That storm had been scary! It had been dark and blocked out the sky, and the wind had roared with water in its voice. She had run. And she couldn't find the way back. The territory smelled different. The landmarks were the same but it smelled like someone else, so it couldn't be the same place could it? Maybe they had food but maybe they would bite her for eating it. She hung around but never approached the new borders. There were lots of things in the big puddles to eat, and although some of them bit her or made her gag, they were (all considered) less scary than lions.

She was bored though. She didn't like being alone. Made her nervous. Nervous and bored... a bad combination that made her feel as lean and rangy as she looked. She padded around one of the smaller pools; it was shallow enough for her to swim in and still reach the bottom, if she choose, and therefore she had picked it clear of fishy things yesterday. Today, this dawn, it was empty, and this was unexpected and unfair. She circled back counter-ways once more and then sat glumly to her tattered haunches. She slapped the water and snapped at the spray that hit her back.

@Wodnik idk?

He was limping along the beach, having no idea where he was going but refusing to stay still. Which was ironic considering that was all he had chosen to do in the first year or so of his life before coming here and finding a purpose for himself. Now that purpose had been torn away from him by some freak incident, and he couldn't help but be bitter about it.

He blamed himself for losing the child he'd grabbed to keep her safe. Some chunk of debris had come hurtling through the darkness and struck him solidly on his right shoulder, knocking him over and sending his niece flying. By the time he'd managed to get the debris off him and get upright, she was long gone. He'd tried following her scent, but the wind and rain had almost instantly blasted it away. He almost hoped he wouldn't run into Gwyn for a little bit, because the thought of admitting he'd lost one of his daughters scared him to his core.

His gaze locked onto the familiar form circling one of the pools of water, and sighed to himself as she took a seat. Well, that wasn't who he'd been looking for. Then again, maybe she could help him. If nothing else, it was somewhat nice to have someone around that he recognized.

"Don't suppose you know how to heal," he rumbled as he continued to slowly limp forward, angling himself in her direction.

@Walpurgis

She blinked water from her lashes and twitched it from her whiskers. The black strands drooped as though deliberately emoting a great deal of angst. If she had to label her emotions, it would be hungry. Looking at an empty pool, what else could she feel? The texture of the stone shifted under her paws as the claws came out. Hungry. Something was coming. The... uncanny feeling of hunger, of annoyance, remained. @Wodnik was a friend. At other times. Right now she only saw his limp. Zoomed in on it. Very obviously fixated on it, with narrowed eyes and ears in side-swept lines that didn't twitch when he spoke. She heard though. Half of what she was supposed to, and of that she only understood half.

Heel. It was a hunting thing. Follow someone a certain way. They hadn't bothered to explain it to her well enough before deciding she was too stupid to understand. Heel. A hunting thing. A hunting injury? (Sometimes it was a doctor thing and that made her angry - but she was thinking about food, so she remembered 'heel' in a hunting context.) "We get food if I heel?" she echoed back, staying mostly where she was but lifting her haunches to a half crouch so her crooked tail could wag. Food? FOOD. (Food?) Wodnik sometimes promised her food. He had before. Maybe... he could get her food again, but she hadn't seen him for a long time, and the storm had been scary and after scary things happened sometimes old friends didn't like her anymore so she was wary but also definitely hungry.

She was just staring at his injured limb, and it took all of his self-control (of which he didn't have much) to avoid smacking her upside the head with his uninjured paw. Seemed like the more he hung out with her the less patience he had. Or maybe it was just because he was irritated with himself and their circumstances to begin with that was causing his short temper.

"I can't hunt when I'm hurt like this," he told her gruffly when she mentioned food. He wasn't surprised she was hungry. She seemed very food motivated every time he'd spoken to her, but this time he couldn't help her. If he tried to bring something down now, not only would he no doubt miss but he'd probably hurt himself more in the process.

"You seen any cubs running around? Or Gwyn?" he asked, trying not to allow himself to hope but doing so anyway.

@Walpurgis

He couldn't hunt. Her skull drooped. Not just disappointed, but annoyed. The last time she'd eaten was one whole day ago. And now the tide pool was empty. And he was here, barging in on her, not bringing her any food. And what if he wanted to steal the fish when they came back? Other lions were better at hunting. Even if they were male and had manes like he did. So he could take all the fish in her pool if he wanted. "OK. But dun eat my fish when they come back. I'll be here! Watchin'! So ya don't!" Walpurgis would almost certainly forget and wander off but bluffing and threatening was just what you did, when you were lost and hungry and raised in a violent world.

"Who wants ta know?" she snorted, lifting her head again to huff at him. She had wondrously not forgotten his name but wasn't aware her question could be taken that way. What she obviously meant was: she was in charge here, and he needed to provide proper flattery and assistance before she would give up the advantage that he had given her. She had something he wanted to know? That was rare. She knew it was a good thing. Not sure what to do with it, really... but she liked it. @Wodnik

Oh, it was a good thing for her that he was injured or else she would have felt his claws for that insolence. As it was, he folded his ears back and stared at her with a disgruntled expression as she continued to mouth off. He was kind of regretting the number of times he'd vouched for her at this point.

