Word Count: 1,343
Thinking back, Ohahira realized she hadn't been a talker since she was very young. The times she'd obliged conversation with Xi and Hari felt forced, and her voice sounded wrong to her own ears. The loquacious cub she'd been once upon a time was outgrown by bad decisions, those of her own doing and of others.
She and Zilly had going on a years worth of sun ups and sun downs between them, yet they approached each other like they'd been separate all of a day. And, after taking refuge on one of the higher parts of the cliffs, Ohahira found the physical distance hadn't brought them any closer emotionally, as absence was said to do. Not much of a reunion.
"Are you hungry?" Zilly asked awkwardly. She rolled onto her back and stared up at her, legs stretching into the air.
Ohahira shrugged. Resting was not worth the effort standing would take her, so on all four paws she stayed.
"I could get you something," Zilly offered. "I mean, I could show you where to get it. I can't bring it to you. They'd talk."
At this, Ohahira glanced at her. "What do you do here?"
"Fight," Zilly replied. "Follow Captains around. Talk to Dira."
Before, Zilly reminded Ohahria of her had-been self; something of a glimpse into the past. This version, hollow-eyed and tired, was more of a present day reflection in vapid waters. Except where rank was concerned, apparently.
"So you're not a slave," Ohahira noted.
Zilly shook her head and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Nah."
The weight of words unspoken pressed down, solid and heavy, like the brute that lined Ohahira's back with scars. If she stayed, one of them would have to ask questions she didn't want to deal with, and that buoyed her resolve to walk away. Then Zilly hurriedly stood up to bypass the otherwise inevitable choice to languor on her decision over whether or not she should say anything else.
"They call slaves thralls here," she blurted. So began a plethora of advice so hasty and disjointed Ohahira could barely organize any of it enough to commit to memory.
"Uss--"
Zilly did stop her tangent, but again shook her head and turned onto her stomach. At first, Ohahira thought it was her full name she was resisting. "I wish you would have come to find me before this. You could have fought your way in. They'd let you be a freeborn."
Zilly had rarely been one to act contrite. Everyone had their triggers, and one of hers was Ohahira here, degraded to a status destiny told her to escape when the Firekin had their darling rebellion. She remembered Ohahira as fun company. Not a nanny, not a friend, but a companion to her mother and therefore something to her by association. A partner, not a servant. She couldn't grasp the depth of her dejected feelings, or why they were as such, but she could and did act on them.
"You can't be a reaver anymore," Zilly went on, "and I don't think being freeborn is as fun, but it's better than letting them boss you around."
"Uss," Ohahira said --
"You could have helped with the thralls instead. You know how to do that kind of thing."
"Zilly," she insisted.
"I just don't understand why --"
"Zilly!"
The lapse of silence lasted only long enough for Ohahira to confirm no one was going to come barreling around a corner and smack her for mouthing off to one of their warriors.
"There wasn't a choice," Ohahira explained, lowering her voice. "They would have taken me whether or not I wanted to go."
Did everything to do with this lioness have to be so exhausting? She wondered if it would be easier to further strain her body in exchange for a safeguard on her mind. Maybe she should throw herself into the fray around them, try to find more orders to take and work to do, rather than try to decode the manic thought process of Xi's most peculiar offspring. Competition for the title was fierce, and needless to say, Zilly earned it.
Ohahira watched her pensively gaze at the sky. This conversation was veering into hopelessness, fast. Explaining things to Zilly had never been an easy, nor enjoyable feat. The way she learned was strange, and the methods she chose to understand what she'd been taught was odder still. Everything seemed to have to somehow directly involve her before she could get it, and that was making Ohahira's capture, which had nothing to do with her at all, hard to comprehend.
Or had she grown out of that since Ohahira had last seen her?
Zilly muttered.
"No one can hear you when you mumble like that," Ohahira snapped, irritated. "How many times did your mother tell you?"
The other lioness spoke up. "Did she send you to find me?"
"Your mother?"
"Yeah."
Ohahira snorted. One word and she could do worse than beat her. "No."
Xibalba was a source of predictability within her daughter. Along with the most crazed, Ohahira didn't doubt Zilly to be the most devoted. She would have bet her sister's sorry excuse for a life that Zilly's ears would go back as they did; that she would look as crestfallen as she did.
It was kind of funny, in a sick way. A reflection indeed.
"I thought maybe she did," Zilly confessed, "and they captured you on your way here."
"Your mother doesn't care where you are, Zilly," Ohahira told her candidly.
This must be how fate felt when it reminded her, again and again, no matter what, her own mother did not care about her whereabouts either. No wonder it took such pleasure in the cruelty. When you weren't on the receiving end, it certainly passed the time, so to speak.
She did not expect Zilly to shrug and say she knew that. What she didn't say -- and didn't need to -- was part of her had and always would hope for something different. That's why she had to ask.
"I had a vision about my brother's death," Zilly said. "I know she doesn't want to see me."
Ohahira nodded, the motion of it slow. "Afraid of joining him?"
Zilly canted her head.
"Are you afraid of her killing you?" Ohahira tried.
"No," Zilly replied.
She was only afraid of if she didn't. The disappointment in her mother's face and the fury in her voice was survivable when in the form of distant, brief visions she didn't see many of anymore. Up close and personal was another matter and another kind of backlash.
"Were you hunting when they caught you?" Zilly asked. There had to be a reason she was here and none of the others were. Unless--
Ohahira had knew that look of terror. She remembered it from two words that were once so important: Tara's gone. "Relax, your mother is still out there. No one caught her. Or any of the rest of them that I know of. Your mother settled down with her flea-ridden hyenas."
"And Hari?"
"Her brother died. Probably off celebrating for the rest of her life."
Zilly peered at her a moment. "And you?"
"They weren't much help to me after that," Ohahira groused.
"You didn't find your sister?"
Zilly rushed to follow when Ohahira suddenly started away from her. Was it something she said? "Wait!" she cried. "Wait! Ohahira, wait!"
"Don't call me that, alright?" Ohahira hissed, leering over her shoulder.
Stopped in her tracks by the ferocity of it, Zilly frowned. "What do I call you?"
"I don't know yet." Ohahira's back produced a sickening crack as she turned, faced front and center, and her spine realigned itself. "I have work to do."
It would be a long time before she was willing to discuss her mother's deathbed plea she should let all this come to pass.
Let them think she'd been dragged here by a reaver rather than a vision.
