[PRP] Sugar, Timmy's Fallen Down the Well

[LadyPipen]

The Kizingo'Zaa territory was quiet- the distress from events that Sukari and, more than likely, most of her littermates were unaware having faded back into peace broken mostly by the antics of her elder not-quite-cousins and bickering adults... Life as per usual.

Sukari was not like her cousin- Kichi had been a hellion from the very start, a sad fact that grew only greater every day the lioness grew larger... But not Sukari. She was aptly named- even among the goddess of instanity's brood, she was a mild one, not causing much cubhood drama. Always safe to leave unattended, just for a little while, while Matope or mother rounded up her rowdier siblings.

Usually, anyway. But not today- young songbird perched fretfully on her head, Sukari scrambled over tree roots and under wide leaves of the jungle, making a slow and steady pace towards the border. Matope was boring, her siblings were rough... And she wanted to see daddy. It wasn't such a stretch- Muhali's temporary mate was allowed with the Kizi while the cubs grew and he was far from a stranger.

It was, with this logic, completely and utterly fine for a tiny cub and her bird to find themselves crouched just outside the treeline. A little less fine that she had stumbled upon an incredibly bright, definitely-not-her-father lion, stumbling out in the open while she crouched wide-eyed in the grass, hoping foolishly that he'd just... Miss her stark white fur in the grass while her bird pecked nervously at her head.

At least, this was her approach for a moment- though young as she was, she was not stupid. The way the lion stumbled about was not quite.... right. Not quite right at all. Slowly, Sukari's neck craned, dark eyes squinting at the terribly bright lion, "Hey," she squeaked, ears perked fearlessly in the face of the strange rogue- though, admittedly, it was less fearless and more she had simply not yet learned that strangers and rogues were meant to be feared, "You walk funny."  

[Daffupanda]

He could remember absolutely nothing at all. Nothing past the opening of his eyes, and nothing past the horrible headache he still carried. Not to mention the confusion that followed him as he walked, or rather, stumbled. Something about the territory he was walking in screamed of danger; something just there, barely out of reach in the back of his mind told him to turn around, leave. And yet the scents here were the only ones he vaguely recognized, and thus, the only real option for someone that had no gods damned idea where he was.

The treeline was growing ever nearer, and he could just barely make it out of if squinted through hazy eyesight and the red liquid that covered the right part of his face. The blood fell freely from a large gash near his temple, and his mane was a mess. The throbbing pain he felt on his head was no doubt due to that particularly large cut, but that wasn't the only injury the male sported; he was quite sure that his left hind leg was broken, and the difficulty he was having breathing might have indicated that he, at least, had bruised his ribs.

It was little wonder he was in such a state, for he'd barely managed to pull himself out of The Rift upon waking up there, on a ledge that was thankfully a lot further from the bottom than it was from the exit of the scar in the ground. He knew not how he'd ended up in that place, and he ignored why he'd been in that territory to begin with; he didn't even remember his own name, and yet he'd managed to pull himself over the edge of the cliff and had begun walking towards the trees. Towards the vague sense of... familiarity he could just barely make out, and it wasn't until he'd almost gotten there that a voice startled him.

He stumbled over his own paws and landed scant inches away from the cubs feet, hitting the ground with a wheezing cough, the air knocked out of him. Hazy purple pink eyes looked up to find a white silhouette looming over him, and a sneer came automatically upon his maw, followed by a cough that rattled his body for his efforts, "Yeah?" he said with a hiss, "Well fuc-" he paused mid sentence as his brain kicked into working mode.

He needed help. He needed someone to help him reach a pride, or a group of lions; anything was better than flopping over in the roguelands, starved and dehydrated, to let the vultures peck at his eyes. Scaring away the only soul he'd stumbled across all morning was... counter productive to his needs. Where there were cubs, there were no doubt, parents, his mind reasoned.

With no short amount of patience, the male pushed himself up off the floor and looked at the cub, "I need help. C-can you..." he took a moment to swallow pride and need to sneer at the small thing, "Can you help me?" then, as an after thought, as he pushed himself up onto his feet, which only just managed to make him stumble straight into a nearby tree where he leaned his weight, "Please."  