"I do," he replied grumpily, "and if you recall I'm the one that brought you to safety and food the last two times you needed it." You owe me, he implied, though he couldn't enforce it at the moment. "Your fish are safe though, I hate them," he grumbled. Even though he was hungry, he'd have to be a lot more so to stoop to that level.

"The kids are my nieces and nephews," he explained after a beat, with no small amount of resignation. "I tried to protect one of them from the storm, but I got hurt and lost track of her. I just want to keep my family together." Easier said than done, apparently. Hell, for all he knew he'd made things worse by trying to get Dysnomia out of the pride. She could be stuck off on her own while her siblings were with Gwyn, wherever he was. Oh, he'd catch hell with his patriarch if that was the case.

@Walpurgis

He folded his ears back, which must be because she had intimidated him good. He decided not to challenge her. She took his silence as submission. This would get him 1 (one) point in her favor. She broke form and smiled at him with full confidence and friendliness. Walpurgis didn't care to count much past one so she decided they were friends again.

"Cause you're my friend!" she filled in, remembering that he had brought her food just like he said and it was because he was her friend. Well there was no food now but that was momentarily OK. Her friend wasn't going to eat her fish. "Good cause I dun wanna watch 'em all the time," she went on to confide in him. "But you gotta eat! If ya don't eat yer leg never gonna get better! You can eat from another pool. There's lotsa pools. Or the savanna... lotsa dead things on the savanna. That other lions already kill." Walpurgis was an expert on scavenging while incompetent and she was happy to share that knowledge with her friend. Her tail wiggled and she started thinking about food... dead food, lots of bones, tasty marrow... slimy fish... little vole creatures... it was distracting!

She blinked blearily back at @Wodnik who was going on to discuss something about the storm, which was not interesting because it was already gone. Or so she thought. He had to protect cubs from the storm. It had hurt him. Hurt his family. Walpurgis wanted family. Fuck storms. "Where da storm now?" she demanded, all in a huff once more, panting with emotion. "We find the storm and kill it and get your kids back!"

His irritation faded away in the face of her stating they were friends. Friends? He didn't... know what that was like. He might have almost had one once, a long time ago, as he remembered a red lioness by the name of Georgia. But she was long gone, and so too was any opportunity for him to make friends. That wasn't something that he did, he'd thought. Everything he did was in regards to his family. But, apparently he'd been wrong.

He'd been mulling that over, not entirely paying attention to what she continued to say until he tuned back in and realized she was talking about going looking for things that someone else had already caught. Yes, perhaps there was a carcass somewhere that a pride or loner had left behind. If he'd been uninjured, he would've wandered into the lagoon again and taken something from the old stash... but then if he'd been uninjured he would have needed to do that anyway.

"Yes... I'll have to limp over and search there," he conceded. It wasn't going to be his proudest moment, which was saying something considering how low his bar for that was set.

He chuckled at her enthusiasm, but it wasn't laughing at her. "It's long gone," he told her. "And they're not my cubs, I don't have a mate. They're my nieces and nephews." Kind of.

@Walpurgis

Walpurgis didn't have many friends. Maybe one at a time. They didn't last too long. But she loved them when she had them, squeezed them until they fled. She was absolutely the sort of lioness who made friends. Not the sort who was good at it. She wore her extroversion on her sleeve, in an unseemly way. Her eyes shone brighter as the male actually agreed with her suggestion. This meant she had been useful. She had done something right. "Oh yeah watch out for the hyenas! And the dogs! They see ya, they gonna eat ya. Unless they afraid. You still a lion. Maybe you scare them off. Maybe you see them kill something and then you go up and you roar and they run and you eat what they kill. That work for me sometimes. I really love warm food. Not like fish. Fish are gross." She curled her fish-scented whiskers. Now that they were all in her stomach they were much less appealing.

What sounded good right now was going out and killing a storm, smashing the smashing wind to bits with her friend and taking back the lagoon from the evil storm. She figured the storm must live there now. Or not? She tilted her head. "Where it go?" Maybe they could still track it down and kill it. She could prove what a good warrior she was. "Why dun you have a mate and cubs?" she asked in the same innocently curious tone, completely unaware what a mine field that question usually was. He was an adult male. He hadn't been living in disgrace; he had recruited her once, and then taken responsibility to herd her out of the mire. Strong responsible men had mates. Period. Strong warriors did. Won them in battle. Or attracted them by going around swaggering and flexing.

@Wodnik

"I'd like to see them try," he replied, baring his teeth in a flash. He wouldn't allow such creatures to take him down without putting up a fight, and a mighty one at that. Never mind that he had yet to win a mock fight, let alone get into a real one, but still.

"Better than going hungry," he continued of her mention of fish. Yeah, he didn't want to eat them either, but if he had to... Come to think of it, he would probably feel less shitty about himself if he actually caught a fish instead of going scavenging, but the latter was more of a guarantee of being fed than the former.

Where had the storm gone? Good question. "I'd guess over the passage we came in across, way out over those lands."

Oh, come on, what was with the personal questions? He didn't even know how to answer that one. Actually, that was a lie. He did. "I was supposed to meet one of Gwyn's daughters, but that didn't work out. I guess now I just have to start looking again." He wasn't sure if he cared enough to do that though. Sure, it might be nice, but he barely talked to others as it was.

@Walpurgis