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Ana toddled after her cousin-thing with the difficult name. She wasn't particularly graceful at walking or running or anything, but she had no problems with announcing that she was having difficulty keeping up with him. It probably would have been annoying if she had been less cute, but she had mastered the art of widening her flame blue eyes to look as adorable as possible.

"Skeeyoldur, wait!" she called. It wasn't one hundred percent clear whether she was asking or commanding. She had learned that trick from her mother, although she was too young to realize that in her mother's case it wasn't a trick.

"Your legs are too long," she informed him as she toddled faster to catch up with him. "You should walk less fast when you walk with me on them until I catch up to you."

Skjo winced at the mangling Anushka gave his name, but he still stopped obediently and waited for his little white cousin to catch up with him. Working out exactly how they were related would be complicated. Her mother was his mother's half-brother's daughter, which made her mother his half-cousin and Ana his...spirits. He didn't know. They were family, and that was really all that mattered.

"I will try to remember that, Ana," he said. Like the rest of the family, he watched Klona's cubs for clues. Would their minds be as simple as hers, or would they be normal? At this point in their lives, it was difficult to distinguish their childish talk from Klona's but they might outgrow it. Or they might not.

"Why do you want to catch up with me?" he asked her, genuinely curious. He did not spend a great deal of time around this branch of the family, or any of them, really, except his mother, siblings, and Uncle Odd. Maybe that was it. Maybe he was just new and interesting.

Her cousin-thing's question stumped her, as Ana couldn't think of a particularly good reason why she would want to walk with him, except that it was better than walking by herself. Older people sometimes knew things she didn't know, and those things were good to know because then she could tell them to her littermates and her mama. She liked being able to tell her mama new things, even though her mama wasn't always very interested in them.

"Where are you going?" she asked, electing to ignore his question and replace it with one of her own.

Ana had seen her mama do that to great effect. Whenever her mama asked questions, she got answers, even though she could tell she wasn't always satisfied with the answers she got. Ana didn't really have that problem though, because she would have been happy with just about any answer as long as she got one. It was being ignored that was awful.

If Skjoldr noticed that Ana was picking up on some of her mother's habits and deliberately using them to her advantage, he gave no sign. Instead he simply answered his cousin's question: "I'm going home to my den."

That answered her question, but Ana kept looking at him as if she expected him to come forth with something more than that, and so after a few moments of silence that struck Skjoldr as awkward but probably didn't bother Ana at all he asked her, "Would you like to come with me and see where I live? I don't think you've been to my den before."

He knew for a fact that she had not. None of Klona's cubs had. Klona herself had only been there once since he moved there, and he wasn't entirely convinced that her visit had been on purpose. She may have simply followed him home after his visit with his cousins. Naturally, he had done what was expected of him and brought her back to her father and brothers. It wasn't really a significant instance in either of their lives.

Anushka considered her cousin-thing's answer and his offer very seriously, sitting down and wrapping her tail primly around her paws as she did her considering.

"I have never been to your home," she agreed. "And it would be interesting to know where your home is and what it is like."

Something nagged at the back of her mind as she continued her musings. There was a really good reason why she couldn't go home with her cousin-thing, but she just couldn't think of what it was. Maybe it wasn't such a good reason after all.

"Yes, I think I would like to come home with you. I will be the first of all my sibs to see your home, and I will tell them about it. They will like that."

In truth, Skjoldr couldn't imagine that Anushka's siblings would really care one way or the other about his den. Not at this point in their lives. But if Ana wanted to see it, he would be fine with taking her there. It would be better than if she tried to find it on her own for some reason.

"They probably will," he agreed. "But before we go, don't you think we should let your grandfather or one of your uncles know where we're going?"

The last thing he wanted was to have the family in hysterics over a missing cub. Klona may or may not notice that she was missing a cub, the litter being as large as it was and Klona herself being inclined toward inattentiveness, but her father or brothers almost certainly would. With her brilliantly white coat, Ana tended to stand out anyway. Her absence would undoubtedly be noticed.

Anushka's blue eyes grew wide and her jaw went slack as it dawned on her what she had been missing and not quite remembering just a few moments ago. It was a good thing her cousin-thing remembered it for her.

"Of course we should do that," she told him. "They will want to know where I am going so that they can tell mama if she wonders."

To date, Anushka could not recall her mother wondering about her whereabouts, but she had also not left the den very often. Her grandfather and uncles preferred it if Ana and her sibs stayed close to home. Not that she had ever been yelled at, but she was definitely discouraged from exploring beyond whatever area they had decided to keep them in for the day.

"I think they will not mind if I am with you, since you are family, but it is a good idea. I do not want anyone to worry."

Skjoldr considered the unpleasant scene that could arise if one of Klona's minders decided that one of her daughters had become lost or absconded with, went into full search mode, and later discovered that she had been with him the whole time. Orvar and Herryk might be reasonable about it, but he knew Skogund wouldn't be. Skogund was never reasonable about anything. Frankly, Skjoldr didn't like to be around him if he could help it.

"It's very considerate of you to think about things like that. Not too many cubs your age would."

But, of course, with a mother like Klona, Anushka and her siblings would all have to grow up quickly and join the ranks of family members looking out for the pale lioness. It didn't seem to Skjoldr like such a great way to grow up, but from what he'd overheard of his mother's conversations with his Uncle Odd, his upbringing hadn't been so great either. Having nothing to compare it to, Skjoldr had no way of knowing about that.

"Really?" she asked.

They were getting close to her home again, and so she craned her neck, looking for someone to tell about her planned adventure. She didn't really expect to see anyone. They tended to be sneaky and hide most of the time, but she didn't have a problem with that.

"Grandda! Uncle Sko! Uncle Ova! I want to talk to you. I want to visit Cousin Skeeyoldur's home." She waited for someone to reply, but no one did for a long, long time. Maybe they were all asleep. It was almost naptime.

Reluctantly, she turned to her cousin-thing and said sadly, "Maybe it is not a good time for me to visit. Maybe I should visit at a different time when there are people to tell."

"Really," he assured her before falling silent to let her call out to the others.

Skjoldr managed not to breathe a sigh of relief when Anushka concluded all on her own that it might not be a good idea for her to come home with him today. He had been looking around for signs of Klona's family, and he was reasonably sure he knew where to find them, but if they weren't answering there was probably a reason. A paranoid, stupid reason, no doubt, but paranoia and stupidity were the reasons behind about a third of the decisions made by anyone in Skjoldr's acquaintance. So there was that.

"I think you're right," he said. "I'll take you back to your family. Maybe after I go you can ask them about visiting me sometime."

He hoped that wouldn't end up with him hosting the whole lot of them. Probably it wouldn't. Moving that many cubs would be difficult. When he thought about it, he was still amazed that his mother and uncle had managed it with his litter. He'd heard the story, of course, many times, but still.

It pleased Anushka to be told that she was considerate, and to be invited to visit her cousin-thing at a later date. She smiled as sweetly at him as she could. It was her mother's smile, though their different facial markings made hers more mischievous than Klona's ordinarily was.

"Yes, I will do that." But she probably wouldn't do that right away. Like Skjoldr, she didn't really want her whole family tagging along, but she wasn't sure how she could phrase her request without having that be the result. She liked feeling special by being the only one invited.

Oblivious to her cousin-thing's musings about the difficulties of cub transport and his mother's scary determination, Anushka said, "We should go then. It will be lots of trouble if mama notices that I am not there."