[LadyPipen]

He not only walked funny- he looked funny, colors too bright to do anything but clash, and his chest heaved in a way that even a cub could recognize he was having difficulty. Head tilting to the side in such an exaggerated movement that the songbird perched there had to flap his wings to keep his place, Sukari chirped in response, "You're not one of those demon-lions, are you? Big Momma has been telling us stories....," The cub said suspiciously- had she ever known suffering herself, she might have been in a bit more of a hurry to help, but there was nothing eating him and by all accounts- he just had an ugly cut on his face. Nothing was trying to eat him, he'd surely be fine, in Sukari's mind.

For only a moment, the cub left it at that, before peeking up a the small pink-and-white bird perched on her head, "Kitoto'Nyoni?" she peeped softly, bird chirping in response- but still fluffed as large as the tiny thing could possibly go, eyeing the strange lion suspiciously in his attempt to look even more ferocious than this rogue, which was almost definitely working, a fact of which he was certain, "Can you go get Mom and Big Momma?"

The response was an immediate peck on the head, flapping as he was quickly displaced by a furiously shaking head, "Hey! No pecking! Do you wanna carry him back?" the cub hissed, throwing at accusing glare at her bird- who whistled harshly before sending Bisnek one last glare and flitting off. Willing or not- neither bird nor cub could carry the adult back, obviously, and flying was faster than running, as if Sukari would ever leave behind some lost, injured.... Thing.

The faster he brought back help, the better.

"Silly bird...," Sukari muttered to herself, watching her friend disappear into the trees before turning around and paying mind to the bumbling adult once more- he wasn't really scary, no way he was one of those demon-lions Big Momma had told her about, the cub promptly decided. He looked like he would bowl over with the next particularly strong gust of wind, and she didn't have to be particularly old to recognize it, either. "You don't look very scary," she blurted, rambling on now as though her bird had been weighting her mouth shut before, "You look wobbly. What happened to you? What happened to your face? Why are you so wobbly? If you're not a Demon-lion, where did you come from? Mom says the Bahari are mad at us, are you a Bahari-Lion? What's your name? My name's Sukari- it means sugar. Big Momma says it's 'cuz I'm sweet as sugar. Does your name mean anything?"  

[Daffupanda]

Demon lions? What the ******** were those? And why was the darker part of his brain screaming at him to get out, that no matter what, this place was certainly not the salvation he wanted? Still, he once again pushed the nagging thought away in favor of trying to reason with the child - the only logical option at that time, if he did not want to end up dead in the middle of... where ever they currently were, "I'm not a demon," though to tell the truth, he couldn't have known if he was, or wasn't one such demon, given he had no idea about anything, and his thought were a hazy, turbulent chaos in his head.

Instinct told him he likely was not one though, and thus, that was what he said, but at that point, he'd have lied through his teeth if it meant convincing the young cub to take him to safety; he'd be whatever the child wanted if she could stop the pain pounding in his head, he swore.

It was, with no small amount of irritation, that the male realized that his life was in the hands of the child... and its reluctant bird helper; gods help him, because something told him his life was pretty much forfeit. He idly hoped he had been living a good life before, even if the niggling thoughts in the back of his mind told him he hadn't. It wasn't until the cub turned back to look at him and speak, that he opened his eyes to the red that flowed down his face and attempted to stay awake, "I should hope not - I don't really aim to frighten, though something tells me I look a fright-" a particularly strong flash of pain raced down his temple and spread through his neck and column, forcing the male to lean heavily on the tree, his rump flopping on the ground as his hind legs simply... gave out under his weight, unable to hold him up.

He could barely focus on the cub as she rambled, much less make sense of what she was rambling about, though there were key questions there he felt he had to answer, specially since he didn't think he was going to be holding onto conciousness for much longer, "Fell down the crack - down the scar in the ground, crawled up - can't remember anything, don't know name, don't know anything," this was all hissed through clenched teeth, even as in the distance, there came a roar he just barely recognized; it was female, and it was terribly angry.

