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Kivi couldn't help being a little bit nervous as she made her way to meet the High Priestess. It wasn't as if she had anything to worry about, but still. Morrigan was powerful. What if Kivi said something to offend her and then had to spend the rest of her life tormented by spirits? She'd already met one self-proclaimed ghost and hadn't liked him at all.

Maybe she should mention the ghost to the High Priestess. Surely it was part of Morrigan's duties to keep abreast of ghostly apparitions and get rid of them if necessary. Kivi wasn't sure that was the best idea, really, but surely it couldn't hurt.

When she reached the spot Kivi plopped down on her yellow bottom and looked around, hoping that she wasn't too early or too late or in the wrong place.

Morrigan took, perhaps surprisingly to some, untold delight in meeting and teaching the pride's youth. Perhaps it was true that she was strict, and tended to wander in circles of understanding far above the earthly concerns of most of the pride, but she wasn't scary. She didn't think so at least. As long as they were respectful (most were, if only out of fear) they would take away nothing but knowledge from her.

Unlike the young scamp a few moons back who'd joked and knocked over one of her mixes of herbs. How long had it taken for the fur of his rump to grow back again?

Today she was meeting with a young lion, Kivi, was it? She tried often to make a little free time in her day to address any concerns the pride had. Usually her work communing with the spirits kept her from keeping such appointments, but today was different. The spirits were alternatingly silent and forboding. Not at all good. Her face was still, but her eyes cast on some distant horizon when she finally padded over to where the youth sat. She stared at her, through her for a long moment before managing to disentangle herself from her thoughts.

"...Troubling spirits on your back, Kivi?"

Kivi was a little surprised to be taken seriously. Her mothers probably would not have done that, and so she hadn't told them. Not after her siblings were so dismissive of her experience. It really happened, and they wouldn't believe her. It was so frustrating! But the High Priestess was talking about taking steps to protect her.

"Well, he was almost all white, except around his face, with was dark like it had been smeared with...I don't know. It could have been mud or soot or...dried blood." Her voice rose to a squeak on the last word. A Stormborn she might be, but the idea of a blood-smeared ghost was a little much for someone her age.

"He was really young. Like, he seemed to be the same age as me." That had been particularly upsetting to Kivi when she considered that ghosts were the spirits of the dead, and so this cub had obviously died around the same age she had been.

"Have there been any...? Have any cubs died lately?"

She could read relief like a script in the poor child's eyes. A pity. Most of the Stormborn were amply superstitious, but few were willing to accept claims of things like ghosts or visits by gods unless they saw them for themselves. Such a physical people they were. Morrigan's long thin claws clacked quietly together as she painstakingly wove bits and ends from the bowl together.

"We have lost three this season. Mostly runts of litters born to oweak to last their first night. One was about your age. Perhaps a little older. Played at viking too far from his den and the sea took him." He'd been bashed against the rocks of the fjord to his death, but she spared the child those bloody details. The mother had been consoled by knowing she had many, many other children to tend to, and the matter had been dismissed as the will of the gods.

"You are right to fear the spirits, child, but they cannot harm you unless you let them. Take care. And if you dream of this ghost...come tell myself or one of the other priestesses directly." She wove a final piece into the charm--a tiny flake of a dark, mildly glossy stone--and let it fall from her paw, dangling before the girl on a thin rope. "Probably the child is simply seeking a playmate. If you like though, take this. It will keep ghosts, if ghosts they are, at bay."

"That's horrible!" Kivi exclaimed. "Is that what happens to everyone who doesn't die in battle? Even cubs and freeborn?"

She knew there were different afterlives and different halls that a lion could go to depending on their station and their actions in life and the manner of their death, but it had never occurred to her that if she had the misfortune to die young or not in battle she might be bound to the earth as the High Priestess had described.

"Mhm. He told me that I didn't belong in the forest, and he was the one who said he was a ghost. I'd thought he was just a cub, and I told him so, and he made awful noises again, and then I told him if he was a ghost, why didn't he do something ghosty and vanish. And so he did!"

She hadn't deliberately left this part out. She just hadn't realized it would make a difference. Kivi didn't know much about ghosts.

"He took a step backward and he vanished. I was standing just a little below him. If he'd fallen and landed on the ground I would've seen it. But he didn't. That's how I knew he really was a ghost."

Morrigan sighed inwardly. It was always difficult to explain the afterlife to cubs. To them it sounded, usually, frightening. "It depends on many things. Those who die well in battle go to one place. Those who are cowardly in battle and die thus go to another. Typically the best places are for those who die heroically, and the 'bad' places are for those who die poorly. Fleeing, for example, is not a good way to die."

"Where one dies also matters. A hero who dies at sea is usually taken to the hall for such people. There is a place for the drowned, specifically. Cubs usually do not go to the halls of heroes, but nor do they go to lands of punishment. They have had no time to win or lose glory, you see."

"The gods also are fickle. They quibble and fight over who takes what spirits. Even the heroes' fates depend on that. Unless you do something bad, you should not worry. Living your life in fear over your fate is cowardly, and will only make things worse." She talked on and on as she considered the girl's report. She'd seen the boy vanish. He hadn't fallen. MAybe he'd gone behidn a branch? Hmm.

Put that way, Kivi felt a little guilty for asking him to prove he was a ghost. As if he had wanted to be reminded that he was dead and not where he was supposed to be. No one needed that. Especially not after they'd died. Now she felt guilty for the warding charm, too. If no one else had seen him, maybe she was the only person who could see him, and if she wore a charm to keep him away he'd never find his way to where he belonged.

But did he have to be such a grouch about it? Telling her to get out of the forest because she didn't belong there hadn't seemed like the action of someone who was lost. Instead, he had seemed quite certain of his surroundings and equally certain that she was the one who was out of place, and not him.

"Maybe. But if it isn't too much trouble, could you maybe go to the forest sometime and see if you can see him. I bet you could help him."

She had already planned to do so, but the girl's asking made it seem like the thing to do first. Perhaps she could help the child find its way, if it was a ghost. Or if he was just a child, she could either find him a home in the pride, or out of the pride. She didn't have fond feelings for the forest, but for personal reasons, and nothing to do with superstition. Still, she was better than to let that distract her from her duties.

"I will see what can be done. A child ghost can cause little trouble, but other, stronger spirits might be attracted to his presence, and they may be the malicious sort, bound here for less palatable reasons. If nothing else, I will ward the area for a time, and try to push him to cross over. Now...did you need anything else, child?"