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 Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:39 am
 Jvala was bored, and if there was one thing that should be noted about a bored Jvala, it was that she was at her most destructive when she was bored. Not destructive to herself or her siblings, no. Jvala just liked to destroy things. It wasn't done out of malice, not at all, but there was nothing more satisfying than shredding the bark off of a tree or tearing up plants or pulling the petals off of flowering shrubs or digging holes. With a huffy sigh, Jvala rolled onto her back and peered around. Surely one of her siblings would have to be nearby -- one was ALWAYS nearby. Settling her eyes on Uruloke, Jvala decided that today her brother would be her partner in crime. "Uruloke," she called to her brother, grinning at him pad around upside down due to her position on her back, "Hey! Uruloke!"
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Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:33 am
 Uruloke would never have admitted it, but he missed his jackal skin. His mother had given it to him specially to help him keep warm when he was younger, but now that he was older it had grown too small to fasten around his neck like it had once done, and so he couldn't wear it all the time like he used to do. Not to mention some of his siblings had made fun of him for wanting to have it close all the time, and for giving it a name. He didn't see why they would do that, since surely the jackal had a name before it was dead, and because he didn't know what it was, he had to make one up.
However one looked at it, it was for the best that he leave the jackal skin back in the den, carefully hidden from where any of his siblings might find it and bring it out to mess with or tease him with. He missed its warmth, though, and its...not companionship, but it always made him feel like he was never alone. Not that loneliness was much of a problem for Loke, being one of thirteen cubs in his litter and not the only set of cubs his mother had borne. He just liked the skin, okay?
"Hey, Jvala," he answered, aware that if he ignored her it would not go well for him. He was observant and fast at need, but he was not the best fighter in the family, despite his best efforts, and his confidence was a little low at the moment because he was missing his jackal.
"What're you up to?"
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Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:46 am
"Nothing," she said with despair. She needed something to do to keep her mind occupied, and you'd think with a billion siblings wandering around it wouldn't be a problem. That wasn't always the case, and she'd been lucky that her brother had happened by. "I'm so bored. What do you want to do? We can fight, or ... go ... push rocks?" She slapped her lips together in annoyance. Pushing rocks didn't sound like fun, but she'd already shredded like three trees this morning and she was bored with that.
Rolling to her feet, Jvala peered at her brother. There was something different about him today. She'd grown so used to seeing him with his fur on that she was shocked to see him without it today.
"Hey. Where's Wormee?" She thought that was its name. Why he'd given a dead thing a name she would never be able to understand.
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Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 10:55 am
Loke had a sudden urge to flee from Jvala's obvious boredom. Bored Jvala was also Destructive Jvala, and there was a very, very good chance that she would decide to amuse herself by shredding his hide. He wasn't enthused about that idea at all. Not that he was a coward! He just didn't feel like being in pain today.
"Not rock pushing!" he said quickly. That would be even worse than having his butt handed to him by his sister. "We could see if there's anything to hunt. Sometimes there are lizards around here."
Someone, sometime, had told him that he should watch and learn from lizards, but he couldn't remember exactly who or when. He also couldn't think why. He didn't think Jvala would go for watching them though, which was why he'd suggested hunting them instead.
When she noticed his pelt missing Loke experienced another moment of panic. What if she decided to race back to the den and go looking for Warmee? He would be so unhappy if anything were to happen to him. In a show of bravado that he hoped she'd buy, Loke said as casually as possible, "Oh, I got too big for him - I mean it. Doesn't fit anymore." He just barely managed not to correct her mispronunciation of the hide's name. That wouldn't have fit well into his story that he'd discarded Warmee.
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Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:04 am
"Lizards, huh." That sounded mildly entertaining. "Or snakes! Or maybe we could be real good hunters and try and catch some birds." Lizards moved too slow for Jvala. Snakes were better, and they didn't have long legs and claws, so really all you had to watch out for was their snappy jaws. Thankfully Jvala had never been bitten by one. Besides, Jvala rather fancied some feathers to stick in her tailfur or behind her ears.
Not wanting to talk about Loke's jackal fur anymore (as she found it very boring) Jvala watched her brother expectantly. "So what do you want to hunt. We can do lizards but... they're boring. I vote snakes or birds." Birds would be harder to do, but the more she thought about it the more she really wanted some decorative feathers. Loke could stand for some pretty feathers in his hair too.
