[PRP] Safe Travels (One Bajillion Lions)

[Kaelyndra]

Sitheka's eyes focused on Maipe when the movement over head caught his eye. Head raising slightly, he prepared for the engagement of conversation, but found she'd turned away. The male moved his own gaze towards Nomsindo; perhaps she'd ascertained the reason for the Firekin's nosiness.

Had her grandparents heard her, Maipe's fate may have ended different. Huo's fate, for that matter.

Instead, Huo felt a strange, queasy sensation pass over his stomach. It growled quietly in protest, and his teeth clacked together. A wary look was passed over his shoulder--did the Boneland's take slaves? He decided to stop the train of thought where it had started.

"Shut up," he snarled beneath his breath. Huo picked up his pace, slamming Maipe in the side with his shoulder. "No one listens to you. You're just off in the head."

Impoqo's ears were too far distance to hear the conversation, and every step she took had to be followed by a momentary pause or she'd over-run the polite, huria-colored babies.  

[Hopefolly]

Maipe was prepared to retaliate, but a sound unlike anything she'd heard stilled the paws she couldn't seem to keep to herself. She recognized the voice, the name, the tone. Having all three put together was what had stunned her.

"Maipe." Shunqa spared no mercy in glowering at his niece with a ferocity he had never bestowed upon any cub, much less his own blood. He was a bit beyond stern, but far from cruel. Just a lion whose patience was pushed too far, Hlengiwe reasoned. Judging by the hunched posture, flat ears, and crestfallen expression... the little cub did not see it that way.

Immediately, Shunqa felt his stomach turn. This time, he stood his ground, sandy and unstable as it was. "Get to the outpost, Maipe. Bimnono will watch you until I'm done. We'll talk later."

"But Huo --"

"Go."

A cub had never looked so scorned. Maipe sneered, spewed insults and complaints under her breath, but go she did, marching ahead of the pack to a waiting Bimnono. Hmph.

"What's a slave?" Nomsindo asked her brother, not the adults. They were too busy and the last thing she wanted was to be on the receiving end of a scolding like that.
 

[Kaelyndra]

"Um." Sitheka's brows furrowed together. An older, more seasoned lion would have simply answered truthfully that he did not know. Sitheka, struggling to meet an internal desire for perfection, could not stand that he would be without an answer.

"A hole they dig to put dead lions in, I think." This was a terrible oddity on its own. Was Maipe threatening to kill her own brother? A thin line of distaste smeared over Sitheka's features and he cracked the bones in his neck as he shook his body down.

"I don't like the feeling of this place," he decided to add.

Huo was having no such equivocal feelings. Maipe's words stung, but they did not hurt as bad as the internal glee of watching Maipe sulk back to the rogue whose name Huo could not pronounce and who he could not stand to be around.

Huo felt smug enough to puff out his chest and jog to take his place next to Shunqa's side all by himself. Was Maipe watching? Huo lifted up his tail and swished it from left to right just in case she was.

I win.

On the inside, his brain still clicked away with the word slave and concocted horrible scenarios. It nibbled at his ego all the while.