Skjoldr had not expected it to be so weird to explain to his little cousin why she would not be seeing him for a while. Ordinarily it would not have occurred to him to explain something like that to her at all, but in a surprising flash of insight the little cub had asked him what was going on and how long he would be gone. Then she'd thrown a temper tantrum. Naturally, Skjoldr had protested at first that he wasn't going anywhere, but Anushka had told him that he was, and she knew it.

"So I want you tell me how long you will be gone so that I will know not to plan plans with you. Please." She had added the please as an afterthought, clearly thinking that she would be more likely to get her way if she used the words she had been taught by one of her uncles.

Skjoldr had still been reluctant to say anything, since the answer was, as far as he knew, he would not be coming back. At least, that had been his understanding of the arrangement. In order to demonstrate that there was no bad blood between Aesir's family and Njal's one of Njal's daughters would marry a son of Kazul's. Skjoldr had been that lucky son.

"I honestly don't know how long I'll be gone," he told Ana, deciding that it would be easiest if he just told her the truth instead of dancing around it or trying to dress it up as something else. "I'm going to be living in the stronghold with the rest of the pride."

"Like your mother," Anushka remarked, making a connection he had not expected. "I think you should be with your mother, but I do not know why you and your mother cannot live in the forest still. You are both welcome, and I have just gotten a new uncle. It is not a good time for you to leave."

Skjoldr barely suppressed a grimace, thinking of that new uncle Anushka was talking about. Burzum. He knew that his cousin had more or less saved his life and the lives of his littermates, albeit not alone. He felt the weight of that debt heavily now that Burz had returned to the forest after winning his freedom during the recent breytast vindar. He had made no attempt to rescue his cousin after he was captured. None of them had. It was shameful to think of.

"I know, and I'm sorry. If it means anything, I don't particularly want to go live in the stronghold."

"Then do not do it. You are a free-born lion. You can do or not-do what you want. Is that not the truth?" Ana was frowning as she tried out her theory. She was young enough that phrases like freeborn were unfamiliar to her, but her attempt to understand what it meant was not too far from the mark, really.

The blue-furred lion with the white-tipped mane considered how to answer this question. "My mother told me that I must do it, and you know we must listen to our mothers."

Anushka shrugged, dismissing his attempt at filial piety. "I listen to my mother, but I am also to ask Grandda. My mother is not always right."

It was hard not to chuckle at Anushka's straightforward description of her mother and the way the family was dealing with Klona's simple nature and her motherhood. Instead he reminded her, "My mother isn't like yours. When she says to do something, people do it. And in this case, it isn't just my mother. This is something the warlord wants me to do, too."

The white cub was unimpressed by Skjoldr's invocation of the warlord. She did not know the warlord, and she had only the vaguest idea what a warlord was. There was no good reason for her cousin to do a thing just because the warlord wanted it.

"I think you should tell them no and stay in the forest. This is home. You will not like it in the strong-hold. Here is better."

"I have to live in the stronghold. That's where my wife will want to live, I expect, and I don't want to bring her to the forest. It would probably be taken badly." As in, it would probably be taken as a kidnapping, or a deliberate attempt to torture his bride. His own comfort and wishes were, as usual, not important enough to consider.

"Wife?" Anushka repeated. "You cannot have a wife. I am going to marry you."

"I don't think so, Ana," Skjoldr said as gently as he could. "You can't marry someone who is already family. You can only marry people who aren't family, and that way they become family."

"Fine," Anushka allowed, not particularly bothered by the loss of her future husband. There weren't a lot of marriages in the forest for her to view as examples. "But we have a big family now. Why do you want more?"

At this point, Skjoldr had no idea if he ought to tell her more or not. He had not expected to be having this conversation to begin with, and so he wasn't sure what he was okay to tell her, and what would get him into trouble later. Then it occurred to him that if he was living in the stronghold, the chances of getting into trouble for telling Ana something her grandfather didn't want her to know were pretty slim.

"I don't. But my marriage will make sure that our family is family with a lion who used to be our enemy." He paused, watching Anushka's face to see if she understood what that meant.

"Why?" She didn't get it.

"If that lion is our family, and we are his family, we are all one family, and he cannot do anything more to hurt us. And we cannot do anything to hurt him. It keeps the peace." That was putting it a little simply, but basically that was the gist of the matter.

"Peace is good. But you do not want to marry. Do you not want peace?"

Anushka's question was annoyingly close to what his mother had said to him when he had objected to being thrust into an arranged marriage with the daughter of his family's enemy, and it took a moment for him to come up with an appropriate way to answer her that wouldn't involve yelling. She was just a cub. She couldn't help it if she asked questions he didn't want to answer.

"Peace is good," he agreed. "But I don't know the lioness they want me to marry, so living with her in the stronghold will be very strange and uncomfortable."

Again, Anushka was unimpressed. Heartlessly she informed him, "My mother is strange and sometimes the den is uncomfortable. But that does not make it bad to be here. There are many good things. You must find things that are good and make peace."

"That's the plan," Skjoldr said without enthusiasm. At least she wasn't throwing a tantrum anymore about him leaving. Joy.

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