[PRP] SURPRISE! (Damisi & Purjed)[FIN]

[fenshae]

Damisi was bored, and lonely, and that was the sort of combination that tended to get young lions into trouble.

Not that there was anything particularly new about the situation. Damisi spent a lot of her time being lonely, and that meant she was bored a lot, too. She was almost used to it, except that Damisi wasn't the sort of cub who could ever get used to being lonely. She had a deep-seated desire for company at all times, for attention, and it gnawed at her belly and made her needy and clingy and desperate for love above and beyond anybody else in her family.

Unfortunate, really, that the neediest cub in the family was also the one least deserving of affection.

At least, that's how she'd come to understand her situation, and she was set and ready to develop a martyr complex about it under the right conditions. It wasn't her fault that she was different from all her siblings, after all. She was special. And if special meant she'd be treated differently...meant that she'd never be a noble like her parents...well, then that's just because she had something else, better, planned for her.

Humphing to herself, the little black-white-and-gold lioness flopped down to her haunches, looking around. She felt the start of a good pout coming on.  

[Princess_Feylin]

The various encounters Pur'Jed had on her way up the mountain to the elevated area where the noble of the Suka'Fumo dwelt had alerted the purple lioness to the fact that things had changed in her pride during her absence. As she climbed, she mulled over the changes she'd seen and heard of. New members were a fine thing, and she'd heard some older nobles had even returned from a prolonged absence. That was actually exciting. But something still didn't sit right. Her pride didn't quite feel like home.

"That will change," she told herself, "as soon as I get home home."

By this, of course, she meant when she got back to her parents' den. She would not be living there with them upon her return, but she definitely wanted to make certain they knew that she had returned and that her excursion had gone as planned. She might even impose on them for a few days while she got herself settled in a den of her own. Or maybe she could make arrangements with Gali to stay with her. There was nothing unseemly about two sisters living together until one or the other married and moved into their husband's den.

Above all, Pur was concerned with seemliness, given where she had been and why. Nevertheless, when she came to the familiar area which housed her family her pace quickened and she practically trotted the last bit of distance, more like a commoner than the well-bred and well-raised noble she was.  

[fenshae]

Her ears flicked and Damisi looked up, brow furrowed. Was that someone coming? It was! Someone was coming! Maybe they'd be her friend!

Excitement flooded her, despite herself. She knew perfectly well that anybody up here would be a noble, and that most nobles would walk right past her without stopping to even look at her. She also knew that it wouldn't be long until she also wouldn't be allowed up here -- that once she was just a bit older, she'd have no excuse to linger around with her family.

But at this precise moment, she was here. And someone was coming. And they might even be nice to her.

Scurrying, falling over herself on her way there, the little cub scampered toward the sound of the approaching lioness.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Her time spent in the wilds of the rogue lands had produced an unexpected effect in Pur'Jed. She was actually more aware of her surroundings, and not just of the people around her. She had also learned that she couldn't afford to tune out anyone whose coloration wasn't that of a noble, since in the rogue lands no one knew the difference between nobility and commoners, and those colored like commoners were frequently dangerous. Pur had hated that.

Just the same, Pur did notice that there was a cub scampering toward her and instantly slowed her pace. By the time she'd come to a complete stop she had gotten quite a good look at the cub making her way to intercept her and it was the eeriest thing ever. The cub looked startlingly like one of her sisters, except her sisters would all be her age now, and they all had purple on their coats, which this little girl did not.

It occurred to Pur then that this might actually be the daughter of one of her sisters. Or maybe even Zamba's daughter. How sad for them, to have a cub with no noble coloring. Both of her daughters had borne noble purple on their coats. Her son, Ruzanski, had not, but of her three cubs he was both the easiest to forget and the hardest. His strangeness made him memorable, but he was not like his sisters at all, which meant she mentally excluded him all the time.

"Hello," she greeted the cub. "I'm Pur'Jed. What's your name?"  

[fenshae]

Damisi skidded to a stop so as not to plow into the female. She settled down heavily on her rump and tilted her head back to look up at her, soaking her in with big liquidy eyes. "Hi!" She said, a bit shyly, and then looked away, suddenly feeling a little self-conscious.