He should've tried his luck with the vultures, he was sure of it.  

[LadyPipen]

The cub wasn’t entirely impressed by the fact that her many questions were going unanswered, the severity of the situation flying almost completely over her head- Oh, she recognized he was hurt, but that had always been solved by the adults before, and had never been more severe than simple discomfort. If anything, the signs of severity that might have tipped a more mature lion off that something was seriously wrong only served to bluster Sukari’s confidence- he was awful wobbly, and thus couldn’t possibly catch her even if he was a Demon-Lion, surely!

Besides, he talked all flower-like, like some of the others, so maybe he was just another cousin she hadn’t met yet!

So, she simply pouted, and was about to open her tiny mouth for the next barrage of wordvomit when the lion flopped smartly on his rump, starting the cub into a surprised jump before she burst into giggles- he was a weird lion, all right, and the longer she stuck around the more sure she became that he was in no way part of the evil lions she had heard tales of when Matope caught her siblings acting naughty.

“How’d you fall in the ravine, silly!” Sukari giggled, finally bouncing forward without any lingering caution- clearly, the bird was holding her sense in her head as well, the cub pausing only to brush up against the weirdo, bright lion’s legs like a particularly pleased housecat, “You really don’t know anything, it’s been there for months- everyone knows about it- Auntie says it’s a good thing it’s there, or we’d get snapped up by the Bahari like crocodiles!”

Wrapped up in her own childish discription of the Bahari’Moto traps, she hadn’t noticed the furious mothers that burst from the trees until a snarl ripped through the air, the tiny white cub puffing up with a gasp and diving for the first ‘safe’ place she could find- between her new friend’s paws, as Matope burst through the trees, hot on Muhali’s heels, slowing as they came into sight, every single hair standing on end- she knew that face, and it was worse than any Demon that could have wandered into the territory.

A snarl ripped through her chest, something savage and far more ferocious than any elder had any right to seem, but her eyes cut to the goddess between them- caught between an instant, almost instinctual hatred and fear, fear for the cub that was caught right between his paws, and the knowledge that it was Muhali who would have to take the lead… Far more fit, and closer as well, in a better position to stop whatever might be about to happen-

“Sukari,” Matope settled on calling out, falling into a hunter’s crouch, eyes trained on the unwelcome, even if injured, trespasser rather than the cub, willing and only partly failing the strained worry out of her voice, “Come over here to Big Momma, sweetheart, that’s a good girl….”  

[Daffupanda]

He wasn't sure what constituted as 'a top notch day' in his book, at least not right at that moment in time, but he was sure the current day was not a contender at all. As he kept his weight slumped against the tree and the roaring sounded over the mid day chatter of birds in the jungle, the male came to the realization that perhaps he should have tried his luck with the vultures after all.

The child spoke again, and he tried to focus, with no small amount of effort, on her once more. Yes, there was a small part of him in the back of his mind that did realize the child was annoying, but that same part of him seemed to still think she was his only real ticket to survival at the moment; the roaring in the distance had made sure he was within hot water. Better try to at least make good with the child in the barest of hopes she'd manage to keep him alive from whomever was coming, "Clearly, by being terribly stupid," the words were hissed out, but not maliciously at the moment. Pain was making talking and processing thought an extraneous task.

It became quite obvious that certain parts of his mind were shutting down when the child spoke again, and the male only managed to barely lift his head to look at her "Croco....diles?" it was apparently, the only thing he'd caught out of the next rant, and he blinked eyes which were too dilated. He did not understand, and as much as he pushed his mind, the frenzy was dying down, and slowly, lights were being turned off in different sections of his mind.

By the time Matope and Muhali crashed the scene, he was barely processing past the fact he was confused by the relocation of the child, and feeling strangely comforted by the feel of another body near his. It had been a long time since anyone had come near him. Hadn't it? He wasn't sure...

