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"That sounds very frustrating."

Worknesh sometimes wanted to swat her best friend. In her opinion, Hviske was being an idiot. The lion she professed to be in love with, Matumaini, was a shy and self-effacing fellow who would never go out of his way to spend time with other people that could be spent alone, and as far as Worknesh could tell, he was happy enough on his own. Hviske's attempts to lure him into her company and win him over seemed not to be having any effect whatsoever, despite the length of time she had been making them. However, it wasn't her place to say that sort of thing. It was her job to be supportive when Hviske came to her to bemoan her continued failure, as she was doing now.

"What I don't understand," Hviske continued, "is his inconsistency. Sometimes I'll spend time with him and he'll say I look nice, but other times I'll look nicer and he won't say a thing. I'm not sure he even thinks I look nice, really. It might just be something one of his sibs told him to say when he was with a lioness, and he only occasionally remembers."

She huffed in frustration thinking about the mixed signals Matu gave off. It was a relief to be able to complain to someone about him, and Neshie was the best possible sounding board. She was sympathetic and an attentive listener, and always supportive. That was just the sort of friend Hviske needed in this trying time in her life.

"Maybe he thinks you look nice all the time, but, as you say, only remembers to say so on occasion. Or perhaps he's afraid to acknowledge when you've made an effort to look nice."

That last bit didn't make much sense, but Neshie had already figured out that Hviske wasn't looking for sense. She was looking for justification for Matu's behavior that supported the idea that she at least had a chance with him.

Personally, Neshie was unconvinced that Hviske did have a chance with Matu. She still had not met the lion, although she felt as if she knew him from the exhaustive descriptions her enamored friend provided her, biased though they were. To her mind, his inconsistent replies more likely bespoke indifference than anything else, but, of course, she couldn't say that.

"Do you think that's it?" Hviske asked. "Maybe he doesn't say so every time because he doesn't want me to think he's interested in me, even though he really is!"

Ostensibly the two of them were supposed to be hunting, but Hviske had yet to see any sign of prey. That didn't surprise her. In a pride as large as theirs, a hunting group had to go pretty far afield to find prey that wasn't scared off by the overwhelming scent proclaiming HERE BE SO MANY LIONS. It almost certainly had nothing to do with the fact that she and Neshie were chattering away like they were in the middle of the pride.

"What do you think? Do you think he might be interested in me? We have a lot to talk about. We always hang out for hours, just talking, and it's so amazing."

Again Worknesh had to keep her actual opinion to herself. If Matumaini was spending hours talking to her friend instead of getting busy with her, he was almost certainly not interested. There was just no other logical explanation for a healthy adolescent male to spend so much time with an attractive female and not try at least once to get closer.

"That could be," she agreed. "If the two of you have a lot in common, and you're spending so much time together, he must enjoy being with you, or else he wouldn't make the time, right?"

Or, quite possibly, Hviske wasn't giving him much of a choice. Worknesh wondered if it was possible for a lion to find himself married just because he had failed to say no at the appropriate time. If it was posible, Matu might just become one such lion.

Hviske grinned, delighted that Neshie thought the same as she did. She had been reluctant to share her secret crush with Neshie, but it had turned out that doing so was a really great decision. Neshie was quickly becoming her best friend and confidant, pushing memories of Hidaya into obscurity. It had been forever since Hviske last saw her old friend, anyway.

"That's exactly what I thought!" she exclaimed. "I mean, he could obviously tell me to go away at any time, or just say he's too busy to spend time with me if he didn't want to. But he doesn't, so I think that must mean he wants to spend time with me."

There was a nasty part of her brain which suggested he was just too polite or too shy to tell her those things, but she tried her best to ignore it. Matu wasn't like that.

"I can't imagine why he wouldn't," Worknesh added distractedly, not quite agreeing or disagreeing with Hviske's appraisal of the situation.

She surveyed their surroundings as she spoke, looking for some sign of something she and Hviske could kill and bring back to the pride to prove they weren't failures as huntresses. On their own, Worknesh knew both of them were perfectly capable huntresses, but whenever they went out together they never caught anything. Worknesh didn't have to wonder why that was.

"Have you tried not saying anything?" she asked. When she said the words, a part of her meant had Hviske ever tried not talking in any situation, but to make sure Hviske didn't realize that she went on: "Just to see if he notices and makes a move on his own?"

Hviske sighed.

"I've considered it," she admitted. "I even tried it once, but he didn't do anything different, even though I went like three days without even seeing him."

Those had been the longest three days of her adolescent life. It wasn't as if she hadn't gone so long without communicating with Matu before, but it was different when she was actually telling herself she wasn't allowed to get in touch with him, or even accidentally-on-purpose run into him.

"I couldn't even last a week," she concluded sadly. "Do you think I just didn't give him enough time to miss me?"

Somehow Worknesh wasn't surprised to learn that Hviske had already attempted to force Matumaini to take the initiative. She was surprised to learn that her friend hadn't had the persistence to make it last longer than three days though. She didn't know if that indicated weakness of character on Hviske's part or just a terrible, terrible crush. Since she liked Hviske, she was inclined to assume the latter.

"I think that's probably it," she said as convincingly as she could. "Try to make it a full half moon, if you can. That should be enough time for him not only to notice he hasn't seen you in a while, but also to miss seeing you."

Not that it would mean Worknesh would get to stop hearing about him. Sometimes she regretted pressuring Hviske into telling her about the crush at all.

Hviske nodded decisively. "I'll do it! And you'll help me be strong, right? Distract me when I'm too mopey or remind me not to be weak. You're the only person I know I can trust."

She wasn't completely convinced that this would be effective, but she hoped that with Neshie's help she would be more successful than last time. Sometimes she really felt like she would die if Matu didn't notice her soon.

"Anyway, I'll start today by canceling our plans. I was supposed to see him after our hunt, but maybe I just won't show up. It's not like we've caught anything yet anyway, so I can legitimately claim we didn't want to come back until we made a kill."

"Sounds good," Worknesh agreed. "But I think now we really ought to do some hunting, so that we can at least come home some time. I promise, if we're too good and catch something right away, you can just stay over with my family. They won't mind."