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Lutum kicked a stone with his paw as he paced through the pride. Some days he just...didn't like being around people. Wherein "people" was defined as "people not actually related to him." Nawiri was nice and all, but she still tended to get all...motherly on the two of them and it was still awkward for him to have that kind of...parenting. He'd gotten used to it over time, but the responses that were ingrained in other lions his age were still unnatural reflexes he had to think about consciously.

The brown lion thankfully gave up his introspection as a familiar yellow and brown form caught his eye. "Eione!" the male called out to his sister, the one and only blood relative he had in the entire pride. It always cheered him up to see her. Even when they were arguing.

"Couldn't sleep," he replied. Eione was, unsurprisingly enough, a morning lion. Lutum...wasn't. That is to say, he liked being outside when the sun was out. He just preferred not to see said glowing disk until it had reached its zenith or so.

"What are you up to?" the lion asked, trying to turn the subject away from his preferred sleeping habits.

She didn't know? Self-assured Eione didn't know the answer to a simple question? Would the sun rise in the west tomorrow? Of course, Lutum would never say any of those things out loud. He loved his sister and she must have something pretty important on her mind if she couldn't give him a real answer to that question.

He came up alongside her companionably, matching her step for step. After a few moments of this, the lion spoke again.

"Thinking about what?" he pressed when it became clear she wasn't going to speak up.

He turned to face Eione, grey eyes wide. The lioness rarely spoke about their father, their lives before the Kitwana'antara. He knew she remembered, but it was a part of who they both were. Not to mention the question itself.

Lutum faced front again, chewing the query over in his mind. What would their father have known about the pride? That it existed, surely. That it would take in two tired and bedraggled cubs, certainly. But would he have known more?

"I don't know," he answered at last. "But...I'm not sure he would have cared." The last was hard for the boy to admit. After all, Aestivus was the only male role model that had had a real impact on his life. Not even Nawiri's father was so involved. And even that, that was only because, until they'd come here, Aestivus had been the only person he and Eione had seen day in and day out, every day of their lives.

Lutum gave his sister another sharp look at that. The disease was another topic that they rarely discussed between them, though this time for a better reason - neither showed any real symptoms, so it tended to not affect them directly. But the way Eione was talking...something had happened to change that. Well, maybe not for her health, from what she'd said, but someone close to her?

Eione didn't have many friends, he knew that. Actually, he wasn't sure if she had any. If she did, she certainly hadn't told him. Not that she needed to. But still, it was beyond his knowledge.

"Has...something happened?" he asked quietly.

Nyesha? The name was familiar, but it took a bit to match the name to the kind, if tired, face of an older blue lioness. She hadn't looked that good when Lutum had seen her, and he wasn't even certain how long ago that had been. He'd still been a juvenile, he thought.

"I'm sorry," he offered, paltry as the words were. They were the only ones he could think of to suit the situation. "I didn't know she was a friend of yours." That was much more true, as it were. He hadn't even suspected, which was a shame.

Lutum snorted. "I wonder if that's a good or bad thing," he mused aloud cynically. Nawiri was on his case in particular to make some, but the lion found it hard to get close to anybody other than Eione. Deep inside, he still had reservations even about Nawiri. The only person other than his sister that he'd truly cared for had abandoned them both as cubs.

It was hard. If he made friends, then he'd have to run the risk of losing them the way Eione had just lost Nyesha. He refused to think about the fact that the small pride would also expect him to have children.