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 Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:00 pm
 Brynhildr walked through by the craggy shore of the Stormborn's lands, feeling the sand's give between her toes. Leisurely, the white lioness made her way towards the central territory of the pride as the dawn gave way to the morning. She was halflooking for someone and half doing nothing particularly at all, but in her heart she preferred that she would see Kekäle. The lioness herself was not too far from becoming a captain in her own right and some of their offspring had become reavers in the meantime, but she had a strange desire lately. In some measure, Brynhildr had begun wanting to have another litter. She didn't know how to bring it up to Kekäle, as their last one had been sort of an arrangement to get their parents and family to stop bothering them about having cubs. Since then, it had brought the two of them very close, happily. But they had not much discussed having cubs for the sake of having cubs. She was interested to see what his opinion would be on the matter. If she found him, of course.
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:15 pm
Kekale was covered in sand and salt after spending a the better part of an hour exercising a stiff leg by swimming in the surf and allowing the waves to buffet him, tossing him to shore and dragging him back over the sand until he felt loose and languid, not to mention exhausted. His mane hung in sodden dreadlocks and his dark coat looked black, but for the sprinkling of salt and sand. Having worn himself out with exercise, he now flopped on his side in the dry sand, lying perfectly motionless while the unusually strong sunlight dried him. He did a very fine impression of tidal debris, as still as he lay.
He was not asleep, however, and when a familiar white lioness with a face like flame and a coal-colored stomach crossed his field of vision he called out to her:
"Brynhildr! One day I will kill you!"
His face formed a smile and his tail flipped lazily to show he wasn't dead just immobilized. Also, his ears twitched a tacit signal that he was pleased to see the lioness. It had surprised him how compatible he and Brynhildr had turned out to be, given the less-than-traditional means by which they had come to produce a family together. Now he would happily claim Brynhildr as a close friend, and one for whom he felt not just a little affection.
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:37 pm
Brynhildr had almost turned to walk through the forest when she heard a familiar voice. Her ears perked up and she turned and looked down the embankment she was on to find its source. "And it is a good day to die, Kekale." She returned his smile and padded down towards the shore to be near him. As she reached the lion, she stopped her back feet and walked her front legs out before her in a long stretch, then laid down. She leaned over an nuzzled his tangled mane, their beads clacking together. It was a nice break to have no witnesses, as their cubs usually would be faking vomiting sounds or groaning to see their parents affectionate towards one another. Cubs would be cubs, after all. "Are you lying out here hoping to ambush anything that took you for a piece of driftwood?" She joked and rolled on her back, turning from white to beige in the wet sand and she playfully swatted at his face, as though in retribution for whatever attack he had been planning.
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Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2017 1:59 pm
Kekale smiled as Brynhildr came close and laboriously lifted his head to return her affectionate nuzzle. Water made manes heavy, and he was trying to tacitly make a point. The point he wished to make was that lying down was the best position to be in, so he felt particularly pleased with himself when Brynhildr joined him on the ground. Enough so that he made only a half-hearted effort to defend himself against her playful paw swipe.
"You are so clever to have discerned my plan," he replied. "Clearly you will not fall to my brilliance, but others may, so I'll ask you not to let anyone else know."
He didn't anticipate a reply to his joke, and so he continued talking, asking Brynhildr, "How are you doing, Brynhildr? It feels like an age since I've seen you."
It hadn't been, of course, but it had been a few days. They often lived separate lives, especially now that their cubs had grown, and Kekale had been deliberately avoiding people because his sore leg made him short-tempered and knew that if he didn't want to get himself into a lot more fights than he could sensibly handle with a bad leg, he should not allow himself into situations where he might antagonize the notoriously short-tempered warriors of his pride.
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Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 12:37 pm
"I know you too well, Kekale. Now, your charm is my only weakness." She gave him a wink. She rolled over and adjusted herself in the sand, using her fidgeting as an excuse or tactic to stall for time as she thought of how to answer. It was a simple enough question, she could have just said 'I'm find how are you' but she'd wanted to talk to him anyway so she ought not to cop out now. She tilted her head, still wondering how to bring it up. Maybe it was in her favor that she had been brought up in a pride whose members were notorious for being extremely blunt. "I've been thinking of having cubs again, actually." She waited for his response and searched his face with some anxiety. The worst thing he could do was to say no, really. If she wanted cubs that badly she could always find someone else. But she didn't want anyone else to father her cubs. She had thought that maybe they should get it over with and get married (neither of them had interest in others, they had already had cubs together), but that would be a lot to put on Kekale in one sitting.
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Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 5:52 pm
Kale grinned back at Bryn, enjoying their conversation. He knew he had been extraordinarily lucky to find her, a lioness with whom he could be friends as well as co-parents. Well, in truth the finding had been fairly mutual, but every so often a captain could rewrite history, at least in his own mind.
