Kuishi was at a loss of what to do. He had done all he could for his pride, as strange as it was, as miserable as he seemed to be, he had loved that place dearly. But fate was a funny thing. It ripped away what he held dear, as it had with his family so it had with his pride. Both his own personal pride on having help the home he loved survive anything mother nature could toss at him. That alone with pride in the word as lion pride, his home. He was no racer and he had no show cheetah, he had few friends and the ones he knew more than simply strangers had been the first to leave upon the down breaking, the end coming. When his place in the world had given up and nothing was left to salvage.
The racing pride had fallen.
He wasn’t sure where he was going now, but he had decided a few months after the last of his pride mates had gone that he was not to return from his hunt that afternoon. Kuishi was a rogue now, as much as it pained him to say the word held a specific meaning for the leopard, a meaning that was otherwise convey into “homeless.” He had no purpose left anymore. He could wander the world a thousand times and not have a place to come back to. No family for him to see their cheery faces. No cubs to greet and watch in wonder as they grew. No loving mate to ask him how he was and what he had been doing upon his exploits.
Kuishi was utterly alone, and fed up with being so horribly such.
His journey had begun with him wearing three grand pelts. One of a zebra, one of a jackal and one of a antelope that had taken three hours to catch. Kuishi wasn’t older per say but he most certainly wasn’t young, and from the ever growing pain in his back he wasn’t close to getting any younger either. Three hours had been wasted with back pains and poor sight over bringing the darn thing down. He had few talents, but skinning creatures was one of them. The beasts he had wrought to the ground became his coat over his coat. A skin to wear over his marvellous skin that aided in keeping him as warm as could be. A little too warm if you asked him personally.
Over his journey the strangely shaped and patterned jacket of his had accumulated dust and dirt like no other. Once, he had rolled in a mud bath and that had finished it up to an extent of which he could not describe. What existed now of his coat was a few scrap layers of the antelope and zebra, with the jackal having been surprisingly durable and survive such a long time in almost mint condition.
Kuishi knew now he was so far away from his home. He knew because where he lived snow was not something that existed. He didn’t really know what it was to be honest. Touching the oddly soft yet cold ground was a new and difficult to grasp situation.
At first he thought it was a frozen volcano raining ash, when he noticed it was the sky from which the white specks had come from. In all his life Kuishi hardly expected to have happened upon such a thing as snow. Such a creature that it was. Well, actually he could hardly call it a creature, he preferred to refer to snow as frozen rain. It seemed the most logical to him in the long run.
He had never seen a mountain before either. It impressed him if he was being honest, the way the ground shifted upwards to the sky. It was a hill unlike any hill that ever had previously existed, it was impossible to miss and almost seem to be gloating of how high and how amazing it was. As if to say “you cannot climb me mortal.” A challenge of mother nature herself.
Challenging mother nature was what Kuishi was all about.
And so up the mountain he went. He struggled, his first encounter with ice bringing him down back to the base once again (not that he had climbed high to begin with at that point mind you). He battled the wind as it pressed against his face and wheezed heavily as the air thinned while he climbed.
He despised hills…
The top was not where he stopped, in fact he was not even a quarter of the way there. But what caused Kuishi’s travels to stopped was the discovery of a pride.
How odd, he thought. A pride who lived in the snow. They seemed to be collecting pelts and Kuishi approached with caution fearing they’d want his too.
“Good afternoon!” The merchant greeted him. “Are you here to donate pelts?”
“Donate… Pelts?” Kuishi struggled to speak. His throat was frail from climbing and his bones hurt in places they hadn’t before. Climbing had done wonders for him and not in good ways.
The merchant, if that truly what they were nodded. “I see you’ve skinned them already!”
Kuishi looked back at the pelts he wore. They were ancient reminders of what was now long gone. What no longer existed. His friends, his family, his pride, they had vanished and only he had memories of it from as it had been in its glory days. Now there was no hope in it bouncing back from the grave…
“Yes…” Kuishi was slow. “I think I shall. Here, take them.” He slid the creatures off his back and became nakedly aware of the cold. “Tell me, this place… This is a pride here?” He asked with a curious jump in his voice.
This place seemed to consist of mainly leopards. Kuishi himself was a leopard… Was this, was it a place worthy of calling a new home? If it was… He could tell that mother nature favored them not. Just as she favored him even less.
It would be good for him, he decided. To be in a place where nature hated them all. In a place where he could truly feel at home again. A place where he could challenge the snow and cold just as he had the drought. A place where he, where Kuishi was able to feel at peace.
He hoped it met all his expectations. Or maybe, met none of them at all. If that was the case then the leopard would feel safe, and safe was one of his top priorities as of this moment.
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((okay, okay, last one and then I'll do tags.))
Rolls:
2: A fair quality jackal pelt. Worth 2 points.
3: Small, torn and barely useable. Worth 1 point.
3: Small, torn and barely useable. Worth 1 point.
Total: 4
((WC: 1013))