Her eyes found the other's paw, and she stared at it for awhile. She had gold toes, she noticed. Gold like the gold on her body. "I'm Damisi," she mumbled, in response to her question, ears folded back meekly. The shyness didn't last too long, though, before the curiosity spread back over her. She peered up curiously at her, through the corner of her eye. "I've never seen you before," she said. And, with as much time as she spent creeping around the pride spying on people, she knew most lions by sight at least. "Where'd you come from?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Not particularly graceful, Pur observed unconsciously, nor hugely polite. But then, a cub with this one's unfortunate coloration would not have such a need for good manners. Her coat was utterly lacking in purple, which meant that she would not be a member of the nobility when she grew up. Or, if she decided to persist in living up here, she would have little luck in arranging a future for herself, or having one arranged for her by her parents. A little like her son Ru, who was older than this cub who met her. That was odd to think of.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Damisi," Pur'Jed said, easily slipping back into the social graces and good manners dictated by her birth and station.

She had not really allowed them to lapse during her time in the rogue lands, but it was reassuring to her to note how easily she was able to use them in the company of other nobles and members of her pride. Even if she had only met with a strange rose keeper, his leopard companion, and a cub so far. Even so, she had no difficulty in being herself as she thought of herself, the noble daughter of Maua and Kivuli.

"I'm one of Maua and Kivuli's daughters. I was in the rogue lands visiting my sister Nyota and her family. What about you?" The more practice she had in uttering the lie, the better.  

[fenshae]

"No you're not," she said, shaking her head very adamantly. This lioness was trying to trick her! That wasn't fair at all. It was bad enough that Damisi knew she wasn't as good as other lions, but now she was being flat-out deceived with impossible things.

She may be young, but she wasn't stupid!

"You're not Maua and Kivuli's daughter," she said, quite firmly. "Because I am. And I'd know if you were my sister." Her eyes narrowed. She knew well enough that she had older siblings, but she hadn't known about this one. At least she was pretty sure she hadn't. "If you were my sister," she continued, reasonably, "We would have met before."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur would have raised her eyebrows if she'd been a human being. She hadn't expected to have her parentage called into question by the small cub, who was so very obviously related to her. She couldn't believe that the cub couldn't see the relation between them. It seemed undeniably clear to Pur. But Pur was older and had seen more of the pride and its lions. Though this particular little lioness was unfamiliar to her, it was true, but that was because she hadn't been a part of the pride when Pur left. Pur could certainly tell they were related, at any rate.

"I am," Pur said simply, not bothering to elaborate for several minutes until after Damisi had explained her reasoning, which made a degree of sense, really, but was still incorrect.

It was a surprise, and not exactly a pleasant one, to hear Damisi claim Maua and Kivuli as her parents. Pur didn't have a problem sharing her parents, of course. She already had a number of siblings, so it would have been perfectly ridiculous for her to be jealous of a new litter. The unpleasantness of the surprise came more from the fact that she hadn't known of it and hadn't been there with the rest of the family to welcome her little brothers and sisters into the world. Neither had Nyota, she reminded herself.

"Mother and Father didn't mention us to you?" Pur asked. She was a little hurt, though she supposed she could understand why Nyota wouldn't have been mentioned, and if Nyota hadn't been mentioned there was no way to explain why Pur wasn't around. It hurt, but she understood.

"I was outside of the pride for a time visiting some more of our family. It was a pretty long time, actually. You weren't even a twinkle in Mother's eye when I left."  

[fenshae]

Damisi wracked her brain, trying to think if it had ever come up in conversation. If it had -- and it very well may, really -- she'd never paid any attention. 'Grown-up stuff' was not interesting to her in the slightest.

But this large purple-toed lioness didn't seem keen to be angry or mean with her, so she was hopeful about that. Maybe they could play together! Damisi never had enough people to play with. "A twinkle in Mother's eye?" She asked, baffled by the expression. She mulled this over for a moment, and then laughed, because it was absurd. Clearly her 'big sister' didn't know the first thing about where cubs came from!

Still, thinking it not very polite to point this out -- and besides, what if she was wrong?! -- she didn't say anything. Instead, she said, "Do you know where everybody's den is? I can lead you back there if you want."  

[Princess_Feylin]

"It's an expression," Pur said, somewhat bemused by Damisi's laughter. She liked the expression. "It just means that there was no sign of your being born."

She didn't know what Damisi did or didn't know about where cubs came from. Her mother had not explained the facts of life to her until she was an older juvenile, about to be old enough to be married off. Her mother had wanted to be sure that her daughter had no illusions about what would be expected of her now that she was approaching adolescence. Pur was operating under the assumption that her mother would have kept to the same timeline with her current litter, though considering how her first litter had turned out it would have made sense for Maua to educate them about sex a lot earlier.