Or some flowers. That gave her another idea. "If you don't want to hunt we can go pick flowers. You need some in your hair. It's so dark."
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Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2011 11:30 am
"Snakes would be good, too," Loke agreed.
He'd never gone after a snake before, but he'd seen them slithering over the sand, and he'd definitely seen the interesting trails they left after they'd gone. He wondered if he'd be quick enough to catch a snake before it bit him. Probably he would have to kill it, and really quickly, too. He'd killed bugs before, but he'd never succeeded in killing anything smarter. That could be a lot of fun.
He had no objections to the idea of trying for birds, but he predicted that would not be even the least successful, and sometimes the birds in the desert were bigger than he was, like the vultures. Those could probably eat him if they wanted to! He'd seen them feeding on carcasses before. Never a lion carcass - he'd never seen a dead lion - but other things. Once there had been bugs and stuff in the carcass, too. It was kind of gross.
"Not birds. They're stupid. They eat things that're rotting."
Loke was horrified by Jvala's suggestion that they go hunting for flowers to adorn his hair. He knew for a fact that there was no way a fierce Firekin warrior would ever be found with flowers in his mane. Loke may not be the fiercest of the fierce, but he wasn't a poofter either. He growled just a little as he said firmly, "I don't need any flowers. I'm not a girl."
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Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2011 12:40 pm
There was a perverse side of Jvala that liked tormenting her brothers. The more they fought her, the more she wanted to torment them. Loke was looking properly horrified by her suggestion of flowers, and she decided that perhaps she would push him a bit more, just to see how far she could get before he lashed out at her. IF he lashed out, she thought to herself with an inward giggle. Maybe they would hunt snakes or birds another time, but right now Jvala was intent on hunting the greatest prey -- her brother and his ego.
"Don't be a poop, Loke. I won't tell anyone about the flowers." She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to look as menacing as she could. Jvala wasn't mean, but she did have a naughty streak a mile wide. "And flowers don't mean you're a GIRL, dummy. Flowers are just flowers."
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Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2011 10:15 am
"I'm not being a poop!" Loke protested. "Just because I don't want to get all girlified and flowery doesn't mean I'm being a poop."
As horrified as he was by the possibility that anyone would think it was okay to decorate him with flowers, Loke was almost equally horrified by being called a poop. There was nothing worse than that. It was like being a killjoy and a loser and a coward all at once. Scatological insults were just like that, and Loke had never realized how much he hated to be on the receiving end of them until Jvala told him not to be a poop.
"And of course flowers mean girly. Have you ever met a boy who wore them? Or a boy whose name had anything to do with flowers? No! Because they're girly." He'd met a girl whose name had to do with flowers. She'd been the one to tell him about watching lizards, now that he remembered. She hadn't been very girly. But he wasn't going to bring that up. It wouldn't help him win his argument.
"Why don't you wear them, then?" he demanded, pleased by this argument.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 1:18 pm
Jvala further narrowed her eyes at Loke, sparks lighting the depths of that pink gaze. Ears pinned back, nostrils flared and she lifted her chin regally. He was really being a big baby about all this. Honestly, Jvala didn't see the problem with flowers. There wasn't anything wrong with flowers, but there did seem to be something wrong with Loke.
He was being a huge poop.
"What if," she growled, poofing up as much as she could in her juvenile glory, "I make you wear those flowers?" Hah! She could pin him down easy as pie and shove all the flowers she wanted to into his mane. Even in his ears and his mouth if he struggled too hard. He really was being a huge baby about the whole thing, and now Jvala really wanted to see him adorned with flowers.
Like, really.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:18 pm
Loke blinked hard. Not once, but twice. It wasn't that he couldn't believe what he was hearing. Actually, threats from Jvala didn't seem that out of character and he had gotten some nonverbal cues as warnings. He just hadn't really learned how to deal with them in a way that wouldn't end up with him being thoroughly trounced. Growling back would only make things worse. He knew that much.
"You can't," he said with a calm he definitely didn't feel. He hated how easy it was for his siblings to pin him. Even the girls could do it. It was possibly one of the most unfair things in the entire universe. The gods clearly had no interest in his dignity or peace of mind, and for this he resented them more than a little.
"And I don't have to hang around to let you try, either," he pointed out, turning around deliberately.
