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 Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:08 pm
Kazul The woods held no terrors for Kazul although she had not ventured into them for some time, and she had not penetrated this deeply their leafy depths since she and Odd were juveniles running more or less wild through the pride. That sort of behavior had come to an end when they reached adolescence, and since then the two half-siblings had restricted their meetings to places closer to the pride. Sometimes it felt to Kazul that Odd was trying deliberately to keep her out of the forest so that he could hold this one part of himself separate, apart from the Stormborn who were so very unlike him in most respects. She tried not to be hurt by the thought because she knew what it was like to want to have something all to one's self, a place to go that no one else could get to. Usually her escapism was mental, but she had never had such strong ties to a place as Odd did to his mother's forest. Today she was going into the woods in search of her much-absent half-brother because she sorely needed to talk to him. Odd Odd's removal from the Stormborn had been a conscious thing helped by the fact that one of his brothers was undergoing a similar period of disillusionment with the pride at the same time and his mother's sister Iseq had come to the pride. He had been dwelling deep in the forest along the pride's border for some time now, growing perhaps wilder by the standards of some, but also more in touch with the spirits his mother communed with. He had also met a strange lioness who claimed that she would be the mother of Herryk's cubs because she had seen it in a vision, which had proven a fascinating thing all around. He had also, thanks to his aunt's meddling, met an intriguing lioness about his own age named Muista. She lived well outside the pride's official boundaries, but when they met they had been within patrolled lands. It had lately taken a lot of control not to return to seek her out. Before he did that Odd really wanted to get a female perspective.
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:25 pm
Kazul It wasn't difficult to figure out where in the forest Odd had gone when he retreated. The signs were all there for any who had the eyes to see. Kazul smiled to herself as she thought this because it was so like the sort of thing Odd would say when he talked about seeking signs from the gods and spirits. She wasn't looking for ethereal evidence, however, which made it much easier in her opinion. No matter how talented Odd was at disguising his presence he never gave much thought to concealing his den, believing as a Stormborn did that he had no need to do so for there would not be any threats to him. At least she assumed that was his reasoning in making his den so easy for someone like her to find. It did not occur to her that he had trained her to find things like that as she came upon the home he had made away from the pride. He wasn't there, but Kazul was prepared to wait, though before she settled in and made herself comfortable she moved some stones on the ground into a sign that would warn him the intruder he'd sense in his den meant no harm, just in case he didn't figure out it was her before he saw her. Odd Odd was reluctant to return to the pride proper, but both his mother and aunt were being particularly elusive lately, and besides he wasn't sure they would be the best sources of advice on female matters. Both of them were unlike Muista, though there were definite similarities, too. It would be more helpful to him to find his sisters, who straddled the words of the Stormborn and the woods just as he did, but they all lived closer to the pride. He could also ask Kazul, but her home was still in the Warlord's den and Odd wasn't ready to venture so far back to the place just yet. It would be easiest if one of them would come to him. There were ways to persuade the spirits to arrange things to work out in that way, but it would be a waste of his energies to follow those measures, he decided as his paws turned toward his den. Not far away from his den he hesitated, aware that things had been disturbed in his absence, and not in the usual way of small forest creatures. Someone had been here, and was possible still here. Odd was not a violent lion, but he was a confident one and had not thought to set up more than spiritual protection around his home, and now he thought he might have cause to regret that until he saw a shape in stones that proved he was dealing with a visitor who knew something of his family's forest ways. That was a relief.
