[PRP] Lurking (Alastriona and Soifra)

[Mtorolite]

Soifra was trying to keep an eye on her father without breaking the no-getting-close to the border rule, and it was proving more difficult then she thought. She was scared he would be leaving to go get more cubs somehow, and she didn't want him too. But Daddy was a big strong lion who wasn't sick, and when he was guarding he patrolled around and around, and it was hard for a tiny lion cub that had to stop frequently to catch her breath to keep up with him.

Eventually, she grew too tired and returned to the den where her sister Alastriona was resting. Alastriona was also sick; Soifra preferred to leave the den and find somewhere quiet to rest in peace and in the shadows where she could keep an eye on everyone, but she rarely saw Alastriona venture out at all. She guessed Alastriona was just more comfortable in the den; she always seemed to be there.

"Hi Alastriona," she said, settling down into her heap of soft grass. "Daddy's patrolling."  

[MoonRazor]

Sometimes - nay, most times - it just seemed easier to Alastriona to stay inside and dream of better things. She was young still and "better things" involved little more than fields of blooming grass and the sound of laughing children ringing across the land, the latter of which she still might have caught if she had bothered to venture outside. But the point was that she had little to compare her life to, so there was little she could imagine beyond it.

She knew there were those that would have considered her past-time a waste; a waste of her childhood, a waste of the still relatively healthy energy she had most day, a waste of the ability to play. She knew those things could soon desert her, but somehow, in the grand scheme of things, that didn't seem to matter so much. After all, what more could a young lioness want when she could surround herself with all the beauty and health in the world simply by letting her mind wander a little bit?

Her deep, purple eyes followed Soifra as she entered the den. Alastriona quite liked her sister's dark coat, and she guessed that it came from their mother. The silver cub had few memories of the lioness that had given birth to them, but she liked to imagine that she could see hints of her mother in her sisters.

"Hi Soifra," she greeted her sibling with a smile. "Did you follow him any?"  

[Mtorolite]

"A little bit, but he's a lot faster and he doesn' t have to stop to cough, so I couldn't go for very long. I'm so tired."

Soifra tried hard not to envy her healthier siblings or the healthy cubs of the pride for their good fortune, but it was hard. She was even limited in playing with Dad - it was so easy to lose her breath and she tired quickly to play for very long. Her time with Dad tended to be when he was asleep and Soifra could curl against his back.

She swiped viciously at a pebble on the floor of the den, trying to let out some frustration, and realized that this, too, would be taken from her - at least, if she wanted to be able to go out again later. She mustn't tire herself out.

Instead, she turned to Alastriona for comfort. She had a lot of ideas for someone who left the den less often then Soifra did.

"Did you think of any more stories to tell?"  

[MoonRazor]

Alastriona nodded. She could empathize with her sister's situation. The shortness of breath and lack of energy were both symptoms that she, too, dealt with on a daily basis, although unlike Soifra, Alastriona seemed less inclined to attempt activities that would exacerbate them. She quite admired her sister for her determination, though, so there was nothing she could say about or against it. Maybe one of these days, though, she would follow after their father as well and see for herself what it was that patrolling entailed.

"Stories?" The silver cub's eyes widened, as though she was genuinely surprised. "Well, they're not stories, Soifra," she said with a giggle, stretching herself out against the wall of the den. "They could happen, you know. They're like predictions or something."

That half her stories were physically impossible didn't seem to stop her from insisting that they were. Then again, to Alastriona, they seemed as real and plausible as anything else. "What kind of 'story' do you want, then?" She added, always willing to share her experiences with her siblings. Or, indeed, anyone ready to listen.  

[Mtorolite]

"Something out there, beyond the pride," Soifra blurted without thinking. She wanted to see what was out there, like her dad had. But her dad wasn't sick. She was. So she could dream. And Alastriona, who was better at this sort of thing then she was, could help.

"The ocean," Soifra said after another minute. "Tell me something about the ocean."  

[MoonRazor]

"The ocean?" She echoed, thinking back. She didn't know much about the ocean, only what their father had told them. It was big, and it was water, and it ate up the sand when it was hungry. That was what she knew. It was just enough to get a picture in her mind, but that was really all Alastriona needed to spin a story out of.

She had a knack for this sort of thing, and when she told a story, the words just seemed to flow. There wasn't much thinking involved, just picturing, and then the relaying of that picture into words. The process itself happened almost automatically.

"Well," she cleared her throat before beginning. "The ocean is pretty big, right. Daddy says when you stand on one end, you can't see the other. But how d'you think it got so big? It must've started out small, like us, just a baby pool of water. And then it got hungry. So it reached out for some food - but it was a little bit scared, so it snatched its hand back before anything could bit it. Then it reached out again... for some sand, then snatched it back again, real quick." She said, picture the waves against a beach, which in her mind didn't so much roll and dash. "And as it ate the sand, the grew bigger and bigger and bigger, until it was so big that you couldn't see the whole thing at once. And all because it took a chance and reached out for some food."  

[Mtorolite]

Soifra had always liked the idea of the ocean. The little river and pools were one thing, but the idea of the ocean, spreading everywhere, was something else. Something that was bigger then the disease, bigger then the pride, even bigger then anything else. The ocean was something you could get lost in. She wanted to see the ocean, but she never would. She couldn't leave the pride.

At least her sister could imagine an ocean up for her.

"How big is the ocean, really, do you think?"  

[MoonRazor]

Alastriona considered her sister's question. Now, that was really something. How big could the ocean really be? It was almost incomprehensible to the little cub that something could be so big that it disappeared from sight. Of course, it wasn't like she could stand on one side of the pride lands and see clear to the other end, but she knew that the ocean was even bigger than that.

For a cub so young, who thought the pride lands made up the entire world, that seemed absolutely monstrous. How could something possibly be bigger than the entire world? But it seemed as though the ocean was. Now that she thought about it, she wished she could see it with her own two eyes.

"At least twice as big as our pride lands," she said with a nod. "Maybe three times, even." Three times. Now, that was huge. "An' maybe there's lions that live in the water in there."  

[Mtorolite]

"I don't think lions can live in the water," Soifra said doubtfully. "You can't breath in the water and it gets real cold."
That's why Soifra didn't go swimming, and as good as it would be to stand in front of the ocean and take it all in, she couldn't imagine lions actually living in it.

Then she remembered something her mom had said - we're all in this together. Soifra wasn't supposed to put her sister down. They were both sick together, and just because she thought an idea was silly didn't mean she should take it away from her sister. She tried to recover quickly.

"Maybe they live right by the ocean though, and they go out swimming lots and lots. I'd like to go swimming like that."