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Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2014 12:29 pm
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Kianzi's world was shrinking. The fields were as verdant and wide as they'd ever been; the mountains stood tall as they had before; the rivers ran deep and long as the year prior. The land itself was not the problem, it was the inhabitants. New prides seemed to form and disband everyday. Just when she settled in somewhere nice, they were chasing her off again because suddenly this was "their" land.
The worst of them was also the most recent, and to her surprise, they hadn't been lions. These were cheetahs, leopards, hyenas -- everything but lions, to keep it brief. And chasing? Oh, no, forget it. They'd wanted her life more than her absence.
Luck must have been bored with routine, since for once, it was on her side. She lived through the ordeal, barely escaping with numerous scratches and scars and hurried as far away from there as she could get. By time she happened across Jasiri on that sunny day, she was healed but haggard, pissed as she'd ever been, and looking very much like a Firekin who had strayed too far from the outpost.
She waited for him to come to her, prepared to fight or flee, whichever seemed most helpful when the time came.
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Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2014 12:26 pm
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Jasiri didn't see the red female as a threat at all, and perhaps he was stupid to disregard her. However, he'd mostly had to chase away horny males and various trespassing non-lions from their borders so far. And she didn't look like someone he might need to fight against. One, she was female. Two, she was alone. Three, she was obviously Firekin, and they had a deal with the red pelts. When he first scented her he had approached out of curiosity, and he was curious even after laying eyes on her. It was a bit odd for one of them to be out here, but perhaps she had gone out on some kind of mission before his pride moved back. There was only one way to find out.
"Did you come to switch sides?" he asked with a friendly grin. He was fairly sure one as red as her wouldn't want to leave her homeland, but what was a bit of teasing between neighbors? "I'm just kidding... The Bonelands pride moved back, so you're probably better off going around."
It didn't even cross his mind that she might be a rogue. In fact, he could have sworn that he'd seen her or possibly her sister in the outpost.
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2014 2:35 am
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Jasiri had decided that he didn't care much for the red-pelt females. The Bonelands females could be difficult if they wanted to, but he had at least started to figure out what made them tick. And there were limits to how annoying they could be without violating the unspoken code of conduct in the pride. This female wasn't behaving in that familiar way, but he couldn't just blow her off either. The Firekin and Bonelands had a truce, whether he liked it or not, and if he unwittingly insulted someone and broke that truce he'd be in a world of trouble. And so he tried to answer her odd questions, but he wasn't going to pretend to be happy about it.
"How many huria?" he asked, "I don't know, you tell me. I've been told most of them are trained in the outpost before leaving now, so I guess there are about as many odd colored ones as you usually get, just at the outpost instead of the main pride or wherever they used to be trained."
Jasiri had a very basic understanding about the huria. He knew that cubs of the wrong colors weren't allowed to stay once they became adult. Similar but different to the Bonelands practice of kicking out the males.
"Are you headed back to the outpost?"
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Annchen generated a random number between
and ...
!
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