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:44 pm
Kazul Kazul heard Odd's approach before she saw him or smelled him. The woods and general set-up of his home made all but hearing someone's approach a challenge, but she knew it was Odd. No other lion would come to this place without making an attempt at caution. Well, maybe one of Odd's fullblood siblings or his mother would, but Kazul was confident it was Odd she heard. Her eagerness to talk to him overrode her initial inclination to wait until he came into his den to say anything, and instead she got to her feet and darted to the entrance so that she could see him. And when her amber eyes did fall on his orange hide she realized that he was not quite the brother who had left the pride. She had missed things in his life, and deep down she knew it was her fault because she had driven him away. Well, she and Solvtorn, but it had been her decision to choose Solv's company over Odd's, blithely assuming that her half-sib would have to forgive her and love her no matter what. It had been a foolish assumption on her part she now saw, but hindsight was like that. "Odd!" she exclaimed. "It's me. I've missed you." Odd Odd had surmised that Kazul was his visitor from a number of tiny details she probably would not have given any thought to, and so he was not taken completely by surprise when she darted out of his den with his name on his lips. Until he saw her he had not realized that he had missed her during his sojourn in the forest. He had been missing her before that, too, though. Missing her the way she used to be had been a part of the reason he'd come into the woods in the first place. He had not liked seeing the lioness she was becoming with Solvtorn as a companion. He greeted her with an earnestly pleased smile but he was wary still to see how much of a change Solvtorn had wrought in his favorite sibling. He hoped to all the gods and spirits that she had not been altered irreparably and for the worse. Surely Ru would have been able to prevent that. It had been the knowledge that her relationship with Ru was altering, too, that had helped to drive him into the woods. Odd had not been able to see where he would fit into his sister's life and had felt more than ever the odd one out. "Be welcome, Kazul. I see you have already made yourself somewhat at home."
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:05 pm
Kazul "Sorry," Kazul said, abashed. It wasn't exactly the greeting she'd hoped for from her favorite sibling, but she supposed she had no reason to expect more. She had not been a good friend or sibling to him in recent months. "Your den here seems much more like the sort of place you would be happy than the one you keep in the pride proper," she said, trying to think of something to say and immediately regretting giving voice to her first impulse. "Will you come back to the pride, or do you prefer it here?" Technically, she knew, he was still within the pride, but it wouldn't be the same if he chose to remain here, so far away from her. She would certainly not be seeing him daily as she had once been accustomed to doing. The thought filled her with remorse. How stupid she had been! And now she came to him seeking his advice. If he were more like a Stormborn he would turn her out with a reminder of how shabbily she'd treated him. "I brought meat for your hearth," she said, remembering some of the formalities of visiting she'd learned from Tomi so long ago. She really had brought meat, too. It was the gesture of someone who came as a guest uncertain of their reception. Odd His sister's discomfort and embarrassment was obvious and it only made Odd feel guilty. He didn't have it in him to be truly vindictive or spiteful. At worst he could be mischievous but this was neither the time nor the place for that, and he felt no inclination to be so at any rate. He wanted things with Kazul to go back to the way they had been, if they could. Her obvious worries about the welcome she would receive from him made him hopeful that she wanted the same sort of reconciliation. He had to stretch his memory to recall the proper social forms for accepting a gift of meat for his hearth, which ought to come before he answered her question about his tenancy. "Er. You are welcome to share of it," he guessed. Unlike Kazul, he had not had a Lawspeaker assigned to teaching him and his siblings how to be proper Stormborn. "I don't think I'll stay here forever," he said then as he stepped into his den. "But I may stay a while longer. It is good to be here in the forest, for a number of reasons. The company, for one, agrees with me." She would probably take that as a reproof, and maybe he meant it as such, at least a little, but he didn't think she would do more than cringe. Commenting on it wasn't her style. Or it hadn't been.
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 1:43 pm
Kazul As Odd had predicted, Kazul cringed when he mentioned that the company agreed with him. It wasn't hard to figure out what he meant by that. At the same time he had invited her into his den, even if he hadn't used quite the proper wording to do so. She knew he hadn't been trained to Stormborn ways as she had, and although she'd once taken it upon herself to do so, they were now both too old for her to try it without her attempt seeming condescending or patronising. She let it slide. "I do miss you," she reiterated instead. "There are so many times I find myself wanting to talk to you, but I haven't wanted to disturb you here. I thought you would come back on your own when you were ready." But he hadn't, and she really needed to talk to someone about the way things had apparently gone awry with Ru. She needed a male perspective and Solv really wouldn't do for this. She was beginning to suspect he wouldn't do for anything. Lately they quarreled more than anything else. He took too many liberties and thought he had some sort of hold over her. He did, but once she had realised it Kazul had taken steps to ensure that he would not any longer. Their association was not going to last much longer it seemed. Odd As they both settled down in the space his den afforded them Odd studied his sister, who seemed finally to have grown in such a way that her huskier form looked less heavy and more like she was merely fluffy. A part of her problem had always been that she'd inherited both her mother's fluffy fur and their father's bulkier build, but now things seemed to have evened out. He wondered how that had changed things for her with the males of the pride, if it had. "If I may ask then, what did bring you into the forest? I am pleased to see you, of course, but it has not been my experience that you go ahead and do things you had previously made up your mind not to do. Is everything all right?" He got the feeling that everything was not all right, in fact, and that she was down here because something had gone very wrong in her world, but he was not the sort of lion to take any sort of pleasure in that supposition. She was still his favorite sibling and it did not please him to see her in distress or discomfort. Of course he had also wanted to talk to her, too, and recently. Perhaps the spirits had intervened even without his having asked them to. It was possible.
