This time for sure Dnay was on the trail of something. Pawprints through his part of the patrol trail, and they didn't smell like the sea at all. They smelled foreign and strange and like water, but not any water he knew. Dank and rich, he couldn't name what he was smelling. Not salt. Not fish. Strange, other, and possibly dangerous.
He would report back, he decided, as soon as he saw what had made the racks and where they were heading. Thankfully enough they didn't seem to be angling towards the shore, or the pride's homes, but it was still worth looking into. He stepped into a near-jog, eager to track the source down.
Zim'torga was not a happy lioness. Of course, she'd never really been a happy lioness at all, even before the dim swamps and hills she'd called home had turned rank and fetid and driven even her pride out of the area. She'd never been unhappy either, but now she was. She hadn't seen her family since the pride had collapsed. She hadn't looked for them.
Perhaps it was selfish, in a way, but now that she was out of the gloom and mire, she felt...like this was right. She hadn't had the heart to live in the dark, it seemed, though she hadn't known it until it was too late to change her mind. It didn't make getting by on her on any easier though. And it didn't make the fact that she still didn't know where she was meant to be any easier to swallow. She'd stumbled across what she thought might be another pride's borders, but the smell was just so different. An overwhelming stink. It was just terrible.
Dnay didn't have a really hard time finding the tracks' source. A lone lioness, sticking out like ripe purple fruit on a dull vine. That wasn't too scary, and probably not dangerous. She wasn't acting like he imagined a scout would, but her scent still bothered him. It wasn't like much of anything he'd ever come across before. The idea that it was a disease, maybe, hit him then. Not good. The pride didn't need that kind of trouble, even if it was unintentional. He crept closer, careful to stay on the right side of the wind from her.
Through a gap in the dense jungle treetops she caught sight of a distant peak. The top was coated in something white, and glistening. She slowed to stare up at it, ears flicking about. It seemed...fresh. Like the air outside the swamp. The opposite of where she'd come from. Perhaps she'd go see it up close, find out if the top was made of bone. It looked too white, but she knew not what else it could be.
A snapping branch behind her made her head whip around, golden eyes staring between the trees. "...Who's there?"
Dnay grimaced down at the offending twig that'd somehow cracked under his paw. He'd admittedly been not paying the best attention. Still. Busted.
He stepped out from cover with a frown. He wasn't afraid of the lioness, and he was showing it. "Me," was his plain answer. "I am Dnaycinat, o the Bahari'mtoto. You are on our pride lands, and you smell...strange." She looked strange too. He'd almost decided to stay hidden when she'd turned around, her face looking like the skull of some odd creature at first glance. He was serious about his job though (not to mention a certain lioness would never let him live it down if she found out he'd run away from a stranger) and at second glance she didn't look terribly frightening. "Who are you? And why are you here?" He demanded.
She blinked owlishly at the brute that stepped up to answer her question. Aha. She did not bother to turn further or regard him more directly, simply holding eye contact instead. "I see." Another long stretch of consideration. He didn't have any trinkets of bones woven into his fur. Just sand, and a great deal of it. How curious. The lions of this land were...strange.
"I am Zim'torga. Of nowhere." She turned to stare back up at the distant peak. "I am here because it is where I am." She said by way of an explanation. "Why are you here?"
Well, uh, that wasn't really the kind of answer he was hoping for. The constant staring was freaky enough, but 'because here is where I am'? If she was diseased he wouldn't be surprised. She didn't seem sick, aside from how she talked, but it kept him from getting any closer. No thank you.
"Never mind. Where did you come from? Why?" She would be questioned until he got enough information to make a call on it. There was no real way to know how fast she was, but she was small compared to his shaggy bulk. He'd have no trouble handling her if she turned out to be aggressive. Or crazy. (It'd probably be crazy over aggressive, he figured.)
How...amusing. He was very present, wasn't he? Her tail swished as she considered him and his questions, an odd rattling noise, almost like shells clacking together to his ears no doubt, accompanied the motion, and a few flashes of off-white peeked out of the purer white of her tail. Bones, in truth, and teeth, if he had a fast enough eye to see them. Her talismans, taken from the bogs of her home. They rattled reminders of manners, and that she was the one trespassing, and that they were watching.
She sighed, then turned at last away from the view of the peak. "My home is gone," She admitted, much more up front than before. "And I am looking for where the world desires me to be." Still she talked in strange ways, but she seemed less intentionally mysterious. "I mean your pride no harm. It is not where I am meant to be, I think, but...perhaps you can be of some help to me..."
That was better, but still irritating. The bones twined in her tail unsettled him. Even from here he could guess they were from another lion. She was alone though, and he reminded himself he could easily take her down if she did anything. His ears lay back, unable to hide his discomfort, but he also nodded. If she was just looking for directions then he'd be glad. He could point her some way or other and get her out of his pride's home without any more hassle. He didn't at all mind that she didn't think she wanted to stay.
She grinned in response to his offer to help, meager as it was. No matter. HE was not going to be any part of her new family, and so she did not need to give him too much of her courtesy. "Come, then. Here. That peak...what can you tell me about it? And how to get to it, the best way, and if there are any lions living around the base..."