Honey
"Do you smell that, love?" Honey asked.It was difficult for him to stop himself from actually bouncing with delight at being home once more. It was wonderful to be home. He had missed the smell of the sea and the dense jungle foliage, despite the way it hampered his running. Honey was not much of a runner, for all that he was a cheetah. Imbra had already proven herself to be his superior in that and other physical activities. She could outrun him, outfight him, and generally outlast him in most everything. He didn't mind.
"Isn't it wonderful?"
Imbra
Accommodatingly Imbra sniffed the air, trying to smell whatever it was that had her lover so excited. All she could smell was salt and the general underlying decay that clung to the jungle."Ah. I smell something," she said. "What exactly is it you want me to smell?"
She never quite knew what to call her lover. He said that Honey was the name he was known by, but it seemed like an endearment and she was not comfortable with those. She was not even comfortable when he called her love. And yet she had followed him to his pride, sneaking away from her own. She had betrayed her blood for him.
Honey
Honey smiled and nuzzled Imbra despite her discomfort with such things. She was such a soldier sometimes. It was what she had trained to be her whole life. A fighter and a killer. He loved that about her, too."The sea!" Honey exclaimed. "The salt in the air, the water. What you smell is the sea! It's wonderful, is it not?"
He had no idea how little the scent appealed to Imbra. If he had known he would have fussed and worried. After all, he had fallen in love with the sea before he had fallen in love with Imbra and it would have distressed him to have one of his two great loves not care for the other.
Imbra
"It's different," Imbra replied.She couldn't really agree with Honey that it was wonderful but she supposed that she would get used to it. Or else she would find something with a more potent and hopefully more pleasant scent to bury her nose in when it got to be too much. That would go against her upbringing as a warrior though, since it would deaden her sense of smell against scents that might be important.
"I'll get used to it, Honey," she assured him when she saw him looking uncertain. "I'm just used to living underground, remember. It's different."
Actually, she had told him very little about the Kuroi'nera because that was one of the conditions of her departure. Her father had sworn her to secrecy on that subject. She would do her best to hold to that vow. Just because she was no longer part of the 'nera didn't mean she was willing to turn traitor.
Honey
Honey tagged Im's thigh with the tip of his tail and darted ahead. In another league or so she would be able to see the beach. She would probably be able to see it now if it weren't for the dense jungle foliage surrounding them. He was a little disappointed that she wasn't as instantly enamored of the sea air as he had been upon finding the Maestros, but she seemed willing to keep an open mind."I didn't know that," he remarked about her pride. She had explained to him that there would not be much said on that subject and why. He had accepted it. After all, he wasn't particularly interested in her past unless she wanted to discuss it. He was more interested in her future and her present since in both of those times she was with him.
"Er. Don't be insulted if you already know this, but I don't recommend drinking the groundwater around here. It'll either be salty and make you thirstier or it'll be, well, not good to drink. Stick to water that's been collected from rain or dew. Pirate's grog is the best stuff to drink though."
Imbra
Imbra wondered what had brought about the change of topic from Honey but supposed he thought of it because he'd just stepped in a green puddle that looked kind of slimy around the edges. She hadn't been the least tempted to consume its contents."I'll keep that in mind," she told him. She hadn't known about the potable water thing. "And what's pirate's grog?"
Whatever it was, it sounded perfectly awful, but the way things sounded and the way things were didn't necessarily have to correspond. She was hoping it was some quaint pridal name for really cold clear water. She'd gotten very used to that living in the 'nera with its underground stream.
Honey
Honey tried to think of a way to describe pirate's grog that wouldn't make it sound complete disgusting. It was basically rotten fruit that had been made to go bad in a certain way so that it would also be an intoxicant, which sounded pretty gross if you hadn't first experienced its effects. Honey had experienced it before learning what it was, and it worked better that way he felt."It's aged fruit," he began. "That's treated in a certain way to have intoxicating properties. The pride term for eating it is 'getting drunk' since a lot of the time the fruit is pulped and combined with water to make it easier to swallow. Not that it's so horrible tasting, but you know. Fruit. Not really a large part of most people's diets."
He trailed off and darted ahead. He could definitely hear the ocean pounding the shore now, and he couldn't help himself. He had to get a look at it. "Come on!"
Imbra
That really didn't sound appetizing at all to Imbra, but she kept her mouth shut. It didn't really matter, she supposed. She wouldn't be forced to, er, get drunk if she didn't want to, after all. And she doubted that she would. Her body was her temple and nothing went into it that would intoxicate her. She wasn't really sure what that word meant, even, but it had toxic as part of it, and that made her leery."I'm coming," she answered as she chased after Honey, placing her paws with more care than he had and yet catching up with him easily even so. She really was a lot faster and more fit than he was. Once they settled into a den, she would see about getting him to train with her.
When they ran out of trees the ground seemed to give way beneath her feet and Imbra froze, startled to be out in the open like she was and simultaneously dismayed by the unstable footing. She looked to Honey in askance. Was this normal?
Honey
"We're home!" Honey announced as he rushed onto the sandy beach and directly into the small waves that lapped at its shore.He didn't realize at first that Imbra was no longer keeping pace with him until he looked back and saw that she was standing at the edge of the jungle, staring around her with comically wide open eyes. Her stance said that she had never walked on sand before and didn't like how it felt beneath her feet, and her fluffed fur said that she felt threatened.
"It's safe, I promise," he called back, doing his very best not to laugh. "It's jut sand."
Imbra
Even if he didn't laugh, Imbra could tell that Honey wanted to, and that earned him one of her glares. She realized it probably lost a great deal of its bite given how rigid her posture was and how she was very obviously in no position to follow through on any implicit threats her expression might make.Sand. Of course. He had told her about that, just like he'd told her how big the water was, but that was so very different from seeing it in person. She was not raised to be a coward though, and so she braced herself and began to walk very carefully toward the terrifyingly huge body of water which seemed actually to roar like a living thing until she was a few feet from its edge. From there she could make herself go no further.
"I'll get used to it," she told Honey. She got the feeling she'd be saying that a lot in the days to come.