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"Amani!" Nyunya's voice shattered the stillness of this otherwise silent area of the Kusini'Mwezi lands. She was a small lioness, but she had a big mouth. "Amani, where are you?" She was using that mouth right now to call for her daughter. The daughter who was nearer adulthood than cubhood.

Perhaps she was being an overprotective mother, but she couldn't help it. Amani was like her in some ways, and in some ways her daughter was her complete opposite. Amani loved to explore, and the older she got, the longer she would be away for, just as Ny had done when playing in the Mistweaver lands. That, naturally, worried Nyunya, especially knowing that Amani didn't have her intelligence and common sense. Hence why, after Amani had been absent for a day or two, Nyunya would start looking for her to herd her back home, which is what she was doing right this instant.

But on top of this, both her sons were gone from her. Njozi had gone with Taabu and Syeira, and she didn't know where any of them were. That was relatively fine, though; she knew Taabu and Syeira would keep him safe. But Rengo had just wandered off without a word. She was terrified for him. And that made her clutch her daughters to her all the tighter, and all the more protectively. And it made her wonder if she really was a bad parent, as she had feared all through her pregnancy.

Nyunya's sharp eyes spotted a black shape a little ways off, and she began to walk towards it. She was getting nowhere looking for Amani by herself. Maybe someone else had seen her pass by? Like this stranger, perhaps. Because she did think it was a stranger... she couldn't make out much of Asherah's figure, just discern that the individual was predominately black-furred.

"Excuse me!" she called to the 'stranger' once she was close enough for her voice to carry without yelling as she had been before. "Have you, by any chance, seen a young lioness pass by here? Her fur is mainly white like mine, but she has a black stripe down her back. She has a little bit of salmon pink on her, as well. Does that sound familiar?" Well, a little bit, when you look at Nyunya herself. The only difference would be the black stripe down her back, which Nyunya distinctly lacked.

As the other lioness stood up and Nyunya got a good look at her, finally, it seemed her mind had imploded. For the first time ever, while her daughter was missing, Amani was not the prime focus of her attention. Standing before her now was her baby sister... if not by blood, than by everything else that mattered more than genetic links. She hadn't seen Asherah since they were barely younger than Nyunya's own cubs, and Asherah had disappeared one day and never returned. It was impossible that Asherah could be here. First Ithibati shows up, and then Asherah? It was too big a coincidence, surely. This female just looked a lot like Ash, and it was Nyunya's wishing for her family that made her think her sister really was here.

But then Asherah said her name, and that made her rethink the coincidence theory. It would be too much of a coincidence for someone to look identical to Ash and know Nyunya's name. Her eyes filling slightly with the beginnings of tears, she took a few more steps forward, her brows furrowing as she gazed at the sister she hadn't seen in so long. With her voice paper thin and barely more than a whisper, she said, "Asherah...? Why... how... are you here...?"

Nyunya felt like letting out all the tears she was holding back when Asherah flicked her head like that. She knew that little move so well, so well. She even remembered lightly teashing her sister in good nature about it - not like the kind of teasing Feddy used to do. She didn't hate Fedha'kialio (he was her brother, she loved him, nasty little creature or not), but she didn't like him, either. Of all her three siblings, he was the only one she wouldn't mind not seeing... and before Asherah, he had been the only one she'd seen since leaving the Mistweaver lands. Typical.

She moved a bit closer when her sister did, a weak smile on her face, her mind still whirring frantically. Was she the only one of their family Asherah had seen since she disappeared? Ithibati had said nothing of Asherah, only of Dharba, who had apparently escorted Ithi to the lands and then left - much to Ny's disappointment, as Dhar was a brother she actually liked as well as loved. If it was so that Asherah had seen none of them before this moment... she would not know of any of the joys and tragedies that had befallen them. Nyunya's sons and daughters for one, almost adult themselves, much to her dismay. She wanted them to be her little babies forever. And Denge... how could Ny explain that Denge was forever gone? It still choked her to think about it. And what Nyek did to Ithi, and the three results of that incident. What was Nyunya to say about any of this, and how was she to start? She was at a loss.

