Welcome to Gaia! ::

Sineri was laying on a rock, enjoying the coolness of the shade of a tree, and equally enjoying the little spots of warmth on her coat made by the sun filtering through the leaves, those patches of heat drifting over her golden fur and changing place with every light breeze that moved the branches. Home, this morning, had been particularly noisy, and she had been needing quiet. The little cub loved to relax and sun herself; it was a much treasured pastime. And it was just horrid when such pleasurable - if lazy and inactive - things were interrupted, as Sineri was about to find out.

What Tetemeko didn't realise, however, was that the deeper his digging went, the higher and further the mud he removed was flung. Further and further it went, until one rather large glob of it landed right on the petite femme's head. Understandably startled, her crimson eyes snapped open and her honey-brown-dipped ears laid flat against her skull. She could feel something clinging to her head, and instinctively her paw reached up to wipe at it. Upon seeing that it was thick, dirty, dark mud, her eyes widened in alarm, and she rubbed furiously at her head. She knew it would not be clean, though. It wouldn't be clean unless she gave it thorough attention.

With most of it off, so she couldn't feel it there any more, she sat up, her head rising above the patch of long grass that had hidden her from Tetemeko's view, her colouring blending perfectly in with the yellowed brush, and looked around for the moron throwing mud. She intended to give this individual a stern talking to. Her narrowing eyes landed on the digging Tetemeko. "HEY! You over there! What do you think you're doing? STOP getting MUD all over me!" There was an amount of dramatism in her voice that would have fitted her demanding he stop trying to kill her, rather than just get her dirty. No one had ever said she wasn't a drama queen, and a smear of mud on her head gave her every reason to be dramatic - OCD hate of being dirty was apparently hereditary.

That apology was not nearly enough to mollify the dishevelled - in her view - young lioness. She absolutely detested being dirty, and mud was the worst. Dust could be patted off, if there wasn't too much of it, with a little light grooming afterwards to make sure. Mud, however, stuck to the fur and clung there. Only a wash and then a thorough grooming could hope to get it off. Oh, a sorry really wouldn't cut it right now.

Stiffly, she hopped off the rock she'd been sunning herself on and walked toward the water, managing to look regal as she did so, despite the splatter of mud on her head. She went to the edge of the water, and giving him a look, as if to say 'it's YOUR fault I have to do this', she dunked her head quickly under the surface, lifting a paw to scrub it over the mud stain. When she resurfaced, it looked better, even though there was still a dark patch on her fur. She shook her head to get rid of the excess water, then sat daintily as her paw again rose, this time so she could lick it and then raise it even higher to begin rubbing at the remaining dirt.

Eyeing him again, and not too happily, she continued on in an irritated tone, "You should make sure no one's around before you start flinging mud every which way, y'know. Look what you did to my fur!" She huffed lightly, apparently not just insulted but a bit upset by this.

"That's not the point," she replied tartly, though of course it was exactly the point. She just wouldn't accept that. Her OCD about being clean made an incident like this the ultimate insult - even if it was an accident, a completely innocent one at that. Tetemeko was just lucky Sineri didn't catch his face twitching like that. She would have guessed he was about to laugh, and he'd have seriously been in trouble then.

"You got me dirty, and it's going to take forever to get clean," she said, in an obvious overstatement, for most of the dirt was gone from her golden fur. Still, she continued to cycle of licking at her paw and then rubbing at the top of her head, peering at Tetemeko from underneath her leg.

Sin chose not to answer Tetemeko right away, instead turning around so her back was toward him, showing off the markings there that were identical to those of her father. And her brother, Shaji, of course, though his were a greenish colour that Sineri had yet to decide if she liked or not. But whether or not she liked Shaji's colouring was not what was paramount on her mind right now. She was checking to see if she was clean or not. The shadowy water didn't reveal much, but from what she could see, she looked clean enough. She could wait until she got home now, and then her father could clean her off properly. But she wasn't going back yet; still nettled from becoming dirty, the cacophony of noise at the den wasn't inviting.

Turning back to him with a flick of her black-tipped tail, she again sat where she had been before, tilting her head with a raised eyebrow at his words, for they described him quite clearly. "That sounds like you... light fur, and you're starting to get a mane. It's hard to get mud out of your fur because of that? Then why get muddy?" She couldn't really grasp the thought that getting dirty could be fun. It always seemed so... icky to her.

She wrinkled her nose slowly as Tetemeko spoke of getting dirty as being fun, really not understanding how that could be so. It was icky, and yucky, and dirty, and quite often smelly. Where was the fun in that, she wondered. It seemed pointless to her to deliberately get dirty, and then have to spend so long cleaning oneself to get it all off. No, she wanted no part of that, and privately thought anyone who did was crazy.

"Fun?" she asked, though, unable to help herself. "Why is it fun to get all dirty and smelly?" She asked this with honest curiosity, wanting to know. It just didn't seem possible to her that dirt and fun could go paw-in-paw. Tetemeko's next question surprised her, though. She would never have expected that this lion would know her brother, and her surprise showed in the way her eyebrows lifted. "Uzalishaji, you mean? He's my brother. You know him?"

Sineri's eyebrows lifted high and her eyes widened as she watching Tete dance and hop around the hole he'd dug, which she didn't find impressive at all, and wondered quietly if he wasn't lacking something mentally. If he wasn't, he was just weird, and that wasn't much better. The fact that Shaji knew him might have endeared Tete to her a bit if Shaji wasn't so... well... eager to believe that everyone was good and perfect and nice. She knew her brother was gullible, but sweet with it. But he would notice if someone was leaning toward the insane or not.

She looked at the hole he seemed so proud of for a moment, before looking back up at him, obviously really not getting it. "... It's just a hole. It doesn't seem special..." Trails off, brow furrowing, a bit confused as to why Tete thought it was.

She nodded in agreement to that; anyone who met Shaji had to agree that he was nice. "Yeah, he is. He's always been sweet." Again she nodded, this time in recognition of his introduction. "I'm Sineri."

Sineri frowned ever so slightly. She didn't like where this conversation was supposedly leading. It seemed to her that Tetemeko was planning to compare her idea of fun with getting dirty, and that just didn't sit quite well with her. There was no way she would ever think soiling her fur deliberately would be fun, and she was sure, even after whatever little explanation he was about to make, that she'd still think anyone who did was crazy.

She decided to indulge him and answer his questions, though. "I like to sun myself. It's relaxing and peaceful. And I like to spend time with my dad."