[PRP] Cubbie Musings (Haruma, Cor)

[Talencia]

Haruma didn't quite know how she felt about having a new mother. That... just didn't quite feel right. Oh, she was kind enough, sure. THey all had been, in fact. But she just couldn't feel comfortable about this term "mother" for anyone. She was reasonably sure her siblings felt similarly, on differing levels. They all tended to cling close together, but today Haruma felt the need for some space, and some time to think.

She didn't go very far. She doubted she'd have been allowed to stray beyond sight of those keeping watchful vigil over them. The way they acted, it made Haruma wonder if they were the only cubs in the pride at this point. She found a thick, waving clump of grass and sat in it with a sigh. Life wasn't bad, but it wasn't exactly good to her yet either. Was there such a thing as good? Being only a small cubbie, she couldn't have said if there was.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor's father was away again. He'd been away for a long time, it seemed, which meant she was left to be minded by the pride's babysitters. Usually she didn't mind that so much, but she was bored. All the other cubs were napping as if there weren't a million other, exciting things to do. At least, most of the other cubs were. She thought she'd seen one of the new cubs wander off.

It wasn't difficult to follow her. Her coat was bright orange with white splotches and black stripes. Cor liked her own fur better. It was much more useful for being invisible and then springing up and startling people. Still, Cor was glad that the new cub would be easy to find and follow, because she wasn't a very skilled tracker. For a moment she even lost her when she disappeared into a clump of thick grass, though she eventually figured it out.

"Aren't you supposed to be napping with the others?" Cor asked as she drew nearer. She continued, not even thinking about the lie she spoke, "I don't have to, because I'm special, but I think everyone else does."  

[Talencia]

Her ears swiveled first towards the voice, then her head. She studied the other cub thoughtfully for a moment. So they weren't the only ones after all. Somehow that failed to excite her though. She had thought she'd savor the company of other cubs, but faced with one, she found herself wishing her sibs were here with her instead.

She mutely pondered the brown cub's words, watching her solemnly. "It's nice that you are special," she began, "but our.. mother," the term still felt all wrong, "did not tell us we had to nap." Her brother was indeed sleeping, she knew, but she was pretty sure her sister was off playing somewhere.

Her face was a study in mixed emotions. She was doing her best to be polite and pleasant, but the idea of being givern a new mother still rankled, and she wasn't enjoying using the term to a stranger. It tasted bitter in her mouth, and darkened her heart. It wasn't as if their mother had been exactly wonderful, but to replace her? Haruma just didn't know about that.

"What do you do when you aren't napping with the others, then?" She suddenly realized the implication that there were other cubs as well, and her ears finally pricked up a bit. "Do you have a mother?" she hazarded, wondering if the other cubs were her siblings. The idea of asking about a father never even crossed her mind, since she'd never had one.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Maybe you don't have to," Cor acknowledge with a shrug. When mothers cared for their own cubs, their cubs got to follow different rules. For a moment Cor had thought that the new cub would try to say something which would make her mother seem more important. Or maybe say something about her real mother. Did she even remember her real mother? Cor didn't. Cor didn't care about her real mother, either. There was her father, her hero, and as long as he was around, she needed no other family.

Cor yawned, trying to make it seem as if it was nothing special for her to be away from the others. She hoped none of the babysitters would notice she was missing and come looking for her. That would be problematic. Then she'd have to explain why she wasn't with the others, while still making it seem as if she didn't have to be. She wasn't sure she was up to the challenge, and so she dropped into a comfortable, concealing crouch.

"Well, I do what I want. Sometimes I help the grown-ups who're too sick to do things for themselves. Other times I get to patrol the borders with my father. He's a scout, and the best lion ever." Talking about her father had distracted her from Haruma's question momentarily, but she quickly recalled what she was supposed to be talking about.

"Right now, I'm supposed to be making sure you're doing all right. I don't have a real mother, either, so we'll probably get along pretty well."  

[Talencia]

She really had Haruma's attention now. "What happened to your mother?" she asked with interest, completely disregarding the mention of her father and the unlikelyhood of this cub being sent to look after herself. For now, none of that mattered. She might have found someone who wasn't her sib who could understand her heartache.

"My mother left us. Just... left." Her ears wilted and her head sagged. "We were used to her going off for long periods of time, but this time she didn't come back." She cast a look at the brown cub. "Some lions from here found us and have taken care of us." This invoked another question. "Were you rescued and brought here too?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor was a little annoyed that Haruma hadn't asked about her father, who was by far the more interesting of her parents, as far as she was concerned. Nevertheless, the orange cub was listening to her avidly, and for Cor that was enough. She liked to be the center of attention, after all. Before answering she paused for dramatic effect, and also to decide what she would tell the other cub. The true story of what had happened, that she'd gotten sick and left, wasn't very interesting, and confused Cor more than a little, since she was too young to understand that there were other diseases besides the one by which the Kitwana'antara was plagued.