It was marginally less likely that she would attack him while his back was turned. Of course, if she did, he would get the fun of explaining why all his injuries were incurred in a direction that indicated he was fleeing. But he had already made his decision and turning around now couldn't possibly make things better. Maybe he should've watched the lizard like Zynab said. Lizards were good at blending in and not being covered in flowers.
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 2:33 pm
Ohhh, Jvala really hated being told what she could and couldn't do, especially from her brothers. A furiously little growl wrenched from her throat. Out of all her brothers he seemed like the easiest one to pick on, even if it was only because he seemed to avoid confrontation. Not Jvala. She thrived on them for some ungodly reason.
As she watched him turn away, she grew so furious that she dropped one little word that she hoped would get some kind of FUN response out of him. There was nothing fun about being a baby, nothing fun about being a poop.
Nothing fun about being a --
"Coward," she trilled, bracing herself for his response.
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 11:04 am
Loke kept walking, even hearing his sister's throaty growl, but his face was fixed in a grimace of anticipation. He was waiting for the impact which was sure to follow Jvala's growl. No doubt she would leap at him and send him sprawling, or perhaps she'd just pin him and rough him up. Or something else he hadn't imagined. Turning his back on her had been a mistake.
But as he moved farther and farther away and he was not attacked he began to breathe more easily and his expression relaxed. Maybe he was really going to get away with it. That would be a first. He would have to remember this method in the future. He actually felt pleased enough with himself to smile until he heard something which made his ears lie flat along his skull.
"Coward," Jvala called after him.
He whirled around, his lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl, and without giving any other sort of warning he charged at her without finesse or technique, a hissing, spitting, growling ball of pure, outraged fury hurtling toward his sister with the intent of giving her a good thumping.
"You take that back!" he snarled. "Take it back right now!"
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Posted: Tue Mar 15, 2011 3:28 pm
Finally, a reaction. Jvala really hadn't been expecting him to turn around and come at her with teeth bared, but she mirrored his expression and did much the same thing. She wasn't going to take it back, she would never take it back! That would be a sign of defeat and Jvala wasn't about to be defeated. No way, no how, especially not by Loke. Pff, this was the same Loke that had carried around his Weeble or Wormy or whatever the heck he called it. Stupid stinky fur. Hah.
"No! I won't! You are a coward!" She was entering stormy waters right now, of that she was certain, but she didn't care. At least she wasn't bored, right? This could get exciting, she supposed. "You want me to take it back you better make me, Loke, or let me put flowers in your hair. I'll take it back if you let me do that." She would too. Jvala was feisty, but she wasn't MEAN.
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 8:53 am
Jvala's display of teeth and claws didn't phase Loke. She had called him a coward, and he was bound to defend himself, even if it meant getting shredded to ribbons in the process. At least that would not be the action of a coward. Instead, it would be the last, brave act of a Firekin who had been maligned. It could even be an epic story, brother against sister. He was ready to throw down and start a war.
"Stupid!" he roared (or so he imagined). "Mean!"
One-word epithets were really about all he could handle at this point. He was too worked up for anything else. Besides which, he was very, very close to the moment of impact, and saying anything longer would have been too long, he would have still been talking when he plowed into her, flailing with his claws and snapping his teeth whenever he thought they might close on something.
Technique wasn't something he'd really picked up on just yet. He was acting pretty much entirely on instinct and fury. He could put up with being called all sorts of things, even boring and a poop, but never a coward. It was required of him as a member of the pride. And besides, Jvala was asking for it. Practically begging for it. And this once Loke was determined to oblige her.
Not by wearing flowers.
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Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2011 9:19 am
Jvala hadn't been expecting her brother to attack her, that was for certain. She'd been expecting him to admit bitter defeat and then follow her while she picked flowers to stick in his hair. Shock was evident on her face as he flew at her with claws bared and teeth clacking away as he snapped at her. She didn't even have time to take a step back -- he was a fast little poop!
"Ouch!" she shrieked when his claws caught her across her shoulder. Now that kind of pissed her off and so with a low growl she started fighting back. How dare he attack her!? It's not like she had asked something terrible of him! She'd only wanted him to wear some flowers, why was that so awful? He deserved to be called a coward although in hindsight that was probably the worst phrase she could've used. It had really lit a fire under Loke's butt and now she had no choice but to fight back!
She was no coward! She would never back down!
Then again, he was bigger than she was, and he'd caught her off guard. This might get ugly.
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