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Posted: Wed Dec 07, 2011 2:19 pm
Kazul Guilt gnawed at Kazul as she thought about how well Odd knew her and how easily he just accepted her presence. She didn't deserve him being so nice to her. And yet she desperately needed someone to be nice to her in exactly this way. She didn't dare tell their father that she was having any sort of male troubles because his solution would be violent and irreversible, and while his staunch support would not be unwelcome it was not what she was looking for in this instance. She lowered her gaze to her paws briefly before meeting Odd's eyes once more. His eyes had darkened to be like hers and Aesir's. When they'd first met his eyes had been a more brilliant gold, like his mother. "You know me too well," she said with a smile. "It's a little embarrassing. But no, everything's not all right." She hastened to add, "I'm not in any sort of trouble, but I've made some dreadful mistakes, I think, and I'm not sure how to right them, or if they are even the sort of thing I ought to try to right." She wondered if he would think she meant the way she'd dealt with him, and that was part of it, but she already knew that it was worth it to try to make things right with him. Odd Actually, Odd didn't think she meant him. He knew her that well, and knew that in the back of her mind she believed in the bonds of family that bound them. so did he, though he honored them differently than she did, perhaps. "I'll help if I can," he said seriously. "But I don't know how much help I can be. I have never been influential in the pride, you know." What status he did hold was held because he was Kazul's companion, and he knew it. Most everyone else dismissed him as one of the Warlord's strange bastards. "It's not hugely important, but there's a matter I would like your opinion on at some point," he said, just to make sure he remembered to say something before they delved into her problems. He knew Kazul would remember, because she always remembered when people said things like that to her, even if she didn't get back to them immediately. She was a far more conscientious lioness than she gave herself credit for being, and spent enough time thinking about others that whatever her reasons she came across as fairly considerate most of the time. She would be able to assist him, he had no doubt.
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Posted: Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:21 am
Kazul Deep down, on a subconscious level of which Kazul was completely unaware the lioness had known Odd would help her because he was family and that's what family did, even when they weren't getting along. However, closer to the surface of her consciousness the green lioness breathed a sigh of relief. Like Odd, she knew he was not an influential lion in the pride, but she didn't need him to be influential for this. She just needed him to listen and then tell her what she had done wrong so that she wouldn't make the same mistake in the future. "Of course," she said simply. She would have agreed to anything if it would make things between them all right. "Actually, all I really need from you is an opinion, too. And some advice. About Ru." She was studying her paws, or so it seemed. In truth she was trying to figure out how much she could tell Odd before it would cross into the realm of over-sharing while still conveying everything he needed to know to be of any help. Sometimes it was a problem to have one's brother be one's best friend, too. Odd Unlike Kazul, Odd had no doubts that his sister would agree to help him, not on any level. He knew that even if they had recently come to blows, she would still have agreed to help him because of their shared blood. It made no difference to her that they had different mothers. It never had, from what he could tell. He had always been glad of that. He nodded in acceptance of her agreement and then put his girl troubles from his mind. He preferred to do Kazul the courtesy of devoting his full attention to her. Of course from the way she didn't seem to want to look at him, maybe she would have preferred to hold a little less of his attention. Well, too bad. she had all of it. "What's he done?" Odd asked. A hint of a snarl curled around the edges of his speech. He liked Ru well enough, but if the green-eyed Reaver was making his sister unhappy or if he'd hurt her in some way, Odd would think nothing of calling down the wrath of all the gods and spirits he could convince to listen to him.