"Oh, it was very exciting. She was a princess in another pride, and she fell in love with my father, who's a scout and really brave and handsome, and so she came back here to live with him. After a while they had me, and everything was going to be perfect but her old pride came looking for her because the queen had died and they needed her to come back and rule. When she said she didn't want to leave my father and me, they said they'd kill my father and take both her and me, so she agreed to come and left me here so my father wouldn't be alonely without her."

It was a good story, and parts of it were even true. At least the part about her parents being in love for a while, and the part about her mother leaving. The rest was pure fantasy, but for Cor, for the moment, speaking the words had made them true, and if anyone argued, she'd argue right back, even if it meant making up more lies.

"Maybe your mother got lost, and she'll come back," Cor suggested. She felt sorry for the sad little orange cub. She also ignored her last question. "What's your name? I think I've heard it, but I don't know if I remember it right."  

[Talencia]

She listened intently, eyes pondering what she was told. She's not met anyone untruthful yet, so it did not occur to her that she was being told a fib. She mulled the story, and came to a conclusion. "I feel sorry for your mother, then," she said quietly. "She's all alone and sad, and with mean lions." She gave the other cub a curious, piercing look. "Don't you want to try to go find her someday, so she won't be alone?" Just then another question occurred to her. "And if your father loved her so much, why didn't he go with her?" She thought this a very relevant question. What had kept the family from staying together?

But the opinion of the other cub about her own mother's antics made her pin her ears back. "No, I don't think so," she said sternly. "We waited for her until we were crying with hunger. That's how they found us, or we'd have died." She said this simply, without relish or flourish. She had no use for dramatics, not when life was already so difficult.

"My name is Haruma," she answered willingly, not bothering to figure out whether this other cub could have heard her name before or not. It was perfectly possibly they'd been mentioned to the cubs already here, even if those cubs hadn't been mentioned to Haruma and her siblings. "What's your name? And your father's name?" It only seemed polite to inquire about her father too, since he was part of the pride. Even so, it was clear this was merely tagged on. Haruma had more interest in the mother.  

[Princess_Feylin]

"Well, I can't go find her," she said, her brow and nose wrinkling in confusion. Did Haruma not understand about the pride, how they were sick and could never leave? She thought that was pretty strange. "No more than my father could have gone with her. We're sick, like most everyone else here."

Cor was a young cub, but she still knew what it meant to have the pride's illness. There were days when she was simply in no condition to go play with other cubs, and then one of the healers would come and sit by her side until she fell asleep. She didn't like those days, but everyone seemed to have them, so she didn't think anything of it. At least she hadn't until now. Now she squinted at Haruma suspiciously. Was she not sick? That was just weird.

"Well it's a good thing they found you, huh, Haruma? I'm Cor Oxidat. Cor for short."

She cut herself off, having heard a sound that might have been one of the babysitters coming to look for her. Her ears swiveled as she tried to decide whether the sound was one she had to be worried about. After no one called her name and demanded that she return to nap-time she decided it was not something she had to worry about, and she sat up properly once more.

"Have you met many of the other cubs yet?" Cor doubted that she had. She'd only just met Haruma herself, and she was usually very on top of things when she was feeling up to it.  

[Talencia]

Sick? Haruma eyed the other cub with bafflement. She didn't look sick. It made no sense, so she merely dismissed it. Just like her own mother, it didn't matter the reasoning. She was gone, and that was that. She willingly let the topic go, choosing instead to answer the next question.

"Not any of the cubs that live here, no," she replied smoothly, but with a slight aloofness that indicated there was a great distinction between the cubs already here and the cubs that were her sibs. "We haven't been here very long. We've been given an adoptive mother, though, so we are settling in." She did not mention that she wasn't comfortable with this new mother. it wasn't something she felt like sharing with this strange cub. Haruma tended to be a rather private and introspective girl.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor didn't miss the way Haruma looked at her, but she couldn't think of any reason for her to eye her that way. Bafflement wasn't something she was used to encountering. She didn't really think she was all that out of the ordinary. It was part of why she made up stories about herself, to make herself seem more interesting. She didn't know what the other parts of that were.

"What other cubs are there?" Cor asked, thoroughly mystified. Oh, she knew there were lions outside of the pride, but it wasn't as though Haruma would be seeing them. Now that she was part of the pride, she had to be sick, which meant she couldn't ever leave. Maybe there had been other cubs before she was taken in by her new mother.

"Who is 'us' and 'we'?" Cor asked, realizing suddenly that Haruma had been speaking in the plural some of the time. It hadn't occurred to her that Haruma might have siblings, but she was also too young to have met anyone with the habit of referring to themselves in the plural. "I only see one of you."  

