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Seqineq's mother had summoned her. Usually Seqineq dreaded these summonses, and this time was no different, but she knew that this summons was different, and she was reluctant to heed it.

As she walked (as slowly as possible) toward her parents' home, Seqineq fumed inwardly, thinking about the fact that she was an independent adult lioness who lived on her own quite happily and was far beyond the age where her parents ought to be able to summon her without giving a reason and expect that she simply turn up at the stated time and place without question or complaint.

Despite her fuming, it was never more than a passing moment's fancy that she might actually disregard the summons though. Familial loyalty was quite deeply ingrained in the freeborn's psyche.

Love! Love was such a b***h. It was no wonder there were no Stormlords whose job it was to look after lovers. No one would want to be such a stupid, horrible ********!" Signild shouted at no one in particular.

She had been mixing her intoxicants, chewing mint while eating fruit that had been fermented in the manner some members of the pride called piratical. She didn't care what it was called. It made things nice and sloshy, and that was just perfect.

"You're all ********!" she announced to the pride, unmindful of the fact that it was the middle of the day, when not even the most devout Stormborn drunkard would be publicly inebriated. She was suffering!

Seqineq's musings were interrupted by the cries of someone who was clearly far angrier at the world than Seqineq herself, someone who declared everyone ********. This was a deeply troubled soul, she decided, in need of her help. Her parents would undoubtedly understand if she was late - or even failed to show up entirely - if she had the perfectly valid excuse of helping an unfortunate fellow pridemember.

It wasn't difficult to seek out the distressed young lioness, as she was moving with all the grace of a two-legged warthog and making the most gods-awful noise as she did so, swearing with a vocabulary which suggested she was either a reaver or spent a great deal of time among reavers. Seqineq had no opinion on that, but she was amused by the varied profanity.

"It's a good day to die," she greeted the grey lioness. "Could you use some assistance?"

Signild turned her eyes toward the voice addressing her. Somehow she had ended up in a heap on the ground. She had no memory of this, but there was no way the other lioness was that much taller than she was, unless Signild herself was on the ground. How had that happened?

"Did you trip me?" she asked. It wasn't an accusation, merely an attempt to make sense of her new life as a flat-on-the-ground lioness. How she had come to be there, that sort of thing. She would work out the rest of the details later, when she felt less like hurling.

Which reminded her...

"Hork! Hrauch! Blerg...."

There. Much better. Oh, except the smell. That was bad. That was very bad.

Seqineq regarded the limp grey lioness with a mixture of pity and scorn. Every Stormborn has at least one drunken experience like this. It was practically a rite of passage in the pride. Seqineq had hers a little while ago. So it wasn't as if she couldn't empathize. It was just...really gross.

Before she could reply that she had not been involved in the lioness's collapse, the situation got a lot grosser as her inebriated companion began to vomit all over her own forepaws and then flop to one side as if resigned to her foul position. At least she hadn't flopped into the vomit.

"Do you have a home that you'd rather be in?" she asked. She might have done better to ask if the lioness knew where her home was, since Seqineq had no idea, but in her experience it was better not to ask lions in this state complicated questions.

Signild squinted at the other lioness from her prone position. She didn't look like anyone Siggy knew, but the pride was so large, that wasn't particularly unusual. She couldn't figure out why a stranger would have tripped her though. So maybe she didn't. Or maybe she did?

Siggy flopped onto her side, too worn out for things like logic and reason, and at least temporarily able to ignore the fact that there was spew on her forepaws and perilously close to her face. Her nose had stopped working, presumably in self-defense.

Oh, the stranger was still there, and she had asked a question. The answer to the question was...sex? No. That wasn't it. It was probably...

"Yes!" she declared triumphantly. She definitely wanted...whatever it was the other lioness had suggested. As long as it wasn't more fruit. That stuff was way more potent than n**.

"Great," Seqineq replied, unaware of the exact mental process behind the grey lioness's answer, but not unaware of the fact that she was currently dealing with a very unreliable thinker.

"Let's get you there, then. First, you need to be standing. Can you do that on your own?"

She really, really hoped that the answer to that question would be yes as well, and that it wouldn't just be bravado, but she wasn't going to hold her breath. Well, not about the question, anyway. She was sort of unconsciously holding her breath because of the vomit. It looked (and smelled) as if her drunken companion had denuded an entire tree of fruit and an entire field of mint, which bespoke a great deal of dedication. And stupidity. What fun.

Siggy had to think harder about the next question, but she decided in the end that the answer was yes. She did not want to live the rest of her live in this spot. Even though she was convinced that she would probably die soon from her stomach climbing up her spine to stop her brain hurting, or vice versa.

"Yes?" she replied, and then proceeded to carefully and literally put words into action. She described every step of the standing up process, and explained why she had to do it, and why she was doing it that way, and in that order. In other words, she babbled, but her new friend seemed to appreciate the information, even though she had apparently mastered standing already, the lucky b***h.

"Who are you, anyway?" she asked once she was firmly on her feet, not to be moved except by her will or a slight nudge from a mild breeze.

Seqineq showed what she thought was admirable restraint as she watched and listened to the piteous grey lion narrate her epic quest to stand up. To be fair, she did make it sound pretty epic, except for when she got distracted explaining why she had to do things in a certain order, when tended to trail off into vague silences.

"I'm Seqineq Boyesdottir," she replied. In an undertone she added, "Not that you'll remember that when you're sober and the hangover passes."

She briefly considered taking the other lioness to a healer instead of home, but she was just drunk. The only way people died from that was if they walked off a cliff or into the water, and that wasn't likely to happen at this point.

Deeply offended by the implication that she would not remember her new friend's name, Signild assured Seqineq and everyone else with ears in the immediate vicinity, "I will remember you, Seqineq Boyesdottir! I will never forget you. Never gonna give you up. Never gonna let you down. Never gonna...something something something or hurt you."

She was still listing the things she would never do when they began walking. Her feet, at least, seemed pretty capable, and they knew the way home. That was good, because Siggy was pretty out of it, singing through the pride about how she and that no-good troll-humping dirtbag were never, ever, ever, ever getting back together.

Like, ever.