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 Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:02 pm
Janja had wandered away from her family for the time being and decided to take a better look around the borders of the Pridelands. She'd seen other lions at a distance in their time their, but had spoken to none. She supposed the group here was just so big that it was hard not to spot others around often. Perhaps this evening she would find someone interesting to talk to. Walking through the tall savannah grass was rather pleasant, she found. Meeting someone interesting would only make it more pleasant!
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:18 pm
That is, until she spotted another young lioness mozying about the borders. It wasn't often she found other lions out this far away from the heart of the pride, especially if they were members of it. She took on the assumption that this female was a rogue, and grew rather excited. Since she had started spending most of her time in the Pridelands territory, she didn't run into fellow rogues all that often. Picking up her pace, she headed in the other's direction with a wide spread, inviting grin. "Hello out there!"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 8:31 pm
Janja was still getting used to the differences in the land and the techniques that would best pick up on changes in her surroundings, including approaching strangers. So she did not notice anyone was around, other than that there were none in the direction she faced, until a voice called out to her. Her ears perked, and her gaze turned to the source of the voice. Immediately she smiled, the lioness approaching her looked friendly- and she had colors on her she'd not seen on anything except the trees and flowers in the Jungle.
"Hello," she called back, turning and taking some steps closer to the stranger. Janja had to wonder if this lioness was a member of the Pride, after all she seemed to be heading from the right direction- though she was heading away from it now. Offering a friendly smile, the dark lioness introduced herself, "I'm Janja, what's your name?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:01 pm
Intombi came to a stop in front of the other lioness and gave her a quick look over. Nope, she'd never seen her befoe. Not surprising, of course, especially if she was a rogue. Since the brown juve was still assuming that the other was indeed a rogue, she just figured that she was from farther away from the Pridelands than she was. "Hi, Janja." Another smile. "I'm Intombi. You're a rogue, right?" She couldn't really help but blurt out the question. Curiosity had gotten the best of her. It was so rare for her to meet another rogue, she was nearly shaking with excitement. Almost all thoughts of joining the Pridelands and her previous meeting with Habu were whiped clean from her mind. The only thing on it now was pure excitement. The only other rogue she had ever met wasn't even a lion! She was a leopardess that had taken up residence in the Jungle, and had ventured near the den for a kill. This was just too cool.
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:10 pm
Janja could easily see the excitement in the younger lioness, and after the introduction and question it seemed like she might be a member of the pride here. It seemed to Janja that Intombi would be more excited to see rogues if she hadn't met many, and she imagined you'd run into fewer when you were a member of a pride.
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Intombi," she said politely, grinning, "Yes, I am a rogue. Though my mother is from around here. Are you a member of this pride?" Of course, Janja was smart enough not to assume things in the off chance she was mistaken. Assumptions were not alway correct- and from her own experience, she'd not met too many others despite being a rogue herself. She'd never met a lion from a pride, though. That would be interesting.
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:20 pm
"Oh, that's great!" Intombi's mood brightenly obviously more, if that was even possible. Mom had told her that there were many lions spread out through the rogue lands like them, but she had doubted it for a little while. It wasn't often she ran into much of anything unless she was in the Pridelands, so to meet another rogue was a ground breaking discovery. "Oh, no, I'm not a Pridelander. I'm a rogue, too." She nodded and grinned wildly. "I want to join soon, though. You run into more lions when you're in the pride than when you're out there." She motioned to the vast nothingness that was beyond the borders with her head.
After a second of thinking, she quickly sprung the conversation forward with rushed words. "I've never met another rogue lion before. This is so cool! Mom said there were others around, but I've only seen lions from the Pridelands before. Sure, I met a rogue leopardess once, but she's not a lion. She actually hates lions... Kinda weird, but whatever. There was that wild dog, too, but she belonged to a pack. I guess that means she isn't a rogue either, huh? Where did you come from, anyway? Around here? I live a bit beyond the border..." She finally stopped for a breathe, sucking in air like a vacuum. Everything she said came out like a train wreck, jumbled together and in a slightly higher pitch than was usual for her. It wasn't easy to pick apart words in the mesh, but it was possible.