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:03 pm
Kazul It was sweet of Odd to phrase his question in such a way as to imply that she was not the one at fault even though there was no reason he should believe anything else. Since befriending Solv she hadn't been much of a friend to Ru, either. Except there had been that one night in the abandoned settlement. She couldn't stop thinking about that, and what had passed between them that evening. Using more vague terms than her memory supplied and suggested she described to Odd how she had been under the impression that something was developing between herself and Ru, but after that night he had barely spoken to her, instead leaving on a viking that took him away for several weeks. "Is it because I didn't have sex with him?" she asked. "Or is it something else I should have done, but didn't? Or maybe something I shouldn't have done but did?" Her mind could come up with ample examples of either sort of action, but she was hoping Odd's thoughts would less biased and therefore of more help to her. Odd Listening to his sister describe a particular evening encounter with their mutual friend was surprisingly uncomfortable for Odd. It didn't matter that he had actually been the one to alert Ru to the place's existence and suggest that Kazul would find it interesting. It was just not comfortable to think about how close Kazul had come to having sex with someone he knew and interacted with occasionally. Fortunately the discomfort passed and transformed quickly into indignation when Kazul informed him how she'd barely heard anything from Ru after that and went on to ask if there was something she'd done wrong. He wasn't an expert in relationships, but he had expected matters to go differently between Kazul and Ru. It had seemed obvious to him that the attraction was mutual, and even Solvtorn hadn't been able to drive Ru off, it seemed. "I can't imagine it's anything to do with you. At least not in the way you think. Have you considered that Ru was born an outlander and that perhaps he is trying to overcome that unfortunate background to make himself someone more worthy of you?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 9:14 pm
Kazul Odd's suggestion had not occurred to Kazul, but the moment the words left his mouth she breathed another mental sigh of relief. For so much of her youth, including some of the time Ru had known her, Kazul had been very vocally proud of her parentage, and she still was. It made sense to her that an outlander might feel the need to prove himself in the face of that sort of possible comparison. And it was even possible he had perceived her inexperienced awkwardness as something else relating to their different backgrounds. Of course their different backgrounds made no difference to Kazul, but Odd's suggestion appealed to all the right parts of her mind and ego, and so it was unlikely she would ever tell Ru that unless he specifically brought it up. "Oh, Odd. Thank you so much. I knew I could count on you to be sensible. And aren't you glad you don't have to call him out or anything like that?" Odd It didn't really sound like something Ru would do, but Odd thought the possibility might help his sister to cope, at least temporarily, with whatever was going on with Ru. Odd intended to find out more about that at a later date. For the time being he was content, and perhaps a little relieved also that he would not have to call Ru out. He knew that wouldn't be a fight he could win. Of course it would serve to call Aesir's attention to the situation, and that would be a fight Ru couldn't possibly win. "I'm glad I could help. Won't you have something to eat?" His thoughts didn't return to his own troubles relating to Muista right away. He was still considering Kazul's difficulty and how best to approach Ru about it. He had been so certain the two of them were going down a certain path, and he had liked where he imagined it would end up. "If not something to eat, perhaps you could let me know how things are going in the pride. I've been a little out of touch, as you've noticed."
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Posted: Mon Dec 12, 2011 11:00 pm
Kazul Her own issues dealt with, at least for the time being, Kazul was finally able to relax and be at ease. She had already made a study of her brother's den while she awaited his return, so there was nowhere to turn her attention except Odd. Which was fine with her. "No, thank you. You are not looking at the figure of an underfed lioness. But please don't let that keep you from eating. I brought it for you." The last was added belatedly as she remembered her manners. "And are you sure you want to hear about the pride? I'd be happy to help you in any way I can with that other thing." It would feel nice to be able to help Odd as he'd helped her. Odd At his sister's insistence Odd helped himself to some of the meat she'd brought for him. Living in the forest as he did, it was unwise to leave meat around for too long. It always attracted things he didn't want in his den. "That can wait for a while," he told Kazul around a mouthful of meat. "Why don't we take some time to catch each other up on what we've been up to recently?" He smiled as he put Kazul off. At some point the conversation would circle back to his issue, but it would do so with more context this way, and he had the patience to wait for that to happen. Also it gave him an excuse to draw out Kazul's visit, so he was glad when she agreed. Things felt right this way. He would have to make sure not to let them go so badly awry again.
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