At those two words, Nyunya almost laughed bitterly. Fate was rarely her friend, so she had trouble believing it had brought her such good fortune - not unless it planned to make some unexpected catastrophe out of this reunion. But there was something she had to know before that happened, if it did. Something she could not hold back asking any longer. "Where were you all this time, Ash?"

Nyunya was finding it so hard not to cry now, the pressure behind her eyes growing with each word Asherah spoke. She couldn't imagine the kind of horrors her sister must have faced in a land like that, and as just a small cub, too. And knowing all this, Ny knew, would make it so much harder to tell her baby sister about the familial tragedies she was carrying around with her. Asherah had already been through so much... to tell her all this, and make her go through the grief, would be torture. And yet Ny knew, eventually, she'd have to tell Asherah everything. She wouldn't be able to deny her sister the knowledge. Nyunya would want to know, were she in Asherah's position, no matter how much pain it caused.

"No.. I'm sorry, Asherah. I'm sorry you had to go through all that." Looking away momentarily, she sighed softly, the sound tinged with regret. "I should have tried to find you when I left home, Ash. I should have, and I'm sorry I didn't."

Nyunya flinched automatically at the mention of her father's name. Even after all this time, never seeing him since that one time he'd frightened her so, she still hated him for doing that to her, for hurting her mother. Her mother... Denge. Gone. And now Asherah was asking about how the family was? Her sister's question distracted the smaller lioness from what could have been a more serious reaction to the name Nyekundu.

Slowly, she allowed herself to sit, staring at the ground between her paws for a few moments. Then, taking a deep breath, she looked back up to meet Asherah's eyes. "I've been... I've been ok. You're an aunt now. Of four." Her smile at the mention of her babies was brief. "But the others... Asherah... Ash... I've got some things I have to tell you..."

She bit her tongue as she fell into silence, waiting for her baby sister to say she was ready to hear what was obviously, from Nyunya's tone, going to be be bad news, and she took the time to get ready to be the one to tell Ash all about it..

Nyunya took a deep breath, and she opened her mouth. With her gaze averted to the far distance a little to Asherah's left (she didn't want to have to see her sister's expression, because she knew it'd break her down and she would never finish), Nyunya began to speak.

"Don't interrupt, Ash.. I won't be able to start up again." She took in a shaky breath, and continued on. "I wasn't even really full grown when I left home. I haven't seen Dhar since, and I've only seen Fedha once. He found me a little after I came here and told me I was pregnant. With that creepy way he sees things. I don't know what he's doing now. I don't know what either of them are doing, if they're all right or not...

"But mum... Denge... she's gone, Ash." Her voice broke slightly as she went on, and her eyes filled with tears she was trying desperately not to let fall. "I never saw her again. And now I never will. My kids will never meet her." She sniffed, dangerously close to outright crying, but she bravely soldiered on. "And mum... Ithi turned up here not all that long ago. She was... was pregnant. With his cubs." She said the word 'his' with such venom, she could only mean one male. "Nyekundu's. Three little girls. I'm looking after them because mum's so weak and ill. She misses Denge... so much."

The tears could no longer be held back as Asherah started sobbing, and Nyunya found herself joining her, her smaller body shaking with the force of them, as she yet again let out her grief at all that had happened. Usually her misery was reserved for night, when she was alone and those under her care could not see her pain, but in this instant she could not wait to let everything out. It was too much to hold back, too much pain and misery forcing its way out of her.

But as Asherah came toward her, Nyunya forced the tears to slow, if not subside completely. She didn't sob any more; she just leaned forward until she could nuzzle against Asherah the way they used to, accepting the comfort and offering her own.

"We're together now... We'll get through it together."