Muhali had never thought she'd spy the brightly colored lion again; the last time, his visit had caused grief, pain and she'd pushed it out of her mind for the longest time. Yet there he stood, Besnik!" the goddess dropped her small form, and soon enough, she stood in her true form, larger than Matope, and just as clearly pissed as she snarled, not daring to go near the male for fear her cub would be hurt, her wings spread, and though she did not need them to appear bigger (after all, in her true form, she was far larger than the lion holding her daughter hostage), it was a clear signal that not all her snarling was rage. A hefty portion of it was outright fear, "Let my daughter GO!"

The male, Besnik, who was barely processing at that point, seemed to be watching the females as if he were far, far away from that spot and situation, "Is that my name?" it was said between coughs, his upright position barely holding, as his front paws shook on the ground, no longer able to support the upper part of his body well at all.

It was right around then that the male's final lights blinked out, his eyes rolling back, and the top part of his body collapsing over to the side, just barely missing falling on top of the small cub between his arms.  

[LadyPipen]

The stranger's growing lack of responses were utterly forgotten in the wake of angry mothers- the snarling roars that had shaken the air, causing the cub to jump and puff up like a cotton ball were thoroughly distracting to her already-short attention span and firmly shoving out any thought of Besnik's oddities and slipping consciousness.

Really, the whole affair had quite the opposite effect than was desired, the cub scrambling back into the space between her new friend's paws- that he might have been a danger hadn't registered in those first few moments of shock, only the need for safety- which, in the heat of the moment, Besnik's shaking paws seemed the best option to a young cub, even if she peeked out, ears perked and head cocked curiously, almost as soon as she hid.

How odd- Big Momma and Mom were hardly threats, and the girl had never seen them in such a state before- part of her young mind registered the instinctive need to hide with the mothers in such a tizzy- the other part of her wanted to know what was happening, and fortunately, that was the part that won out, the small thing inching forward about the time that Besnik wobbled, toppling forward, Sukari jumping out of the way with a startled yelp, whirling to stare wide-eyed at her new fallen friend, head whipping back and forth between the giant goddess, and her fallen friend.

By the time Matope had leapt ahead to snatch the cub up by her scruff, she was already bawling.

"You killed him!" the little thing sobbed, "You scared him to death, Momma how could you!" Her funny, weird friend- she'd known him so little! He could have told her if there really were crocodiles in the Bahari like Auntie Kichi had said!

Matope's eyebrow rose at the carrying on of the cub- even as she stepped away from the nasty brute, she knew he wasn't dead- and Sukari was in one piece, and Besnik's reactions were... Troubling, to say the least, especially since it was apparent it was no doing of Muhali's. Still, it was impossible to comfort the distraught cub while she was being carried- and the elder was loathe to put the child down, in case she ran back to the battered male that they still had to deal with, so she settled for clearing her throat, tilting her head expectantly up at the goddess mother.

Muhali could deal with this insanity, surely. It was part of the job description, after all.  

[Daffupanda]

Muhali was unsure what she had been expecting, but for some reason, watching Besnik fall over after that single, strange little proclamation was certainly not it. The confusion cut through her rage momentarily, and the goddess froze, much like a gazelle watching the savanna for predators, and her eyes shifted from right to left back to right again. It took several beats of her heart to realize that nothing was hunting them, and that the only scent in the vicinity was, in fact, the fallen male, who was well and truly, gone from the waking plane for the time being.

Her large form shrunk, melted away into her much more manageable, hidden form, her eyes blinking rapidly as her daughter's wailing cut through the silence in the clearing.

For another moment, the goddess remain unmoving, and then, slowly, she approached the fallen lion, almost as if unsure or wary of his form. A ridiculous notion, to be sure, given that she herself was easily stronger than him, but on the other hand, she had never been much of a fighter, and though adrenaline and a need to protect her cub was present... Muhali had never really been violent. Besnik, however, had once posed a threat.

A real threat.

He had almost single-handedly dismantled all the work she'd put into the Kizi and Shandor with his arrival, and had, in a breath, managed make her and the blessing she'd once cast upon the land appear no more than a sham. Her concealed place as lead mummer had made it impossible for her to really refute his words, and the venom spiel he spoke. It had, at the time, been severely stressful for her, and in her mind, despite the fact the male had never so much as raised a paw during his stay, remain neatly labeled as 'threat' in her mind.

