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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 2:42 pm
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He felt old.
No, his body felt old. Older than his children, who had grown up and begun their own lives. Older than his mate, was always there to support him, though he concealed much of his difficulty from her. Older than either of his parents, who were still fully capable of anything they set their minds to.
This was the curse of the disease.
He was not yet in his final days, but they were coming, surely and inexorably. The only ones he had confided in, in secrecy, were Healers, and only a few of those. He couldn't be certain how many others suspected, but Adivyta, thank the Goddess, wasn't one of them.
Yet.
Today he still had duties as a Nanny, and if his peers had noticed how his preference had shifted over the years to one who sat and watched over the children, entertaining them with voice instead of action, they hadn't spoken. It had, after all, been a shift of years. And while he concealed the depth of his symptoms, it was known that Hashiel had had the disease from the time he was a cub. That he had lived to adulthood, when so many died young, was in and of itself a surprise and a blessing.
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 3:24 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 4:09 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 4:15 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 5:27 pm
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Eppie chuckled at Hashiel's snort and his response. It was too true how one day all these cubs would inherit the pride, albeit much quicker than in any normal pride. One day they'd all be just memories to these cubs, and one day they'd be memories to their own cubs. It was how their lives would always be. At some point over the years, Eppie had made peace with that.
The tan lioness tried her best to hide some of her sadness when Hashiel talked of him and his mate's family from the outside. She had grandchildren on the outside, and she would never see them, never meet them, and she didn't know a single thing about their father or how to find him. She had their sibling, Lippo, and that was all she knew of them.
"I'm glad to hear your family is well. It must be exciting to hear about the stories from the outside," Eppie commented, before offering Hashiel a response to his question, "My family is restless. Josepi tells fantastic stories, but can't seem to talk himself a mate, Veena does not visit me enough, and Lippo is just... she hasn't been well lately. She's always been prone to random sickness, but it's mostly her spirit lately that's ill."
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 5:46 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 8:34 pm
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Eppie thought on the leopon's words for a few moments, before giving him a sad smile and returning her attention back to the cubs they were tasked with watching.
"Perhaps you're right," Eppie replied, resting her head atop her paws as she watched healthy cubs play, and sickly cubs try to keep up. "I guess the real question is which one?"
With their lives what they were, family ultimately meant everything. You had such a limited time to know your children or you parents, that there was always some sort of pressure to be close and to be involved. Sometimes that was what was needed, and at other times it wasn't what was needed at all.
Eppie had spent so much of her life with her children, tending to her children, trying to be involved with her children... Perhaps what she needed was to distance herself from her children. To let go a little.
"Life should not be this complicated," She chuckled.
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 8:39 pm
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"Only your family can answer that," he replied simply. And there was no guarantee such an answer would be found. Families were, as Eppie implied, quite complicated. Even his. It had become much more complicated when he'd married into Sliabh's family, but even before that there had been difficulties. He remembered how strange it had been to meet his father for the first time, this leopard whom he hadn't known and who hadn't stayed long enough to become truly significant to Hashiel.
"But if it wasn't complicated, life wouldn't be worth living," the leopon replied at last. Instead of dwelling on the inevitable ending of life such a statement usually referred to, he focused instead on setting his paws so that he could rise to his feet once more. It was, by the sun's low height, just about time to send the cubs back to their own families, complex or not.
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 9:01 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2015 9:05 pm
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