[PRP] Spying

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The reason why Maji was so difficult to spot at the moment, despite his blue fur, was because he was lying flat on the ground, totally exhausted after a session with Mittere. Even though the blue lion knew that his teacher had the disease, he was absolutely convinced that she would be beating his tail into the ground from now until he was as old as...as Modya!

He stirred at the sound of a familiar voice, however, and raised his head to see an awfully familiar set of feet not too far away.

"Ho, Ua," he called out tiredly. "What're you looking for?"  

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The blue lion groaned theatrically at his older brother, and sank his head back down onto the hard-packed earth below in a display of exhaustion that should have softened the hardest of hearts...so long as they weren't related to him and fully aware of his tendency to dramatize most things.

"You could say that," he answered Ua at last. "You could also say that I'm insane for allowing Grandmother to do this to me."

He cocked his head to the side on the ground, mentally reviewing what he'd just said. Honesty forced him to make an addendum. "But I don't know that I could ever stop Grandmother from doing anything, to me or anyone else." There was no little pride in his voice as he stated that fact. It was pretty cool to have Mittere for a grandparent...at least, it was when her full attention wasn't focused on you.  

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Maji snorted in response. "I'm not going to be a Warrior. She said I didn't have to be," the juvenile replied, resisting the urge to stick his tongue out at his brother. That wouldn't be polite at alll, and really, Ua didn't deserve it. Yet.

"She said something about the border," he added, answering the question. He didn't really remember what, especially as Mittere had made it clear when they were still cubs that none of the brothers were to be anywhere near the borders on pain of unspecified punishment.

"Why?" Not that Maji really cared why Ua was looking for Grandmother, but it was a question that you were supposed to ask...right?  

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"Oh." That was a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maji personally agreed with that sentiment and avoided the den as much as possible. Being old enough to be out on his own for much of the day helped a lot in that respect. He didn't have to worry about Kua, didn't have to seethe at Kestven...didn't have to do a lot of things he otherwise would be.

"Uh...the ground's nice to lay on?" Maji offered, unsure of what else to say at the moment. What could he say? He totally understood where his brother was coming from. After all, wasn't he there too?  

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"I don't think you'd call it "cool"," Maji informed his brother after a moment's reflection. "I was practicing how to block. Which means, since I'm not very good, that I have a lot of bruises in places I never knew you could bruise." His mouth twisted in disgust, but even so, the blue lion had to admit that there was something satisfying when he finally performed the block correctly after countless failures.

However, there were still all those failures and they did, in fact, hurt. A lot.

"This is where people learn how to attack and defend. So that they can protect themselves and the pride from people who would mean us harm."  

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Maji gave a harsh bark of laughter at the idea that he'd ever be particularly good at this stuff. It wasn't that he doubted it, but he already knew that he'd never be anything compared to Mittere. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing.

"By dint of repetition," the blue lion replied, grinning. "Grandmother may pound me flat daily, but eventually it'll all stick somewhere, I'm sure." And he was. Mostly because said grandmother did not condone failure on an extreme level. She permitted some failure because that was part of learning. However, she didn't like it in high doses.

In other words, she gave Maji some leeway for being new to this, but not much.  

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The blue lion's face lit up at Ua's suggestion. He certainly did hurt, and Uncle Amani was the most likely person in the whole pride to be sympathetic to his pains. That's why Ua was awesome - he thought of stuff like that.

"You're right! And I'm sure Healers would rather us go to them before we got super sick," he continued, justifying his desire to be relieved of pain. It all made perfect sense - tend the bruises and sprains now, and things wouldn't get super bad in the future!

"Come on, let's go!" Maji cried, bounding around Ua's more stationary form with energy that he hadn't realized he still possessed even after Mittere's brutal training session.