Approaching him now, it was clear he was in no position to be a threat of any kind, and unless they moved (and moved fast), the lion might not even last that night. Her muzzle moved near his head, assessing the damage there, and then his sides and legs, before he turned to look Matope in the eye, "He's alive," the way she said it, was more for her daughter's sake, but what Matope probably saw in the goddess eyes, were the unsaid words; that he wouldn't be alive for long unless they did something about it.

She turned to look at the male, whom seemed to be having trouble breathing, and closed her eyes, her lips pulling back into a silent snarl, "Kizingo'zaa is Sanctuary," she said, "We don't let others simply die here."  

[LadyPipen]

Matope didn't like this- not one single, little bit, and the old lioness was paranoid enough in regards to the male that she was not in the least convinced that his pitiful show was the truth. She had, after all, lived through his shams before, and the carryings-on of the sweet, sobbing cub she carried only served to further cement the belief in her old mind that Besnik was up to no good, no good whatsoever.

Still, it was obvious the male would be doing nothing nefarious in his current physical state, no matter her doubts about his mental state. She refused to stoop to his level- or the level of any other. She was Kizingo'Zaa- perhaps not born or bred, but was it nobler to assist in forming the pride and it's ideals, or to be born into them?

The next problem, however, would be in transporting the brute back to the pride, and all the fallout that would come after that. Clearing her throat, Matope gently placed her charge back on her own four paws- promptly stamping one on the cub's tail the moment she tried to bound away, "Oh no you don't, young lady, I think you've gotten in quite enough trouble for one day," she tsked sternly- this whole ordeal was something she'd learned to expect with Kichi and her siblings..... But not Sukari. If this was going to become a trend with the newer Kizi litters, perhaps it was time to retire...
With a stern look silencing whatever comeback the cub was preparing, Matope looked deeper into the damage the male had- but she couldn't bring herself to think of him as "poor". "It certainly looks as though he found what was coming to him," she mumbled to Muhali as she stepped closer, nose wrinkling in unhidden disgust, "But right you are, sweetling, as much as he may deserve such- though I certainly hope we'll find.... fitting recourse during his recovery...."

With a disdainful sniff, and more than a little bit of trouble, Matope nosed her way under the bute's arm, hefting his front end onto her back with more than a little bit of trouble and a grunt, huffing at the effort while Sukari seemed to perk up.

"I'll help, I can help!" she chirped, the worry of the mothers flying over her little head as she bounced over to his tail, batting it playfully before grabbing it securely in her tiny jaws to 'help' carry him home, utterly tickled that her new friend would be staying.... It was so hard to find a playmate that wasn't her siblings, or Kichi, who told such scary stories!  

[Daffupanda]

"I don't think anyone really deserves this kind of punishment - looks like he's been to hell and back," granted, Muhali would have kindly encouraged him to stay there, but that was the selfish side of her talking. The side that wanted to threats upon her land, the side that wanted peace and quiet, at least until her cubs were grown and out of the nest, per se. This was by far not her first litter, but it was, technically the first to be born within troubled times, and the protective mother in her was in a complete tizzy about it.

Her nose lowered to the male again, and she sniffed before curling her lip in clear disgust too, "He smells like he hasn't washed in days... and look at his mane, it's a mess," she remembered the day this lion had first set foot upon her land, and this stranger at her feet was but a ghost of the refined, well groomed male that had turned heads at the time. He'd almost won, too. In a way, he had, given that he'd instated the Dreamers as second class citizens and he'd caused such commotion at the time pertaining the muses that she hadn't been sure they'd ever be welcomed again.

As Matope nudged herself under male, Muhali nudged herself under the other arm, using her wings to great effect as they began dragging the foul smelling beast towards the healers' dens, "This is an Omen," she whispered at Matope as her daughter rushed to help them along, "A bad one for sure."

That said, the two mothers dragged another problem home. As if they didn't already have enough.

-- END --