Whatever answer Bryn might have given in response to Kale's casual inquiry regarding her health, he had not anticipated that particular response, or anything even vaguely resembling it.
Their original agreement to raise a litter of cubs together had originally been conceived to relieve the pressure being exerted on them by their respective families. They faced no such pressure now, having raised a more than satisfactory litter, but the fact that they had lived up to any familial expectations to reproduce did not mean that they could not choose to do so again.
That was a line of thought Kale would not have minded saying. Instead, he was startled into speech, instinctively knowing that to hesitate too long would be an error, but he was not completely sure what words would come out of his mouth. It could have been worse.
"Who have you decided would father a litter as fine as ours?"Puhterodactyl Probably we could finish this in a few more posts. cool
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Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 3:51 pm
Bryn scowled at the lion and stood in the sand and surf. She swatted his face for real this time (albeit not hard) and stomped off a few steps. This was unusually reactive and emotional of her, but how could he be so thick? She looked back over her shoulder at Kekale and sighed, still frowning. Hrmmm... She turned so she was facing him and sat down, tilting her head and squinting her eyes at him a little bit. "Do... do you really mean you don't know who I would want the father of my litter to be or why I would be mentioning this to yoouu?" Had she just blindsided him? Was he truly that oblivious? If the latter, should she be worried any of their children had inherited this ... lack of perception? She decided not to be and only to focus on the matter at hand. The more time that passed from him asking that, the more embarrassed she felt, the more blood she felt rushing to her face and pounding through her veins.
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Posted: Wed Aug 02, 2017 7:52 pm
So...that had apparently been the wrong thing to say. Kekale was a smart lion. He knew this. He was also very good at reading very obvious cues, like when the mother of your first and so far only litter of cubs glares at you, smacks you, and stalks away, that is usually a clear sign that you have said the wrong thing, and apologies are in order. Rapid apologies, he decided, rolling to his feet and pretending that the abrupt movement didn't hurt.
"Bryn..." he almost said, but she was speaking and so he shut his mouth with an almost audible snap and concentrated on looking like he was paying very, very close attention to what the lioness was saying. He was paying attention, of course, but his sisters had informed him numerous times that sometimes it meant more that a lion looked like he was paying attention, and so he was putting on his best Attentive Listening face.
"I appreciate you mentioning it to me. I think we didn't do such a bad job last time with the cub-having. You did more of it than I did, obviously, especially with the giving birth part. You were stellar at that. No way I could have done nearly as well, even if I were built for it." He was rambling. Stop it.
"I wasn't sure if you were telling me as a polite 'by the way I'm going to have more cubs, not with you, but I thought you might like to know so you don't dismember the lion I've chosen,'" he explained. "Because dismemberment wouldn't have been an entirely improbably outcome, so the warning would've been a good idea."
He took a deep breath and pressed on. "Or - and I figured this was more likely - you were implying that you would like these hypothetical more cubs to be with me, but being coy about asking whether I was in favor of the idea. If that's the case, let me say that I am emphatically in favor of the idea, and enthusiastic about getting started in the very near future."
Then Kale grimaced as he recalled the physical mechanics of the usually excellent process of cub producing. With his leg a bit gimpy, this might not be as delightful an experience for him, but he was still more than willing to give it a go. Or several.Puhterodactyl Thank goodness. I just realized how close the purge is.
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Posted: Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:34 pm
Well, he had taken an awfully long time to get to the point he was trying to make, but Bryn listened as patiently as she could, which was kinder to Kekale than she maybe felt like being to him at the moment. Once he finally reached his destination, all tangents aside, she nodded with a look of satisfaction on her face. She knew he wasn't a fool, she would not have tolerated him or wanted his cubs if that was the case. She'd forgive him this misunderstanding. The lionesses knew she could sometimes be too vague when hinting at something– other times she was not subtle at all when she meant to be. She nuzzled her face through his damp and matted mane, getting some of the salty sea in her own forelock in the process. She took a good look at the father of her cubs. "Get better, then come see me," she said, indicating towards his bad leg that she had noticed him favoring a bit, and winked. "I'll be ready whenever you are." Satisfied, hopeful and maybe a bit impatient, she left Kekale to finish his soak.
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Posted: Fri Aug 04, 2017 1:59 pm
Well. She hadn't smacked him again. That was something. But any one of Kekale's sisters would have been howling with laughter at how awkwardly he had handled the whole exchange. He had been much smoother the first time they made arrangements to have a litter.
Maybe because there had been fewer emotions involved? That was something to consider. Along with maybe getting around to asking Brynhildr to marry him at some point. The wedded state probably would be pretty good with Bryn as his bride.
"I'll do that," he replied, grinning as he spoke his promise. He appreciated that she had not forced him to be the one to bring up his stupid leg. Truly, Bryn was an excellent lioness, even though she was sometimes vague.
"Soon," he added before she completely vanished from earshot.
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