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 Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 8:50 am
Kazul had a mission. There had been talk around the pride that her father was an incompetent Warlord who was weakening the pride with his own carelessness and disrespect for the pride's ways. Her mission was to find the lion who was spreading these rumors and demand that he explain to her, the Warlord's daughter, why he was spreading these false rumors.
So. Njal.
Kazul wasn't stupid enough to believe that he was the ultimate source for these rumors. She knew that the gossip had begun a little before Njal returned with Thorgrim and his little family, but she didn't know who had begun them initially. She hoped that by talking to Njal she would be able to find that out, too, because he was too young even to remember much about the Warlord before her father. It had to be someone else.
But in the meantime. Njal.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:03 am
Njal was actually quite innocent that day. Not that he could be considered an innocent lion by any means, of course. Just innocent that day, because he wasn't doing anything. He'd hunted a bit, for fun, and was simply enjoying a bit of relative down-time as he walked about the lands. He'd been quite busy lately, yes. Talking to people, talking to Thorgrim, talking to his mate. A lot of talking!
Before coming back to these lands, that he barely even remembered, he hadn't even been much of a talker. Now it seemed he had to do it all the time! It was quite an interesting little development, but Njal was more than willing. Especially if conversations went the way he wanted them to.
He saw Kazul probably before she spotted him, and he laid his ears back. There would be no talking to one of Aesir's spawn, however. He didn't turn away, but opted for pretending she just wasn't there, and continued about his very important business. It's a shame you couldn't quite convey such an air when you weren't really doing anything.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:23 am
Perhaps Kazul took a little too much joy in greeting Njal, "Someday I will kill you, Njal."
But he was going around saying things about her father, about his Warlord, that ought to earn him a drubbing from anyone who heard the lies. That no one had yet beaten him for his lies was another problem, one that Kazul would have to look into at some future date. The Stormborn should take umbrage at attacks against their Warlord, be they physical or otherwise.
So maybe there was something wrong with the pride, and those symptoms Njal claimed to be seeing were not rooted in her father's leadership, but in some other problem. Maybe if she spoke to him, reasoned with him, Kazul could persuade Njal that they need not work at cross purposes since their shared goal was the betterment and benefit of the pride.
"You don't look particularly busy. Let's talk."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:31 am
Ugh, she had come to him. Great. Just what Njal had been hoping for. "Not today, Kazoo." He'd been told the names of Aesir's children, and some allies, but admittedly could have tried to learn them with more care. He didn't even try to put on a facade of pleasantness, and turned to look at the female with the same enthusiasm a cub might face an impending bath.
"A lion doesn't need to look busy to be busy." He countered, but she had a point. No, he wasn't busy. Fine, Njal might as well meet some of the warlord's kids face to face. However, he knew he'd probably have to be a bit careful not to be... too alarming. It simply wasn't the right time for direct conflict. "Fine, let's talk."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:51 am
"Kazul," the warlord's daughter corrected without rancor. It irked her that he would resort to something so petty as deliberately misnaming her, and it irked her even more that she was bothered by it. It was a stupid tactic and she shouldn't be affected by it at all, but she was proud of who she was and that included her name.
The amber eyed lioness was not impressed by Njal's assertion that a lion needn't look busy to be busy. He was correct, actually, but Kazul was more than capable of discerning the difference between the sort of inactivity Njal described and actual idleness. What Njal was indulging in at the moment was definitely not of the former sort.
"Want to tell me why you've taken it upon yourself to start spreading lies about my father and trying to convince people he's damaging the pride?"
She could have been more subtle. She would have preferred to be more subtle. Unfortunately, in her experience subtlety was frequently lost on reavers and so it would be more expeditious if she simply asked him directly to answer the questions bothering her the most.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 9:59 am
He didn't acknowledge her correction, because Njal didn't really care if he said her name right. At least not right now. Perhaps at some point he'd need to play civil, but.... then again. They were Stormborn. How often did they really need to be civil?