[Talencia]

Haruma laughed. It was a rare thing, but was always entirely genuine. She simmered down to giggles that she could talk trhough. "Of course there is only one of me," she grinned. "But there isn't just me!" Her tailtip waved behind her in merriment at the thought of there being more than one of herself. "I have a brother and sister. we look out for each other, and are always together." She paused, giggles subsided, realizing that she wasn't with them now, after all.

"Well, we always live together," she amended with a slightly sheepish look. "Without a mother or father, we are all we have." It was a rather obtuse statement, but it made perfect sense to her. Even though she had a 'mother', Haruma didn't count her as truly part of the family, and family was who you looked out for.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Cor wasn't sure at first what Haruma was laughing at, but it was obviously not the kind of laughter where someone was being made fun of, and so Cor didn't mind. Cor didn't like to be made fun of, and she got really angry when people said bad things about her father, but she knew the difference between when a person was laughing at her and when a person was laughing near her. A born entertainer, Cor liked to make people laugh, and quite frequently found herself telling unwitting lies just to get the desired response in her audience.

"Oh, you have siblings!" Cor exclaimed. She didn't remember if she had ever had siblings, but she certainly didn't now. Perhaps they had died when she was too little to remember them, or maybe they had never been born at all. She didn't really care one way or the other, as they weren't here now, and she was a cub who didn't give a lot of thought to the past, viewing it as something which could be altered in accordance with her present and future needs.

Before Cor could point out that Haruma wasn't with her siblings now, the green-eyed cub beat her to the point, which made Cor grin. She liked that Haruma was clever enough to realize what she'd said and how it didn't fit. The grinning probably didn't go so well with Haruma's more serious statement that she and her siblings only had each other, but knowing what was appropriate in a given occasion wasn't one of Cor's skills as yet.

"You do have the pride, you know. We've adopted you, and so we'll all look out for you, even if something happens to your mother or your brother and sister. That's what prides do." Giving the only example she could think of, Core said, "I mean, there are babysitters to look after me when my father can't because he's on important missions or something."  

[Talencia]

Haruma kept her trepidations about the statement to herself. She wasn't ready to accept that anyone honestly cared for them. It wasn't exactly mistrust as much as it was heartache. She and her siblings had lost so much already, her young heart couldn't handle the idea of being let down yet again. But she let her doubts about the other cub's statement go unspoken.

Instead, she decided to focus on what seemed Cor's favorite subject. It helped take the focus off herself. "What kind of missions does your father go on?" she asked with somewhat feigned interest. It wasn't that she was trying to decieve the other cub, she merely didn't feel as much interest as she indicated. Still, it seemed polite to be so, thus she acted the part.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Thrilled to have finally been asked about her favorite conversational topic, Cor did a little half-bounce of excitement, her claws sliding in and out of their sheathes unconsciously.

"Oh, he goes on all sorts of missions. He's very brave, you know. He sometimes goes looking for healers who might be able to help us with new cures. I bet he's probably out there looking for your mother right now, though."

That sounded like a sufficiently heroic action to Cor, especially given how important Haruma's mother seemed to be to her. She wanted to cheer the other cub up, and so she said, "He's really good at finding things. They're probably talking right now about her coming back here to be with you and your brother and sister."

Briefly she entertained the notion that her father and Haruma's mother might really have met, and maybe they were falling in love. Well. Haruma's mother might be falling in love with Cor's father. Cor knew her father was already in love with her mother, and wouldn't fall in love with anyone else. He was too good of a lion. She felt bad for him, really, loving her mother so much when he couldn't be with her.  

[Talencia]

Despite these encouraging words, Haruma's expression soured just slightly. Her ears folded back, and her brows lowered, eyes narrowed minutely. For some reason, the idea of their mother coming back after all that had happened... it felt very wrong and bad. She withheld the rising growl of unhappiness, letting it come out as a soft hiss instead.

"Even if he convinced her to come here to see us," she said softly, "she'd just leave us again." She always had. In fact, Haruma remembered little else about the person she was supposed to love best in the world. Just her coming briefly, and then going again. It rankled to think of her coming here to usurp the kindness of the pride that had taken them in. The fact that her mother wouldn't have been allowed to leave again didn't occur to her. Had she realized it, it probably would have made her all the more miserable. Who wanted a mother who didn't want you?

So instead she switched topics, deciding to ask more questions about her companion. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" If made to guess, Haruma would have said no, but who knew? "And what other cubs do you know?" She tried to show more interest than she felt. Right now she was feeling rather unhappy at all the dwelling on their absent mother, and it made her long to be back with her siblings. Despite that, she tried to be polite anyway.