The flowers had been growing everywhere, in strange correlation with the rogue that had been covered in flowers. They would have otherwise sent the rogue away by now, or made him a full member of the pride, but there were some whispers that he was more than he appeared.

Brewmistress wasn't concerned with anything to do with the rogue, though. Her concern was the flowers. Checking several dried flowers, she prepared her stone bowl and rock for grinding it up to make into a brew. "Could you pass me that root, Boneknapper?"

Examining the requested root, Boneknapper passed it over to Brewmistress. "I don't know why you're doing this." She watched Brewmistress grind up the root and add it to the hollowed-out log chunk filled with water. "For all you know, those flowers could kill you, and then we'd be out a lion who knows how to make drinks that let us get... What was it that cursed god your mother knew called it? Drunk off our asses?" The stories that Brewmistress had passed along had been, to put it frankly, incredulous. Boneknapper didn't think she could quite believe some of them. Apes that walked on two legs and wore skins? And built dens out of wood and grass? How crazy could a lion GET?

Brewmistress let out a huff, "Just because I test this stuff on myself, doesn't mean I'm unaware of the risks." She finished stirring the concoction, then nabbed one of the flowers and proceeded to grind it up. "Everything I try could kill me, or at the least make me gravely ill. That's why I try it on myself first, so I can at least live long enough to tell somebody else not to do the thing or they'll regret it." The brown lioness paused, examining the ground-up flower before returning to grinding it down. "Look at it this way, if I die... You get first claim on my bones."

Boneknapper let out a sharp laugh, sitting back. "Oh, I get first claim on your bones, do I?" She reached up, toying with one of the many pieces of bone jewlery she wore. "I wonder, how would I clean them... Probably drag your corpse out past the border and invite some hyenas to pick at it, so long as they don't damage any bones and leave them for me. They get a meal, I get clean bones." Playing with a bracelet made from the vertibrae of a hare, Boneknapper smiled, "Or maybe let it rot long enough that the vultures can easily pick at it. Somebody will get a nice pelt out of the deal, too!" Her eyes narrowed as she looked sideways at Brewmistress, "You're strangely unbothered by this conversation."

"Call it being accustomed to you and your love of bones." Tilting the stone bowl, Brewmistress dumped the crushed flower into the brew. "Now we let that sit for a while so it combines... And I drink it to see what happens." She settled down, stretching out across the ground as she waited. "How's Puzzle handling the step up in duties?" To some in the pride, she knew, it had been a shock - Where a few lions came from, the leadership position went to, simply, the oldest cub. Puzzle was neither the oldest cub nor the oldest male cub, somewhere in the middle of the litter. And somehow... It had been him. Nobody else in the pride seemed to care TOO much, as far as she could tell, other than being happy it was somebody who'd grown up with the pride, knew it, and felt comfortable with it.

Pausing in starting to suck on one of the bones on her necklace, Boneknapper raised an eyebrow at Brewmistress. "Hey, there's nothing wrong with loving bones, they make the most wonderful sound as they knock together, I'll have you know!" She lay down, tucking her paws up against her body. "And he's doing... Well enough. Braved going near the border not too long ago. He met a lioness from the Motoujamii, sent her back that way..." Reaching a paw out, Boneknapper played with a small rock on the ground. "He didn't tell what pride lived here, though, so hopefully we don't wind up with them at our border." Her ears twitched, "Should we even LET lions know there's a pride here? Outside those that need to know, like the Bahari'mtoto?"

One white-tipped dark paw reached out, batting at the rock Boneknapper'd been playing with. It promptly started a small game of batting it back and forth. "I think we need to keep our borders secure and protect what's ours. There's a lot of prides out there, lots of lions who'll want what we have. They'll want what the Bahari have, too." Brewmistress watched the rock vanish off into the foliage, tail twitching. There went that game... "We have a very nice piece of the lands here, with lush land and plentiful food. We may have blood ties to prides like the Motoujamii and Pridelands, but is that enough to stop an invasion, if one came?"

Boneknapper watched as Brewmistress checked her brew. "We have at least one advantage against invaders - They don't know how many of us there are." With the rock gone, Boneknapper went back to toying with her bones. "We know the lands, we're native to them. We'll know how to hide from prying eyes so nobody sees us, and they'll feel our claws before they know we're there."

Brewmistress huffed, "We'll see what happens, I suppose. Even seers who see the future aren't perfect in vision." From what her mother had told her, lions who could see the future only saw POSSIBLE futures. Sitting up and lifting her brew, she inhaled the scent of it. It smelled vaguely like the flowers. "Well, this is the moment of truth." Leaning foreward, she lapped at it, before setting it down.

The pink lioness leaned foreward, eyebrows rising. "Is it doing anything? How are you feeling?"

Eyes widening, Brewmistress whispered, "I can hear the plants..." Slowly, she smiled, looking at Boneknapper. "They're singing, you know! I haven't heard them since I went to look at the Dreamer's Cave!"

Now Boneknapper's eyebrows REALLy went up. "You can hear the plants, like when you were at the Dreamer's Cave..." Slowly, she rose up. "Brewmistress... You just made a concentrated form of the blessing on the cave." A grin was spreading on the pink lioness' face, "You've made a liquid method for lions to reconnect with their muses! You've made a... A Muse Brew!" Starting to head off to tell Puzzle and Starfire, she stopped and grabbed Brewmistress. "Come on, you, I'm not leaving you alone with this!"

As they hurried through the jungle to find Puzzle and Starfire, Brewmistress listened loosely as the flowers sang in a choir. It was rather quite lovely to listen to!