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It was an odd family dynamic, the one in the Warlord's family. To begin with, there were the Warlord's legitimate offspring, Kazul's brothers and sister (and Kazul herself). But then there were also Aesir's illegitimate offspring, and there were six of them, though also evenly split between boys and girls. The pride's customs dictated that bastards were not to be treated any differently from anyone else, but that didn't mean things couldn't be strange with a lion having fathered cubs on two lionesses and having them live in the same pride.

What was strangest, probably, was the way Kazul had adapted to her half-siblings. Typically, she wasn't too keen on the other girls, who looked entirely too much like their shared father and made her feel just a little like her position in his affections might be threatened, but she didn't much mind the near-triplets who were her half-brothers. Her particular favorite was Odd Haleifr, or Odd for short, and she had taken to spending most of her free time with him, playing games of pretend or showing him around the pride while telling stories about how amazingly wonderful their family was.

Odd was a good listener, and he always had been. Not only did he listen, but he also tended to remember what was said and synthesize it with what he already knew so that his worldview was relatively complete, even for one so young. Of course, the fact that he had been raised as he had, outside of the Stormborn and with a very spiritual mother meant that his beliefs differed somewhat from most of the others' in the pride, but he'd been a little surprised to learn that at least one of his half-siblings didn't mind that so much. For reasons that continued to mystify him, his half-sister Kazul had taken an interest in him and decided that they would be friends.

And Odd liked Kazul. She was a lot like his brother Calder, but not quite identical, which was probably for the best, and also explained why the two didn't get along too well. Neither one was the type to cede authority to someone else willing, unlike Odd, whose spiritual side made him a great deal less inclined toward aggression and authoritarianism. He wasn't exactly a follower. He just didn't see any reason to get into fights over unimportant matters like who ought to be in charge.

Right now, Kazul was the one in charge because she was the one who was bored, so Odd was walking through the pride at her side in search of someone or something to entertain them.

"Faugh!" Kazul exclaimed in frustration.

It seemed like she and Odd had been wandering around the pride for ages and ages searching for something even moderately interesting to do. At this point she was almost tempted to take him to the flat, sort of sandy area where the reavers and reavers-to-be and freeborn who liked to fight practiced and honed their skills. Kazul herself was too young to really be allowed to fight there, but she hadn't done much more than walk Odd past it so far. Maybe they could go there. She just wasn't really in the mood to watch others spar.

"Let's go to the cliffs," she suggested finally. "At least it's kind of exciting up there."

She'd always found it sort of exciting anyway. The smell of the sea was strongest there from the way the spray filled the air when the waves crashed against the rocks below, and it was a long, long drop down to the bottom of the cliffs, too. Sometimes, when the tide went out particularly far you could walk along the bottom of the cliffs and only be wet up to your chin if you were about Kazul's size, but mostly there was water there. Even with the water, a fall would undoubtedly kill a lion.

She did wait for her half-brother to agree before she set off in the direction of the cliffs, just in case he had objections, but if he didn't want to go there, she really didn't know what they could do. Except maybe bother one of the reavers for stories, but that was almost like watching them spar, and therefore not much good.

Odd sat very still, watching as his half-sister visibly discarded some idea or other. He didn't know what she'd been considering, but he could recognize the shifting of expressions and posture which accompanied consideration and dismissal. If she didn't come up with anything, he had a few ideas, but there was a good chance she wouldn't be very impressed by them. They were different kinds of exciting.

"All right," he agreed when she came to a conclusion that satisfied her. He liked the cliffs. The spray from the sea made it seem almost as though the spirits of the sea and air were tangible, which was a feeling he'd never experienced before his family came to the Stormborn and he still couldn't get enough of it.

It wasn't exactly an easy climb, but they were young, healthy cubs and so it didn't seem too terribly difficult. However, before they reached the plateaued portion of the cliffs with the best lookout Odd put out a paw to stay Kazul's forward progress.

"Look," he said, nodding to a bright shape moving as if dancing.

Kazul heeded Odd's direction, accustomed to the idea that he was more observant than she was. She figured it had to do with him being new to the pride, and therefor less inclined to take for granted the sights she'd seen every day of her life. However, when she followed his gaze and looked toward the cliffs she realized that she was looking at a sight equally strange to her as it must be to him. What the gold lion was doing seemed completely mysterious to her. Stormborn did not perform anything resembling kata.

When he stopped what he was doing and then bowed toward her and her half-brother, Kazul took that in stride. While few lions in the pride were much for obsequious gestures toward anyone, there were those who had come from without whose foreign manners dictated that they show respect to their leader and his family by bowing. She accepted it with as much grace as she could, though it made her uncomfortable, in truth.

For the moment, however, her attention was more on his unusual syntax. Her mind automatically ordered the words in a less nonsensical way, but her curiosity had been pricked. It was very, very obvious that this slight lion was from another pride, and probably a very distant one at that. She sensed the potential for stories.

"We saw you on the cliffs and thought what you were doing looked interesting. What were you doing?"

Odd was content to allow Kazul to speak for the both of them. For one thing, it took him a little longer to puzzle out what the golden-eyed lion had said, but also he had learned people in the pride were generally more willing to indulge Kazul's whims and curiosities than they were his. The difference of legitimacy, perhaps, but maybe it was something else. He didn't hold it against her, either way. She never hesitated to use what influence she might in the pride have to help him if she was able.

He nodded his agreement when Kazul mentioned their curiosity. He had thought maybe the older lion was performing some sort of liturgical dance to glorify his gods. It seemed as plausible as anything else. He had not made a connection between Erlender's actions and fighting. His experience of fighting was very limited, even now. He hadn't even been to watch the Reavers practicing their fighting yet!

Rather than speak or pepper the foreign lion with questions, Odd would have remained silent and waited for his reply to Kazul's question, but there was one piece of information he did want to know, being new to the pride himself. He didn't know if the older was very new to the pride or only a little new, but he didn't recognize him, and Odd would like to remedy that. It seemed to him that new Stormborn ought to know each other at least.

"I'm Odd," he said. "And this is my half-sister Kazul, by the way."

Kazul nodded in what she imagined to be a regal fashion. It did please her that he knew who she and Odd were just from knowing their names, though it wasn't as if either of them could deny Aesir as a father. She wouldn't want to anyway. Kazul was very proud of her father.

The brightly colored lion's manner made her want to behave more formally, though she wasn't one hundred percent sure how to go about doing so. There were formalities with the Stormborn, but they weren't the same sort that Kazul somehow felt this strange golden lion warranted. Rather than try and fail, Kazul decided she'd just act as she usually did.

"Training? For battle? Really?" The questions built on top of one another. It was probably fortunate that her voice didn't get higher with each one of them, or she'd be squeaking by the end. "It looks more like you were dancing than fighting."

Odd nudged his half-sister, unaware of her brief desire to behave with manners as good as the older lion's and only able to observe that she was being her usual inquisitive self. He had been wondering the same thing, of course, since the majority of his (limited) experience with battle came from Stormborn techniques and tactics, but he probably wouldn't have asked in quite the same way. And he would have left out the bit about dancing.

"It's probably how they fight where he's from." He was more than clever enough to figure out that Erlendr hadn't been born among the Stormborn. "Isn't it?" He directed the question toward their new acquaintance.

It occurred to Odd that he should probably ask about his name at some point, since Kazul didn't seem inclined to. Maybe she figured there was no need, since this lion would be easily described and recognized.