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 Posted: Tue Mar 31, 2015 8:35 pm
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Rrab was still getting used to being on her own. With no males to tell her what to do or how to act, she had to learn to live for herself. Thankfully, she had been forced to hunt while she had been a captive, so at least she knew how to do that. Beyond that, however, she was more than a little... lost.
Especially when it came to speaking to others. For one, she had never been allowed to make friends in her pride, but more than that, she had never been taught how to speak, either! Any language she knew, she knew only because she had picked it up from listening to the males talk to one another.
It was hard to know if she was doing it right, but she wasn't going to stop. She would become a lioness who was normal and able to live on her own. She had to!
She stood over a pond, looking into the water.
"Me Rrab," she said to her reflection, as though introducing herself to it. Really, though, she was just practicing her words. But that wasn't right, was it? "I... Rrab," she said again, trying to think back to what other lions had said while speaking.
She crunched her nose, staring hard at her reflection. That still didn't sound right! |
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 10:36 am
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Rrab could have jumped twenty feet into the air when someone spoke behind her, the lioness startled quite spectacularly. While she might not have gotten that high, she did take a tumble into the small pond in her fright, before she sat herself up and looked over at the other lioness.
She stared, wide-eyed, at the lioness for a moment, before the other introduced herself. She tilted her head to one side, smiling faintly. Oh! She was helping her! "Li pretty," Rrab offered happily, "Rrab leaning... speak. Taught by no one. Doing good?"
She didn't mind females nearly as much as males- they were just like her. They had suffered in the pride just like her, too. She had only ever been able to take comfort from other females. Perhaps that was why she was so much more willing to trust them right off the bat than males.
She smiled and moved herself out of the water, shaking herself off since it seemed she wasn't close enough to get Li wet.
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Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2015 12:30 pm
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Li's eyes went wide and she arched an eyebrow, her ears flattening in alarm at Rrab's reaction. She took a pace forward to ensure the other lioness could get out of the pond okay, then settled back down as Rrab sat up.
White lips parted in a smile at Rrab's words - broken as they were. In reality, the lioness' speaking skills weren't that good, but Li forced herself to take into account that she was teaching herself how to speak based on.. what? The way she heard others speak? She must admit she was rather impressed. The lioness had managed to come quite far for a self-taught creature, and had quite the tenacity to teach herself in the first place. It was admirable, at the least.
"Thank you." Li bowed her head. She didn't know how much speech Rrab would understand or be able to respond to, but she decided to continue anyway. Besides, practice, right? "How long have you been learning?"
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Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2015 11:04 pm
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Rrab looked thoughtful for a moment at her question, though not just because she was thinking of an answer for it. She was also doing her best to figure out the words the female had used. Some words she got right away, but mostly they were the commands the males had always shouted at her back in her old pride. She hadn't used any of those words.
Still, she had learned enough to get the general idea of what Li had asked her. She wanted to know how long she had been learning to speak.
"Many days," she responded with a smile, "after run from pride. Pride ....um.... bad. Not teach Rrab words. Only shouting them." Hopefully that had been enough to let the other know a little bit about her past. she didn't feel any shame in what had happened to her, as it had been out of her control, but she wasn't looking for pity, either. She just wanted this Li to know why she couldn't speak well. This was how you told someone that sort of thing, right?
She didn't know how to say that it had been a few months since she had run from her former home.
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Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2015 8:20 pm
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Inwardly, Li sighed - "many days" wasn't really a helpful answer. Still, the fact that she had received an answer was good enough. A rather long, and detailed one at that.
She was a little startled at the lioness' response. Because Rrab didn't know how to speak, Li had assumed her parents had been rogues, and (if she'd even known them both) that they hadn't been around much longer than they needed to be. She had heard of prides where certain lions were thought of as "lesser" for whatever reason - gender, colour, size, etc. - but she hadn't thought a family-like group would be so callous as to refuse to teach even its lowest members to speak.
The lime-accented lioness would have felt bad for her pale new acquaintance if she hadn't become even more impressed. Not only had she taught herself to speak (or, rather, was teaching) but she had recognized mistreatment and run from her pride, forsaking everything familiar for the unknown in a chance to make a better life for herself.
"That's impressive, Rrab," Li admitted openly. Rethinking her vocabulary, she added, "Very good. You did very good. Are you all alone out here?" She offered a warm smile to try to off-set the slight condescension her voice naturally held. Not because she felt it, it was more of an accent to her now. She had her mother to thank for that.
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