[PRP] A Thief in the Night (Jackal x Jhulsa)

[Hopefolly]

Jackal regarded his fellow predators the way most thought of the stars: Curious things destined to never be fully understood, some dimmer than others and all due to one day flicker out. He'd watched them since he was cub, memorizing their patterns, appreciating them in ways not all could. Oh, routine was an awful burden that dulled the mind and the senses — not just those like sight and touch, but that of awe. So many in the world had stifled their ability to simply marvel at things.

He was grateful to his pride if only for fostering a mindset that dared to dream. To him, it seemed nothing if not utterly ridiculous to band together pilferers, fighters, and outcasts, then expect them to live in assiduous harmony forever. To him, it was jarring and amusing to have his thievery and deceit celebrated, yet risk being ostracized for the mere crime of courting another male. That's what made them such an interesting bunch.

But he was becoming a hypocrite himself. For all his belittling pity these poor souls could never be truly content, lately he'd been no less restless, spending more time away from his home than in it.

Rogue air did well to clear the mind. He breathed it heavy enough to taste and the flavor was that of freedom. Faint and far away, he could sense grand adventure calling to him. Day after day, night after night, there was nothing but this. The only difference between Now and Then was Jackal's decision to pursue fate. If change would not come to him, then he would go and find it.

So he bid farewell to his beloved mother and walked for two days and three nights. On the third night, he crossed a small stream, passed through a copse of trees, and literally bumped right into Jhulsa.

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

Jhulsa did not like to sleep. Sleep was wasted time and missed opportunities. The world moved on without her while she slept, and that was unacceptable. She had a finite amount of time to live, to be, to seek and find everything that she was looking for, and she didn't want to spend a moment of it with her eyes closed. Unfortunately, biology disagreed with her assertion that sleep was unnecessary, and now matter how strong her will, she had to sleep now and then. And so she did, in fits and starts and not quite often enough.

It had become a sort of game, a challenge, to see just how long she could manage to stay awake, and the longer she went, the more interesting it became. It had started simply enough, a stubborn unwillingness to shut her eyes, but it was beginning to become more than that. The effects had been aggravating at first, a nuisance, but she soon became fascinated by them.

Almost two days in to her first intentional trial, she had certainly felt - and looked - better, but it was tolerable. Though usually one to go at a slow and deliberate pace anyway, she found herself having to move more slowly than usual, as her coordination was lacking, to say the least. It didn't help that her vision would go blurry occasionally, or that she was starting to see things out of the corner of her eye. She'd stopped turning to try to get a better look at them after she'd run into a tree.

Which explained why she didn't notice Jackal until he'd bumped right into her...and why, after staggering and having to sit gracelessly in order to avoid falling over, she stared at him with narrowed, skeptical eyes.

That lion was probably real, but she wasn't entirely sure. At the risk of talking to thin air (in which case, no one would be around to know, so it was safe enough), she offered a flat "Hello."

Hopefolly

 

[Hopefolly]

If Jackal had brushed against the tall grass with all the force of his contact with Jhulsa, most of the insects clinging to the lofty strands would have remained undisturbed. To see a full grown lioness falter this way alluded to more than just clumsiness. What exactly was to blame, he couldn't be certain, but she looked tired.

"Hello," he replied in kind. He took a step forward, in her direction.

Jackal noticed the marking on her shoulder as he was speaking. The lapse between the first pair of words and the final two was so brief it was more of a dragged out drawl than a pause. The tone of subdued realization to the alert listener, but perhaps not as obvious to someone in Jhulsa's state. "You're a... pretty one."

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

Had Jhulsa thought her impromptu experiment through a bit further before undertaking it, she might have postponed until after she got home and could conduct it in relative safety. Depriving herself of sleep while alone in rogue lands was, admittedly, not one of her better ideas to get carried away by. But she had wanted to know, and that was a desire she had always been prone to obsession with. Wisdom and good judgement had yet to catch up with the physically adult lioness.

He was speaking. So. Real. Good. Except maybe not, because this was hardly a fitting state to meet someone in. Jhulsa canted her head to the side and blinked at the stranger, clearing bothersome spots from her vision so that she could get a better look at him. Once she had, she was able to determine, "So're you."

Not a statement she would ordinarily have chosen to make, but it was the first that came to mind, and the wait for another to form would have been long. It was better than a blank stare.

Hopefolly

 

[Hopefolly]

This disorientated state of hers was increasingly alarming. The way she floundered about was suspect to insanity, something a born Kizi had witnessed once or twice, to put it mildly. But Jackal had also seen exhaustion.

Occasionally, he preferred to hunt for himself. Kept the claws sharp and the mind sharper. There had been one particular zebra who had bucked him, kicked him in the side hard enough it cracked then and ached to this day. Through the haze of pain, Jackal's temper flared, and he hunted that creature by strength of will and resentment.

He remembered the way it moved on the day before he'd killed it, and it looked very much the same. So for now, he would return to his first assumption: She was harried by lack of sleep, not lack of sense.

"Thank you." Jackal's reply, sincere and condescendingly amused all at once, came swift on the heels of her reflected compliment. Self-defense mechanisms came in many forms; his donned the cloak of superiority. He was worried for her and himself, worried that she could lash out if he encroached too far on her personal space.

