.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:12 pm
Ahlsen bobbed his head in understanding. He turned his eyes towards the water. Like Lakisa, he had assumed the sound was an instect. It got louder like one, as though it were seeking them by their voices.
Yaariq assumed something entirely different--she'd heard her daughter's voice more than she didn't. It wasn't out of the ordinary to wake up to the sound of a mewing cub, only to find an empty den or Ahlsen's steady breathing beneath her skull. She tucked her nose into her chest and closed her eyes, willing the sound to go away.
"Hot today," came her attempt at conversation. There had been far worse days.
On the shoal Lakisa had previously made note of, a stark white face snuffled at the sensation of sand. Finding this an impenetrable barrier, it stopped.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:27 pm
The cries persisted, unchanging except in volume. Lakisa had never allowed a cub on her watch to reach a point of such desperation, but she had heard hapless creatures elsewhere. Prey whose mothers had been killed, mostly.
She would never know for certain if she decided on her own to cast a second glance just before the cub waddled out or if it was because the poor thing managed to gain some ground she saw him. It didn't matter. There was no time to wonder. No time at all.
They weren't the only ones to have noticed this new arrival.
Lakisa stared in horror as the crocodile sped up and practically jumped to her paws, screeching. For all the talk of his alleged incompetence, when impulse took over it was to him she shouted. "Ahlsen!"
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 10:43 pm
Whatever the plight may have been, Ahlsen's body squirmed while his forearms drug him back onto his feet. The splash of water was more than audible, and the flash of murky grey and scales visible.
The black male's lip curled back, a snarl emitting from his throat. Beckoned by Lakisa's desperate cry for help, Ahlsen leapt into the water without hesitation. At this point, he had not seen the ruddy pelt which had caused the alarm. Something had caused panic and so Ahlsen acted.
The same shoal the cub had paused at was the result of a shallowing of a river, and so it was by sheer luck Ahlsen could haphazardly spray water as he bounded towards the offender. He did not think when he reached out to grab the crocodiles tail.
He did when its face swung around and snapped inches--or that's what it felt like, though in reality it was more like a foot--from his muzzle. The tail was released immediately, Ahlsen stumbling back with such speed that his back legs sunk and he found himself sitting. The next sound he made was one of alarm, heavy aggression caused by fear as he took a pelting swipe at the crocodiles face.
The commotion spurred Yaariq to all fours. "Ahlsen!" she mirrored Lakisa's voice. Her eyes jerked to the small newborn on the shore. Weight shifting through all four of her feet, she debated whether she could reach it.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 6:06 pm
There was no time think, only to act. "Wait," Lakisa shouted sternly to the other female, when what she clearly meant was "wait here." She left Yaariq standing there by her lonesome, to decide whether she would follow orders or the lioness. Busy retaliating against Ahlsen, the crocodile did not pursue her as she bounded across the water. Her movements were hurried in speed alone, but the shambling gait with which she tromped through to the other side made it a strenuous effort all the same.
She bolted for the cub, head low, prepared to scoop him up.
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Posted: Mon Apr 14, 2014 6:39 pm
Ahlsen did not want to wait. Lakisa was full of terrible orders. The black lion once again acted out of instinct as he could a step backwards. The crocodile, displeased to contend with three lions was already slithering away. The water parted under his weight as he left the shallow river and then he disappeared entirely under the murk.
On the shore, the real subject of the order was pacing. The back of her mind was screaming at her to help. The other half could not manage a how. The space grew, and grew, and then Yaariq was up to her neck in the water. The frantic dig of her claws pulled her into the river's shallow. Young, frightened, and determined, she practically ran up Lakisa's a** while the older female scooped the small cub into her mouth.
One advantage to being a rogue was that home was whichever side of the river you happened to be on. Finding both members of his family on the opposite side of the muddy flow, Ahlsen scanned the water for the crocodile and then took one testing step towards them.
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