Her bluntness didn't surprise him, because the dark male half expected lions to be blunt around here. Beating around the bushes was for wussies. "I can't tell you why I do something I do not do." He frowned. Njal wasn't trying to play innocent. "I don't spread lies. Your father is damaging the pride." There, it was a fact. Pft, lies!
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:08 am
Kazul's eyes narrowed when Njal tried to be clever with words. Clearly that wasn't his forte. Why had he decided to take it upon himself to win people over with words if he wasn't that clever with them? That smacked of stupidity, and although Kazul didn't usually ascribe a great deal of articulateness to reavers, she rarely made the blanket assumption that they were stupid. They, too, were of her pride after all, and she knew that being a reaver meant more than being muscular and fierce.
"You're mistaken," she told him. "Perhaps because you're reasoning from a faulty basis."
Giving people the benefit of the doubt wasn't one of Kazul's strong suits. She didn't feel that she was a very nice lioness by nature and tended to believe that most people were at least as petty and selfish inside as she believed herself to be. She also tended to believe that most lions were less intelligent than she was, on the other hand, and so it wasn't much of a stretch for her to tell herself that Njal was not deliberately lying, but had merely been misinformed.
"Tell me why you think so."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:18 am
"Or maybe you are." a childish retort, but it seemed Njal was well-established as not being the most witty of lions. But anyways, what did this girl know? Of course she supported her father. As far as Najl cared, she was perfectly biased.
Her question irked him, because Njal couldn't find a quick answer. The true answer would be 'because Thorgim told me', but even he didn't know that. He was quite convinced he'd come to conclusions himself, and simply happened to agree with his friend. Certainly Thorgrim had only helped him come to conclusions by being a partner in discussions!
"Because I'm not blind. I can see it, and I can hear it. The things he's changed around here, and the things he lets slip by! It's..." He needed a longer word here. "Ridiculous." Yep, good choice!
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:30 am
Kazul ignored Njal's initial retort. It had been childish and if she allowed herself to be sidetracked by it then she would be drawn into childish bickering which would accomplish nothing. But it was difficult!
"All right. You can see and hear it, but I can't. Tell me what you see and hear that's so ridiculous."
It was a colossal effort for her to continue on in a reasonable, logical manner. But mostly she wanted to shake Njal for being an idiot. There was nothing wrong with the pride! Not a damn thing. She'd heard the stories about the way it had been under Gunne, and before that. If it had been weakening and becoming lax, the tendency had started before her father's reign. She was certain of it.
"Remember, I wasn't alive when Gunne led the pride."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:40 am
He was growing rather irritated with all this explaining, because it just felt like a huge waste of time. He was fine blabbering about issues to people he thought might agree with him, but when it came to people who would disagree... well, he'd rather just hit them. So much simpler!
But he could hardly go about whacking Kazul for being so blind. It'd just generate animosity, and they needed friends now. "Alright, here's one. Thrall cubs, becoming freeborn." He knew better than to point out female-Reavers, because Kazul was female, and it just might make her get stupid and irrational. "Thralls are thralls, and their cubs ain't any better."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:54 am
"So if the thralls' cubs are sired by freeborn lions, you don't think the cubs deserve the chance to be raised as their father's cubs?" Kazul asked, tackling the easiest matter first.
She didn't really have an answer for why the cubs of two thralls should become freeborn. That was a law she, herself, didn't understand. Perhaps it had something to do with her father's time spent as a thrall. Kazul actually had something of a personal opinion on the matter of thralls becoming freeborn, too. Her father had spent time as a thrall, at Gunne's command, and that state had not been permanent for him. He had figured out a way to get out of it that didn't involve being freed once more by Gunne.
"What about thralls that perform a great service for the pride. There are instances of them being freed in the past, in reward for their service. Should that practice be discontinued, even though there are provisions for freeing thralls in the pride's laws?"
There were more questions she wanted to ask, but she needed time to collect her thoughts before asking them. She had been trained by a lawspeaker in her youth to be familiar with the pride's ways, laws, and history, and so she felt ready to debate this, but it was more important to make him see that these things weren't her father's fault than to prove him wrong.
