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 Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:14 am
Masika limped along a little used trail. The smell of another was close, very familiar upon her nose. A worried glance checked this way and that, looking for the owner of that which she tracked. Softly, she spoke, her voice gentle, but inquiring.
"Kitwana... Are you there? Please, Kitwana, be there somewhere...." Pausing, the young lioness turned her head to lick at her shoulder, slightly irritated that it wasn't completely healed yet, and still ached when she pressed forward for too long. But this was important. She couldn't wait any longer, Kit needed to be found, and she needed to be on her way, with or without her longtime friend. Indeed, she still considered him a friend...
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:26 am
With a gentle thud, thud, thud, a presence made itself known, however much the secrecy of late had suited it. Dust loosened by the movements curled uneasily around the tail tuft to disturb it from it's resting place.
In truth, two others watched Masika's movements, an old friend and his seemingly unshakeable companion. And oh how Kitwana had tried to shake him. Still, it seemed the straggly male's fate to constantly have another hanging on his tail, for he had certainly rarely been without some nuisance he had to deal with.
The nuisance presently in question was another male, adult like Kitwana, though a good deal younger. His grey pelt was marred with black tattoos, and a long black stripe down his form. Masego, this other, turned his scarlet eyes upon the form of his patron, taking in the sharp lines, and sharper eyes with some trepidation.
He knew not what history the two former slaves held, nor how they had parted, but Kitwana's manner said much.
The elder of the two held his maw aloof, eyes trained on the grey female, the little fool.
So, she was injured, was she? A fitting punishment for having fallen prey to the lure of a pride. A slave once more, he had no doubt. And not as if she did not deserve it.
A slave he had once been, and his body held the tale. His mane, ill-grown, was more a mohawk than that great plumage of a male. His body, not huge and hulking as most, was instead lean to an almost painful degree. No excess fat padded his form, every sinew on show, almost to the bones that had once shown through.
And now, he was perhaps making another mistake, allowing one who had once needed him to need his services once more.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:34 am
Her injury, despite Kitwana's first impressions, did not appear to be that of claw marks, or even lion made. A single jagged lion stretched across her shoulder, bright pink in appearance and scabbed up as well. Her body though, was none the worse for the wear. She, as well, was lean, not so much as Kit, however. Her muscles were well developed, her claws sharp and deadly as any others. She'd filled out into herself, had grown into a rather attractive young adult. The necklace around her neck tinkled against each other as she padded to a stop. Ears flicked like radars atop of her head, and she blinked those crystal blue eyes for a moment.
Turning in the direction she thought him to be, Masika, known to him as Dama, tilted her head and sighed. "Kit..."
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:40 am
Masego, hearing the voice of the female, tilted his head at the older male, as if asking some silent permission.
Whatever he were asking, it received a distinct negative as Kitwana narrowed his eyes, and merely allowed the thumping of his tail to increase in violence.
A coil of dust had now been suitably jolted, and it rose like smoke around it's assailant, winding it's entirety upon the stifling air to bask on the plains.
A low growl nearly escaped the wirey male, but was kept within his breast. Whatever past he had, Masego would have to wait to know until Dama found him, for he had had his fill of finding his little protegee.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:46 am
Padding forward, Masika intruded upon the pair, pausing hesitantly as she saw the companion of her slavemate. "Kit." She padded straight to him, keeping a wary eye on the other, younger male as she did so. "I'm glad I have found you, Kitwana. You aren't an easy lion to find these days."
Gesturing to the direction of pride rock, a good day's travel behind her, the silvery lioness sat down in front of her long time friend. Glancing between him, and his companion, Masika quirked a brow. "Have I been replaced so readily, Kitwana? Here, I thought you would be travelling alone..."
"You have missed a lot, since you ran off that last time."
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:54 am
A wry smile curled over Kitwana's maw as the female approached him, made her comments.
"You, however, are never hard to locate, Dama."
This was true enough. She, more steady in her haunts, was an easier catch than the nomadic male and his companion.
Her next comment, however, elicited a bark of laughter.
"Replaced? A replacement implies a place of necessity.
No, I merely picked up a stray. If you wish to think him in your stead, I feel neither of you flattered by the reflection."
At this, Masego gave an unexpected response. A slight sigh of happiness, indeed, met this insult. He seemed strangely infatuated with the ill treatment, having met with a truer proof of the elder's ways, in his mind- his kindness. This had been long ago, but gratitude pressed Masego to stay with his 'saviour.'
"Have I missed much? Matters of the pride types bore me, Dama. I am shocked that they should intrigue you so."
A hint of bitterness flavoured these comments.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:08 am
Pausing, she glanced into her former companion's eyes. "Stray, travelling companion, it's all the same to you, Kit. You have a way for picking up the lost souls." His second reference to her name, nay her slave name, caused a twitch to ripple down her back. Flicking her tail-tip from side to side, she sighed. How was she to explain what Mufasa told her, when she knew he wouldn't believe in the first place?