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:37 pm
"You're not?" Janja repeated, sounding a little surprised to hear that she'd found another rogue lion this close to the territory of a pride. It all became clear, though, when she said she wanted to join the pride soon. When Janja realized how much Intombi wanted to say, or wanted to ask, the dark lioness took a seat to make herself more comfortable. She was just as interested in hearing in this lioness as she was in answering the questions.
"I've not met many other rogue lions, either," she said truthfully, with a nod, "I've met a couple leopards before, and one didn't seem to fond of me and my sister when we found her. My family and I came from the Jungle, my mother, father and two sisters. I guess we're supposed to meet my mom's family but everyone is being so hesitant.."
Janja got enough out of what Intombi said to answer some of the questions. She heard the comment on leopards, and the question about where she'd come from. "Have you met many of the pride members here? Are they as friendly as I've heard?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 9:49 pm
After her long burst of speech, Intombi followed suit and sat down as well. Even if they weren't going to just sit there, it was nice to get a little comfortable for a while. "The leopardess I met seemed to be okay with me, but that was probablly because was pretty small when we met. She must've thought I wasn't much of a threat." She shrugged a little, as if the mind of a leopard was a mystery. "I didn't know lions lived in the Jungle... From the way she had talked, I thought only leopards lived there."
"I've met a few of the locals, yeah." In fact, the only lions she had ever met were from the Pridelands. That wasn't the question, though. "They're all pretty friendly. Some a are a little on the odd side, but they're friendly for the most part." Of course, Intombi had never met a truely mean spirited creature in her life, and she niavely assumed that all critters in the savannah were of a good nature when it boiled down to it. Even the leopardess she had met had some good in her. "I'm actually on my way home from talking to one of the natives. He was a nice guy." She nodded pleasantly.
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 10:02 pm
"I was young and it was dark when I met the leopardess who wasn't so friendly, she didn't seem impressed with us at all even though we wouldn't have been much of a threat either," she commented on the leopard again, and had to laugh at the impression Intombi had of the jungle, "I didn't meet any other lions in the Jungle, only leopards and a klipspringer. But the klipspringer is from around here." Janja seemed to support the idea that there were mostly leopards in the jungle, but little did she know that her leopard friends were actually half lion. Narcissus and Hayate both said they were leopards, so she had no reason to doubt them despite looking different from Mleli. After all, male lions had manes and females didn't- why couldn't leopards have differences like that as well?
She listened to Intombi describe the locals in a way quite similar to how her mother and father had described. Of course, her father had commented on one bad run-in he'd had before he met her mother, but she expected he might have been too sensitive.
"It's good to know they're friendly, despite oddities," Janja commented, "It'll make our stay her much more pleasant if everyone really is that nice. Of course, once we get up the nerve we'll be with family- but they're making it harder than I think it needs to be. It's almost like they don't expect any friendly welcome."
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 10:30 pm
It finally hit Intombi that Janja and her family had come all this way just to meet more family. This struck Intombi odd for two reasons. Firstly, she wasn't sure why anyone would go all that way for family. She was positive she wouldn't travel for a while to see her own family. Perhaps a day, but she wouldn't go too far out of her way. It wasn't that she didn't love her family or anything, it was just that they weren't a particularly tight knit group. After her talk with Habu, she had learned that some lions were closer to their family than she was, but these lions must be really close to go all that distance.
Secondly, she was surprised that there was a family to travel with if they were going to see family. That suggested quite a bit of family. The only relatives Intombi knew she had were her derranged brother and her estranged mother. She guessed there was a father in the mix somewhere, though Mom never mentioned him. For the longest time, she had assumed that a lioness had cubs simply when she felt like it, without the aid of a male's reproductive system. Now that she knew better, she knew there had to be a father, but she hadn't the foggiest idea who he was or what had happened to him. That made two relatives; Intombi assumed Janja had more than that. "Wait... you're visiting family with family? Just how big is this family?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 10:41 pm
Janja's family was very close, even in her own opinion and she seemed the most likely out of her sisters to wander off on her own. Or so she liked to think of herself. She never really imagined a family being any other way, either- Hayate had to stay in the Jungle because of his family, that made two families she knew of that were close enough that they stuck together. They were a family of rogues, the travelling was not really an issue with them. What had held them back so long was, apparently, the danger and troubles associated with travelling with young cubs.