It was a shame she was too proud to hold to that.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 11:14 am
"No, because cubs are raised by the mother." He huffed. And he wouldn't even consider them being raised by the father. Kids should be raised by their mother. Njal liked females, he loved his own mate, and he did think fathers should have relationships with their cubs. But the main part of upbringing lied with the wife. Besides, a good freeborn, or reaver, shouldn't be wasting his time with thrall cubs.
"But that's different. It is a reward for them actually doing something worthwhile. There is no point in rewarding runts simply for being squirted out of their mother, who may or may not have gotten knocked up by a freeborn." Perhaps a bit vulgar, but this pride wasn't exactly foreign to vulgarity.
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 12:41 pm
"There's no way to guarantee that. There must be hundreds of instances where fathers raise their cubs. Mothers die in childbirth, for instance, and then the fathers are the only parent able to raise the cubs." Kazul's temper was fraying a bit. He was so wrong! And what's more, he obviously hadn't even considered that males raised cubs, too.
Of course there were differences between dead mothers and thrall mothers. But there didn't seem to be any reason why the cubs couldn't be raised by their father if he didn't want them to be thralls. It wasn't any different from if someone were to claim that a thrall was related to them, or go through the process of having a thrall freed. It just took less time and assumed some intelligence on the part of the pride's record-keepers.
"You're joking, right? What about the tradition allowing a freeborn lion to recognize another lion as kin and guaranteeing for that lion a welcome to the pride as a freeborn? Are you saying that should be forbidden, too?" She could feel herself losing control of her temper and closed her mouth with an almost audible snap.
Wait. Breathe. Think. Remember what the true purpose of this conversation was. Continue.
"I ask because that's a practice that started a long time before my father came to power, so I don't see how it's my father's fault that it's still going on."
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Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 1:09 pm
"It shouldn't happen. If a thrall mother dies in childbirth, another thrall should raise them." He said stubbornly. Thrall cubs were thralls, period! she wasn't going to convince him otherwise. "Freeborn shouldn't be wasting their time with thrall cubs."
He was finding it quite irritating how she'd keep bringing things he hadn't even mentioned up. "That depends." He laid his ears. Admittedly, this was a point he hadn't thought much about, or even discussed with Thorgrim. "I said the cubs of thralls are thralls, I never made any claim as to what should happen to outsiders." That said, yes, even though it was an older tradition, Njal might have liked some more strict rules on that.
"Perhaps not all issues originate from Aesir, but he's done no good in dealing with them. And it doesn't matter how much you whine about me insulting your father, I'm not changing my mind about that." Njal was sick of this, he wanted to go home, too, to his mate. She was a good lioness, he was happier around her.
Then a somewhat pleasant thought occurred to him. "If you're so sure I'm wrong, then what do you have to worry about, anyways? Is your ego, or Aesir's, really so frail that you can't take some criticism?" Or were Njal, Thorgrim and their supporters actually beginning to pose a threat? Whether she liked it or not, Kazul coming to him like this was giving their 'cause' importance, it had become a big enough deal that someone felt like they should try and deal with it.
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Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 5:19 am
"Granted," Kazul allowed. She couldn't imagine volunteering to care for a thrall's cubs. Not that she liked cubs much anyway. "But I was talking about freeborn mothers. Sometimes they don't survive birthing either. Never mind."
It wasn't worth arguing about that. Probably Njal would just assume some other freeborn female ought to step in and care for the cubs. And probably someone would, too, but it wouldn't be Kazul or anyone like her. She hoped that when the time came for her to have cubs, she would love her own cubs at least, but as far as other people's cubs...she barely tolerated them.
"I wasn't whining," she pointed out. "I was asking you questions. You can't really expect everyone you talk to will agree with you. From what I can tell, you've only been naming problems, but I don't hear a lot of solutions."
Both of them were beginning to tire of this conversation it seemed. But Kazul had never really been that good at leaving well enough alone. She kept picking and poking at things until someone either left or exploded at her. A part of her almost hoped Njal would explode at her. It would certainly damage his credibility. What a pity this encounter had taken place without witnesses.
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