"They intrigue me, because I needed to know where I came from, who I really was, Kitwana. You can't tell me you've never thought of your life before the firekin stole it from you, can you really?" She could feel the bitterness in his comments and they stung slightly, but at least she knew who she really was now. "Dama was the name the firekin gave me. I know that now. But, dearest Kitwana, the name is not mine." She paused to let it sink in for a moment, before adding, "my name is Masika, stolen by the firekin when they stole me away from my family..."
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:13 am
Anger met Kitwana's mind at her words. The work of the Blood ran deep, and to deny the name they gave her was to deny the life each of them had lived.
"You may be Masika to all the family in the world, kid, but the Blood named us as we are, and we'll stay that way."
His own name had been his identity. Kitwana, slave.
A slave born to be a slave, he would die a freed slave, but a slave nonetheless.
"I had no life before."
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:19 am
Shaking her head, she glared at her slave-mate. "We may have been slaves, but that did not make us who we are today. If slaves were all we were to be, then why did we escape? Why didn't we stay there and die the death we were meant to take? No, we escaped, and that alone tells the world that we are more than what the Blood said we were."
She didn't believe he hadn't a life before the Blood. But perhaps he'd been as young as she when he was stolen. Which would mean that his pride was probably as extinct as her own, hard for him to track down even if he wanted to.
"We are more than the Blood ever dreamed us to be Kitwana. We were destined for better things and you know it. Why else would you have left, and drug me along with?" Her fiery glare challenged him to tell her she was wrong.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:24 am
An inkling of truth in her words there may have been, but Kitwana was as stubborn in his ideas as in his ways, and his ideas had long since been formed by the life he had known for so long.
"We left as rats from a sinking ship, as I told you then. I was too much a fool not to steal my own kills, and too much a coward to face Makadari for the death he wished to inflict on me.
And you, kid, were lucky to be found out there, and don't you forget it. We're living on borrowed time, we should both be dead."
Yes, and this was the knowledge the male carried. His death had been booked, and he had slipped away. They were more than the Blood had made them, they were what death had failed to make them.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:34 am
While he did have a point, she saw it as so much more than that. "We should both be dead, but we aren't. We have no reason to fear other prides any longer. We are free and there's nothing the Blood can do about it. You saw how Mwezi couldn't be bothered with us. Hell, even the lazy prince, Mwali, has left his home for the cushier life with the pridelands. That's saying something right there, Kitwana. The Blood are no longer a threat to us."
Taking a chance to glance at Masego, she tried to figure out how on earth Kitwana would've managed to dredge this one up at. He looked stout enough, but didn't seem the type Kit would willingly associate with. Hell, even she wasn't what Kit seemed to willingly associate with, although they had popped upon each other many a time after escaping the Blood.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:40 am
Masego, aware of inspection, smiled easily enough at the female.
Kitwana obviously knew her, and though his manner toward her left the grey male undecided, her knowing his patron at all seemed enough to gain his respect.
Silent he remained, however, allowing the conversation to continue.
"A threat they may not be to our life, Dama, but a threat to our way they will forever be. You are what they made you at your base. You are their creation, however much you may grow away from them.
You may change your name, but not that you are Dama."
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 11:50 am
"That may be what you think," she snapped. "But I believe differently. We have made more of ourselves by leaving, than we ever would've done by staying. We made a statement to the Blood when we left them to find our own lives. You can't keep hiding behind them to explain who you are, Kitwana."
"Regardless, I have found where I come from, who I was and who I am. While the Blood may have called me Dama, dirt, they couldn't keep who I truly was a total secret. My parents were the mistweavers, the ones that the Blood seethingly hate with every fiber of their being. While that alone would've been enough for them to kill me on the spot, I think they kept me alive, and didn't abandon me to die in the desert, because of who my parents were." She glanced back at Masego, slightly raising an eyebrow at the calm, cool demeanor of Kit's 'friend'. He seemed like a strange one, he did.
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:00 pm
"You call it hiding, I'll call it acceptance, kid. You'll know one day the good of what you have been, as well as the bad."
Her next communication, however, ceased the argument from him, and awakened a new idea.
"So that's why you want me, huh? Guard for another trip?"
Masego, meanwhile, perked his ears at the last word. Were they to travel?
What excitement, to be moving again!
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Posted: Sun Jul 23, 2006 12:16 pm
"Guard, no. Of course, you won't consider it any more than that, will you, Kitwana?" She noticed the perking of the grey one's ears, and noted that for later use. "I, shall call it a chance to teach you that not all prides are out to enslave or eat you, Kit. My home is the mistweavers, my role to the pride, whatever may be left of it, their princess. My parents were the King and the Queen of a once great pride, but it seems when I was stolen, the pride has fallen apart. I wish to go home, and to see what has become of it all. I extend the invitation to come with me." And she left it at that.
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