"Unless people have changed dens I do," she said. Before she'd left her sister Gali had taken a den of her own, and she would soon have done the same, but plans changed. "Since I doubt Mother and Father have changed dens, I'm fairly certain I know where theirs is. But I wouldn't mind having some company on my way there."  

[fenshae]

Truth be told, Damisi hadn't the foggiest idea about the mechanics of reproduction -- but she was still quite certain it had nothing to do with eyeballs. She'd come to the knowledge somewhere or another that being a mother involved getting very, very fat, so she assumed there was lots of eating involved. "Oh. Okay."

She danced a little on her paws, then bounded forward a few steps before pausing to wait for her sister. "I get to stay with them until I'm a little older," she said, matter-of-factly. "But then I have to go away and live somewhere else, because I'm not the right colors."

She paused, then, brow furrowing. "...the family you were out, visiting. Are they the wrong colors, too?"  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur didn't know how much of her explanation Damisi had grasped, but she couldn't really offer anything more. Some expressions were simply inexplicable, even when they were really nice ones. That was how it was said, and she didn't know why. She was glad that Damisi hadn't asked her to go into specifics.

Instead she smiled at the cub's enthusiasm as she danced and bounded. Her energetic behavior reminded Pur of her two girls. They had danced and pranced like that, too, when they were excited about something. Ru, too, had been a cub in constant motion, but his kind of motion was different from his sisters'. He had a difficult time staying still for long periods of time, even when he was supposed to, and did so only with an effort. It was strange to think that she had cubs older than her sibling.

"Some of them are the wrong colors," Pur replied, remembering that Nyota's paramour had no purple on him whatsoever, and the brief glimpse she'd caught of her niece the cub was colored like mud and sky, without purple. She didn't mention that the cubs' mother, Nyota'Vumbi, was the most purple cub in Pur's litter. She didn't know what Maua had told Damisi's litter about Nyota, and didn't want to reveal anything Maua wanted kept quiet. She understood about secrets.

"What do you think you'll do when you go away? Will you become an artisan or a player?" They weren't as well-respected as nobility, of course, but they were valued members of the pride for the services they performed. She couldn't imagine Maua sending any of her daughters to a future which wouldn't be at least respectable, even if they weren't the right color to be nobility.  

[fenshae]

She bounded along, feeling pretty smart. She knew how things worked. She even knew a little something about what Pur was saying, with the family! Of course they'd been wrong colors! Although her answer did make her wonder a little, and she started to ask for further clarification, but her sister's question distracted her from the inquiry. "I don't know," she said, honestly. "I'd have to be good at something, to be something like that. And I don't know if I'm good at anything."

She glowered, then, as a thought occurred to her that was probably not a nice thing to say, but because she was young and had not fully learned about tact she said it anyway. "Nobles don't have to be good at anything. That's not fair."  

[Princess_Feylin]

Pur was taken aback by Damisi's opinion that nobles didn't have to be good at anything and wondered what Maua had been teaching her cubs. She distinctly remembered hours and days and weeks of lessons on all the myriad things a noble had to know, from the big important things to the tiny minutiae. All of it had to be exactly right or else it would be an embarrassment to whomever was in error, and also to their companions and family.

Being a noble carried a lot of responsibility and was a great deal harder than commoners thought it was. She had left her family and her pride, lying to almost everyone, so that she could have a forbidden litter of cubs which she had then abandoned because there was no way she could bring them back with her. She could think of no greater hardship, though that was probably her innate self-centeredness.

"It's different for nobles. For nobles a lot of what they have to be good at is all inside their heads and is about how they talk and carry themselves and how they behave among others. Everyone else has to learn something they can do with their paws, mostly, and don't have to think about it as much. Probably if you wanted to you could find someone to teach you about whatever craft you decide to go into, and then you'll be good at it before you have to leave."

She could see the den in the middle ground. It seemed their conversation would soon be drawing to a close, as she wished to speak to her parents privately.  

[fenshae]

"I guess," Damisi said, not entirely convinced. Then again, seeing as she would never live that life, she had never paid much attention to it and had certainly not been extensively schooled in it. Perhaps there was some sour grapes afoot in the cub's young mind.

"What would you do?" She asked, then, suddenly intrigued. "If you weren't a noble? What would you do instead?"