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Patience was not a virtue that came naturally to Kekale. In fact, among the Stormborn it wasn't always even reckoned a virtue. However, Kekale had a captain who respected patience and planning in his reavers, and so Kale had done his best to cultivate the trait. So far nothing bad had come of it, at least.

That didn't mean he found activities like his present one all that interesting. No amount of telling himself things would be exciting eventually could make it more interesting to watch a brown lion as he slept. Partly that was because Kale couldn't allow himself to become too distracted, just in case, and so he was literally sitting there, in the questionable shade of a stunted tree, watching someone sleep.

If he hadn't been a reaver, this sort of thing would have been downright creepy. Since he was a reaver, it was just part of his job.

The shadows in his dream were dancing furiously. In the past, Fon Youn had tried to interpret the shadows' movements, but dream shadows were absolutely useless for interpretation because they weren't of the world or cast by anything of the world, so they couldn't show the world's futures. He had no idea whose futures he was watching, if they belonged to anyone, but they definitely seemed exciting.

For his part, Fon Youn's life since the Pepo`porojo was scattered had been less than satisfying in every respect. He had lost track of his friends, and - worse - been forced to abandon his mother's shrine. All that remained to him was the pouch of his mother's small bones, which he touched frequently, even in his sleep, for reassurance and guidance. Whatever the others in his pride had said about his mother's wild ways, he knew the would have been kindred spirits.

The brown lion touched his paw to his pouch again and Kekale sighed audibly. He wanted to know what was in the pouch, and he wasn't nearly light enough with his paws or teeth to take it off the lion without waking him, and he would not be in a good position upon the lion's waking if he tried to simply take the pouch off him.

All right. He'd had enough of being patient.

The black lion rose to his feet, stiff muscles protesting the sudden movement after more than an hour of near-perfect stillness. He padded forward until he was less than a foot away from his quarry and regarded him from up close. Fit, not too old, and probably malleable enough, once things were explained to him. He'd do for a thrall.

Kekale drew his left forepaw back and struck the slumbering lion across the cheek.

Fon Youn was jolted from his dreams of shadows dancing by what was probably an elephant stepping on him. If not that, then a hard kick from an enraged zebra. Something like that.

He was not expecting his eyes to snap open and come to focus on a dark lion with red markings. What lion could hit that hard? Even when he was being punished in his youth, no one had ever struck him like that. Given him chores upon chores, certainly, but violence just wasn't something visited upon poupes like Fon Youn. He was special. He was necessary.

In an instant Fon Youn was on his feet, teeth bared in an indignant snarl, demanding to know, "Who do you think you are?"

Kekale was wholly unimpressed by the brown lion's reaction time, and somehow less impressed by his snarl. To demonstrate his lack of concern for the threat the thrall-to-be seemed to believe he posed, Kale smacked him again, this time jabbing his paw straight into the other lion's throat.

When he snapped his paw back, his claws snagged on the thong that held the intriguing pouch around his quarry's neck, which hadn't actually been on purpose, but which suited the young reaver perfectly well. He had been curious about the pouch anyway.

Throughout all this, he had not bothered to answer the other lion's question, he realized. He decided to see what would happen if he simply didn't. After all, it seemed like there was no real danger from the yellow-eyed lion. He was only snarling and asking questions.

Not being used to being struck, Fon Youn was momentarily speechless by having experienced it twice in less than two minutes' time. The moment passed, however, as soon as he felt the thong around his neck snap and saw his bone pouch in the black brute's careless paw.

"Give that back!" he snarled, lunging for his mother's bones. The idea of someone else even handling the pouch was abhorrent.

As soon as the other paw came up and swatted him aside almost effortlessly, Fon Youn realized that attacking was absolutely the wrong way to go about solving this particular problem. This was a bully, and Fon Youn had done his share of bullying in his youth. Bullies liked to be flattered and appeased. At least, Fon Youn had.

"Please," he said, humbling himself for his mother's bones as he would have done for no other thing. "Those are my mother's smallbones. They are precious to me, but only to me."

The attack had not come as a complete surprise, so Kekale had been able to ward it off with a quick swatting blow that sent the other lion staggering. It was good to know he had some fight in him. Spineless thralls were the worst. Even his mother's thrall, Txur had some spine, and he was a pacifist.

Kekale regarded the pouch for a moment, then shifted it between his paws. It did feel like there could be small bones in there, but what kind of weirdo carried around his dead mother's smallbones? He was going to assume the mother was dead, because if she wasn't that made the whole thing so much stranger.

"If it's that important to you, let's make a deal," he proposed. "You come with me and obey me, and if I decide you've done an acceptable job, I'll return the pouch to you."

As soon as he admitted the bones' importance, Fon Youn knew he had made a mistake, but he was unpracticed in groveling and had gone overboard before he realized what he had said.

"Are you serious?" he gasped, horrified by the ramifications of entering into a deal like that, with no specificity in the terms, no limit on how long he would be bound to service. It was a terrible deal. Absolutely terrible.

Unfortunately, it was also for his mother's bones, and Fon Youn knew that if he was given no other option, he would take this one. But there was one point he had to make abundantly clear: "It's not the pouch, it's the bones inside. I won't make any kind of deal unless it's for the bones themselves."

Kekale hadn't been trying to be sneaky when he offered the pouch. He hadn't planned to let the lion go free after his term of servitude, so it meant little to him whether the lion got his pouch back with or without the bones. He had assumed he would be returning it with the bones, but now he felt irked by his own oversight and insulted.

"I am very serious, so you either take the deal I've offered you, trusting in my good nature that I will, in fact, include the bones with the pouch when I return it to you, and do as I say in the mean time, or I will eat these bones right now and s**t them out Stormlords only know where."

That sounded like a pretty good threat to Kale. It was obvious the lion hated to see him even handling the pouch, so the idea of someone eating the bones, digesting them, and then shitting them somewhere must have been horrifying.

It took Fon Youn exactly no time to reach the conclusion that he would be accepting the deal that was offered to him, before it was further altered and his mother's bones desecrated.

"I understand," he said, bowing his head in defeat. "I will serve you until such time as you see fit."

He didn't mention the bones again, and wouldn't even when they returned to the black lion's fellows and he was made aware of the true nature of his deal. Thralldom. For one such as he, it was distasteful, but his mother's bones were at stake, and they mattered more than anything. The sting of that realization was probably the closest Fon Youn had ever felt to feeling truly dutiful or responsible. Too bad it had earned him a lifetime of servitude and slavery.