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"You have to hold still, Eli, if you want me to get this right," Shallan admonished her companion, who was wriggling under her paws.

Beside her was a rock smeared with mashed up plant bits that had all turned out to be a disappointing green when smashed, instead of retaining their color. She had been trying to mix up some paints like the kind worn by some of the pride's warriors when they went into battle, but she hadn't had much luck so far. It was fortunate that Eli was tolerant.

"What did you say you wanted again?" She was supposed to be painting a picture on Eli's side, but Eli had changed her mind several times since agreeing to be Shallan's canvas and Shallan was reluctant to begin in truth until she pinned the other cub down, as it were. Not that she held out particularly high hopes for the outcome either way. The mix was wrong. She was beginning to think paint was simply not her medium.

"Well you're tickling me!" Eli pointed out. "Just hurry up and do it already."

She wasn't entirely sure how she felt about Shallan, but generally she liked the other cub. Except they were both fairly opinionated girls, and that meant that they occasionally got into arguments. When that happened, Eli tended to lose unless things got physical. Physically, Eli could usually best Shallan, but Shallan herself never seemed all that impressed by physical victories and said they didn't prove anything except that Eli could fight.

"Oh, I thought I said I wanted a lion taking down an eagle." The "duh" was implied, except that wasn't actually what she'd said. First she had said she wanted a picture of herself, then she'd said she wanted a giant fish, and after that she'd said she wanted flowers. The lion taking down an eagle was yet another new idea that had popped into her head. Probably Shallan should stop asking if she didn't want to keep receiving different responses.

Shallan frowned when Eli changed her mind yet again and decided she was just going to ignore the other cub and paint what she wanted to paint. No doubt Eli would be pleased no matter what, and if she wasn't she could always take a quick dip in the river or the sea to get the paint off.

"Okay, you'll have to hold really still," she warned. "I'm not kidding. If you move, it'll look bad."

Shallan had decided to paint Eli's side in part because it gave her a larger portion of body to work on, but also because she suspected Eli would have an easier time holding it still than she would other parts of her body. She was constantly making faces and twitching her tail and otherwise moving in ways that would make Shallan's task more difficult.

"That means no laughing, too," she admonished.

Eli rolled her eyes as she listened to Shallan rattle off instructions about not moving which all seemed very obvious. When Shallan reached the bit about not laughing Eli blatantly ignored what she had just been told to giggle and ask a question so innocently put forth it could only be sarcastic: "Am I allowed to breathe?"

Really, Eli had not expected it to take even this long when Shallan asked her if she'd like to be painted on. Only after she agreed had Shallan informed her that she still needed to gather the plants she would require for the paint, and make the paint and all that, and Eli had been suckered into helping with the gathering, though not the mixing. In the future, Eli would be more canny.

"You'd better not make me look stupid," she warned Shallan. "I'll kick your butt nine different ways and pull all the hair out of your tail if you make me look stupid."

Shallan smirked. "You should watch it with those threats. What if I get so scared my paws shake and you end up looking stupid because I can't help my shaking paws?"

It wasn't likely to go down like that. Shallan completely believed that Eli could kick her butt if she put her mind to it, but Shallan wasn't without her defenses, and she wouldn't go down without a fight. Unlike Eli, whose family had been in the Stormborn for time out of mind, Shallan's family were all outlanders, and that meant she had something to prove.

"You have nothing to worry about though. There's nothing I could possibly do to make you look stupid. Only you can do that." She should've stopped while she was ahead, but she couldn't. She had never been able to, no matter how much trouble she'd get in later. Maybe Eli wouldn't notice.

"Are you calling me stupid?" Eli growled, lunging to her feet with her teeth bared in a snarl.

Shallan hadn't even started painting yet, so she didn't have to worry about smearing the stuff. But that did give her an idea.

Moving swiftly, Eli swiped her paw through the mashed up plants Shallan had intended to use as paint and slapped it right across the ginger lioness's face, catching her squarely on the cheek and delighting in the way it splattered across the bridge of her nose and all the way to the opposite ear.

"Don't you ever call me stupid."

Her next movement was to tackled the artistic cub, her claws unsheathed and her teeth seeking a hold in her enemy's dark pelt. Being called stupid was almost as bad as being called a coward, and Eli was neither of those things.

"Not exactly," Shallan began to say as Eli completely overreacted, but she was interrupted by the amber-eyed cub's lunge and the sting of a paw across her cheek, followed shortly by the stinging of mashed up plants in her eye.

"I'll paint you with your own blood!" she shrieked, so infuriated that it made no difference how nonsensical that threat was.

By the time Eli made her next move, Shallan was perfectly ready to throw down, and met the golden cub head on, raking her small but sharp claws along the side of her neck, which didn't quite work out as planned since she almost got tangled in Eli's fluffy demi-mane, but she was still satisfied to see a few thin lines of blood.

A few seconds later she was on the ground, trapped beneath Eli as the brunette tried to bite her ears.

Eli couldn't believe that Shallan had managed to draw first blood. It had been barely a scratch, but that didn't matter. Now Eli was honor-bound to somehow mark Shallan's hide permanently, as payback. Tearing up her ears seemed like a satisfying way to accomplish that, but the stupid brat wouldn't hold still and Eli's teeth kept closing on air.

Eli roared her frustration into Shallan's face while still pinning her to the ground. In another second Shallan had flung Eli off and scrambled a short distance away.

"Fight like a Stormborn!" Eli yelled. "Only cowards run from a fight. But then that's probably all you know how to do. Stupid outlander coward!"

Eli wasn't sure where she'd gotten the word outlander, or how she'd known to use it as an insult, but she was gratified by the way Shallan leapt forward and tried to tackle her. Naturally, Eli moved out of the way.

Shallan was relieved to have gotten away. She was angry and multiple parts of her face stung even though the worst of her paint-goop had come off in their struggle, but she didn't want the fight to become drawn out. She would lose then. But she couldn't let Eli get away with calling her an outlander like she was scum.

"You probably know all about being a coward," she huffed when her attack failed. "Why else would you try to blind your opponent before fighting them?"

She continued, heedless of the fact that her insults were sometimes contradictory. "I shouldn't expect any better though, from someone who's so stupid you have to jump right to violence whenever you're challenged. And you know what? I can learn to be a better fighter, but you will never learn to be smarter. You're going to be stuck as an idiot for the rest of your life."

Despite having several siblings who could occasionally be mean, Eli had not yet encountered anyone outside the family who had said hateful things to her, and she was startled by how hurtful it was. It also alarmed her to realize that while her siblings had to love each other, no matter how mean they were, Shallan might hate her forever. Unless she hated Shallan first.

"I hate you," she spat. She was not about to cry. She definitely, definitely wasn't about to cry. "I hope the stormlords send a wave to wash your whole family away and you die floating in the ocean a million miles from anyone you know."

Having spoken her piece, Eli stomped past Shallan, deliberately bumping her with her shoulder. She wasn't running away, she was having the last word. The fact that she started running as soon as she was out of sight didn't mean anything. She just wanted to go home and be with her mama.

Shallan was panting with anger and adrenaline, but when Eli told her that she hated her, and that she wished she and her entire family would die all of her anger and adrenaline left her in a rush. No one had ever said anything like that to her. She watched Eli stomp off through a shimmer of tears.

Then she gathered her wits and took several deep breaths, forcing her distress down until she could smile again. When she could, she tried speaking, just to make sure she sounded normal: "She really is pretty stupid. Most people would've just pointed out that I'm a thrall's daughter. Idiot."

She didn't cry. Not even a little bit. Stormborn don't cry.