Word Count: 1260
It was strange being in a place like this. The longer they stayed, the more Ljena became aware of it and the harder it was to maintain an inner peace that had once seemed so natural to her. It was hard to talk to anybody about it, Onwa was such a strange create, Matumaini was so practical (and Onwa was usually around with him, too).. and her father was here, but this was personal in a way she wasn't sure how to share with him, either.
She wasn't sure she'd call it a crisis of faith exactly.. Ljena was the child of a god, her friends were too. It was possible to keep believing in the Great Lion even faced with countless shrines and the handful of gods who actually visited their worshipers.. you just had to believe that all of this in front of you was true, but less than Him.
It was not a crisis.. but it was comforting being in a place where she could question that ultimate divinity. She and those like her were a poorly kept secret at home, she could just be here and that was liberating! But what did it mean? If she could finally think about the mother that had left her and her siblings behind.. what did she think?
Lurking nearby, making a concerted effort not to be seen or heard (which meant not shaking the ground even a little bit), Ngurumo was watching the pale lioness as she paced a quiet clearing in the trees. The young god had met a few members of the strange moon cult and he was no closer to figuring out how exactly to find and cultivate that level of dedication.. but he still liked to think about it, and he was getting better at spying! It helped when he didn't have to move, the earth liked to move with him and that was a dead giveaway.
This one was an especially interesting mortal, he remembered when they first met.. that strange shadow-beast who refused to believe he was a real live god had been with her, but she had known better. He knew she had given her name (or.. he was pretty sure she had) but he couldn't remember it. She was simply that pretty golden lioness from the weird moon cult.
She looked lost, he noticed.
Ljena was completely oblivious to her observer. At first, she was worried about being watched or followed when she wanted to be alone but her mind had since wandered too far away from herself to be aware of it still. Her thoughts lingered on her mother and she started to wonder.. if Alkaid was among the gods to be found here, would Ljena want to meet her? Would she want to meet Ljena?
Before, it had been remarkably easy to put such a question out of her mind. Gods didn't really care that much, they had offspring they left behind all the time, they were never more than that. It fit right into the narrative that they were lesser gods who didn't matter in the big picture. If she had to describe how she felt about her mother before now, her answer would be vaguely positive but she would have had to admit she didn't think all that much about it.. because that's what the Mwezi'Johari wanted from lions like her.
Is that what she wanted, though?
*
Ngurumo watched silently. If he weren't a god, if his perception of time had been more like a mortal, he probably would be getting quite bored watching a quiet lioness do what appeared to be nothing. He did spare a thought for how much more convenient it would be if he could read her mind, but that was not a power he was entitled to as the god of earthquakes. He could do other cool things, but not that.
So he could only guess what she was up to when Ljena suddenly started moving again. He followed her gaze up to the sky, visible through the canopy. They were sort of out of the way of the main area of the pride, but so many shrines were put out of the way to find the very best places.. when he looked back down to the lioness, she was digging a shallow hole into the ground and disappeared around the trees that were, thankfully, opposite his hiding spot.
Mortals are strange, he thought, staring at the hole in the ground she had left behind, wondering if it meant something.
It could barely be called a hole in the ground, it was hard to tell from a distance but it was barely deeper than a paw print in the mud would be. It was tempting to go get look at it, but it was too random.. was she going to come back? He looked out across the trees and waited.
When Ljena reappeared, she was nudging along a stone. It was bigger than could easily be carried but it was still significantly smaller than many of the large stone shrines that were found in the pride. She kept moving it along until it was back at the little hole she had made. With a few adjustments, she got it settled into the ground and stabilized reasonably well.
Was.. she making a shrine?
Coming back into the clearing she had marked, Ljena was now aware of the fact she had an audience. As her thoughts returned to the world around her, it would have been difficult not to notice his presence but truthfully it was a realization she couldn't fully explain, the kind of thing she would usually attribute to her visions.
She chose to ignore him and spent the next hour or so sitting in the middle of the clearing with her back to the spy, blocking his view of whatever was happening in front of her. She wasn't trained the way the carvers were, and she wasn't trying to make something grand and amazing.. but it was a surprisingly effective outlet for the tangle of thoughts and feelings.
When she finished, she sat there quietly for another little while, thinking.
The carving was rough (and her claws were even rougher for the effort) and in the end, she didn't know what to carve so she ended up with something resembling the marking on Enver's shoulder.. maybe it wouldn't mean anything to anybody but her, but she was satisfied with that. Maybe Alkaid would find this, maybe she wouldn't, and Ljena decided that was enough.
She was smiling when she finally got up, pointedly looking at where she knew the young god was hiding, and left.
Ngurumo froze when Ljena seemed to make direct eye contact with him, mumbling a curse under his breath and wondering how long she knew he was watching.. but he didn't emerge until she was gone. Left in her place was what did indeed look like a very small shrine, shining in the sunlight beaming down through the trees.
Can she do that? he wondered, Don't you need to be a Keeper?
He stared down at it thoughtfully. There was power in it, just like most of the shrines around here.. mortal intention was stronger than a lot of them probably realized. He couldn't tell who or what it was for except that it was not for him.
Ljena had answered her own questions but left only more puzzles for the young god trying to make sense of the world he shared with mortals.
Fin.