She could see the surprise in Intombi, but what exactly she was surprised about was hard to say. Until she commented on how Janja was here with her family, and was going to be visiting more family. It seemed that Intombi was from a small family.
"Well, there's my mother, father and two sisters," Janja started, listing the family she knew she had, "Mom said her mother lives here, and that she has a brother and sister. I guess we don't know who all we'll find here, but we expect to find at least my mom's mother, er- my grandmother."
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:04 pm
The revelation that a mother could have a family hit Intombi like a ton of rocks. She had never considered for a second that her own mom might have parents and siblings floating around the savannah. Aunts, uncles and grandparents were never brought up when the small family was together, and so she had just fallen under a sense that dear ol' Mom had no family. Of course, this idea defied all logic, but she had made the assumption as a cub and had never stopped to re-examin it as a juve.
"I don't think my mom has family anywhere near by... I mean, I don't really know or anything. She doesn't talk about them ever. Actually, we don't talk about anything ever. We talk a bit, but not much." In truth, the young lioness had learned far more from her random meetings with random lions and various savannah critters than she had from her own mother. She had had deeper conversations with complete strangers than she could ever hope to have with the lioness. "Is it fun having all that family?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:18 pm
It seemed that everything Janja said would be a surprise to the younger lioness, because now her last two comments really seemed to strike something in Intombi. Suspicion that the brown and pink lion was from a small family was confirmed when she said her mother didn't have any family nearby. Intombi was young, Janja noted, perhaps she hadn't really had much experience with it.
"Oh," Janja mumbled, a bit lost for what to say when Intombi commented on how little she spoke with her mother. She'd always had a good relationship with her mother, then she remembered how she hadn't even realized they had family here until not long before they came, "Actually, mom didn't tell us about her family here until just before we came here. I love my family, very much, but it can be frustrating sometimes. It's hard not to argue at all when you live with the same lions for so long.."
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:30 pm
One thing Intombi's disfunctional family rarely did was argue. Even though they weren't close, they hardly ever disagreed on something strongly enough to rub eachother the wrong way. Of course, they really had conversations that lasted more than a few moments, so it was hard to hit a disagreement. It didn't bother her much, though. In fact, she rarely thought of it as a bad thing. She had been raised in that enviroment, and knew nothing but it.
"Arguing isn't fun." It probablly wasn't good for her mental growth, but the juve had rarely had a fight with even non family members. She hadn't met a critter that she hadn't like for some reason yet, and had only disagreed with a few of them on very small matters. There were hardly any arguements in her life history. It was just begging for a bad fight to crush her. "So what have you done since you've gotten to the Pridelands?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 11:38 pm
"I don't know, getting into debates can be quite stimulating," she said thoughtfully, a small smile on her maw as she commented. With Ekevu for a sister, there was no doubt the two girls had butted heads at least once in the past. Then there was the fact there were three girls, that alone seemed to justify the occasional arguement, "And it's a lot better than just bottling everything up. We never argue about anything serious."
When Intombi asked about what she'd done since arriving in the Pridelands, Janja's expression changed quite dramatically from cheerful to rather displeased. She had to stiffle a groan in her frustration.
"I haven't done anything, I've hardly gone exploring," she said bitterly, glancing beyond Intombi towards the Pridelands and Pride Rock, "My parents are taking their time getting the nerve to just waltz on over to wherever we're going, and I finally got bored of not doing anything. That's why I came out here." Janja nodded matter-of-factly, a smile returning to her face, "Any suggestions of good places to go?"
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