"What's your name?" he queried, one metaphorical step closer to appeasing unspoken curiosities, and one physical step closer to her.

Meepfur

 

[Meepfur]

That was an easy question! Thank goodness. She could practically feel her intelligence level dropping as the hours passed, a particularly unsettling side effect. Coordination and vision issues she could handle and even be amused by, decreased thought process not so much. "Jhulsa," she answered, a little faster than her previous reply. "'Til I find a better one."

A moment, and she remembered to ask, "Yours?"

Hopefolly

 

[Hopefolly]

Meepfur

Until she found a better one...?

Jackal inspected her a second time, seeking any familiarity beyond that marking. His efforts sparked nothing. Another pride then, one whose people also took two names.

"Ja —" He wondered. His people hid their names for protection on behalf of the community, but he was no longer a Kizi and he no longer had a pride. But old habits die hard, and that aside, he found he liked being Jackal. Jackal did not belong to anyone but him any more than Hafa'i did. They had no right to decide who he was or who he wasn't.

"Jackal," he said, only a heartbeat after the first attempt. "Where are you from, Jhulsa?"  

[Meepfur]

"You're not a jackal," Jhulsa observed in a moment of shining, brilliant obviousness that she would likely find embarrassing later, assuming she remembered the details of this conversation. Even then, assuming that she did, the male would probably be long gone, back to whatever journey he was on (or maybe he was just a wanderer?), and they would both more or less forget this encounter as just another conversation with another passing stranger. That was what life in the rogue lands seemed to be thus far: just a series of random, usually meaningless encounters.

And usually with the same questions, or variations of them. It made them easy to answer, even half-asleep. "Jini-msemi." There was a more pronounced, slightly drawn-out 'mmm' in the middle than there should have been when she said it. She paused then, looked around, and vaguely indicated what may or may not have actually been the correct direction. "That way."

Hopefolly

 

[Hopefolly]

Meepfur

Jini-msesmi. Jackal broke eye contact, tilted his head down, and frowned. The chance meetings with these sorts were seldom experienced firsthand, but he'd heard plenty about them from others. He knew them for their excessive piety. Talk of spirits and superstitions was guaranteed to last hours if you dared engage it. The same nonsense he was used back home, only with different brand of whimsy.

A quiet hum from deep in his throat implied subtle disappointment. He gave his mane a shake and refocused on her, this fatigued beauty. "It's getting late," though it was already. "Have you found a safe place to sleep for the night? It looks like you might have forgotten how."  

[Meepfur]

The implication was subtle enough that Jhulsa had no hope of picking up on it in her current state. She was far too busy leaning gradually but ever more precariously to the side while she processed what he was saying. Late? Hmm, yes, she supposed it was, though for her it had been 'late' for a day or so. "I haven't forgotten," she asserted, "I just didn't want to."

Hopefolly

For some reason, I always reply to this when I'm about to pass out.

 

[Hopefolly]

Meepfur

Just getting into character, totes! BD Also, I need to start up Ava x Al's RP here soon.

Jackal hadn't expected her to wander off into some closed quarters with him, a lion she had just met. But he'd have anticipated that result long before what she said. She's insane, he thought critically. Had the Kizi's mental plague truly dissipated, or had it only taken root elsewhere? Or maybe this was a madness all their own. "And why is that, Jhulsa?"  

[Meepfur]

"I wanted to..." There was a brief pause, accompanied by a furrowing of her brow, while she tried to summon the words she wanted. "The effects. I wanted to observe the effects."

Problem was, the effects made observation difficult.

Hopefolly

No rush! I'm working on getting his RP together.

 

[Hopefolly]

Meepfur

Jackal was enough of a realist he hadn't expected her to just merrily skip along with him because he pointed out the late hour. He meant her no harm, though she had no way of knowing that, and for every lioness who was led into some secret, secluded place by a complete stranger and left one day closer to being a mother, he wondered how many didn't leave at all.

There was a thought...

What if it hadn't been him who found her?

"The effects are being exhausted, becoming insane, and running yourself down until death doesn't seem so frightening a concept from what I know," he informed her, recalling that hunt. This was prime opportunity to hear it first hand... "How would you explain it?"  

[Meepfur]

"That is...not incorrect," she decided after taking a long moment to consider, a moment during which she also realized she was looking at him at a rather odd angle due to the fact that she was leaning, and straightened up into a proper sit again. He was interested, and that was actually quite exciting! Enough to bring her a little more alertness, at least.

"Coordination and balance go-" there was another word she wanted, but 'go' worked well enough, "Faster than I expected. Started seeing things, awhile ago. Hard to tell if I've been hearing things, I haven't been going to check."

Hopefolly

 

[Hopefolly]

Meepfur

Jackal did listen. He did note the answers given. But there was an important thing in life called priorities, and sometimes they were a matter of survival. "Hearing things?" He looked askance to the left, as any direction was as good as the other.

Lions were the kings and queens of the land. They had nothing to fear but each other. Had she mentioned suspicious noises because it was a noteworthy concern, or was this exhaustion talking? "Should you be going to check?"