[PRP] Lost and found (Tuuri, Ruzski)

[Annchen]

”Hey, heeey!” Tuuri called, ”Hey, you dropped this! Hellooo! Oh, sorry...”

The lioness called a hurried appology as she accidentally bumped into another lion. She was struggling to catch up with the person who had lost the small bundle, but they had to hear her soon. She hoped so at least. How on earth did they move so quickly through the small crowd? Tuuri jumped up on a boulder, trying to go over and around instead of through the small gathering of people.

”Hey! Stop!”

Princess_Feylin

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Ruzski, former warlord of the Stormborn, was late to meet his son. He had promised the young lion that he would show him the basics of using the artificial claws a few lions used in battle, and it had taken him longer than he would have liked to figure out where he had put his set since last he used them. He strongly suspected that Gyllene had tidied them, back when they were still together. Back when he was still the warlord. In other words, it had been a while.

The pride was crowded, though, and the artificial claws were not the only thing Ruzski was bringing with him. He'd also found several pelts that he was going to ask Peril to take to Kazul because they were the kind of fur he remembered she had once liked. He might have brought them to her himself, he supposed, but she didn't really trust gifts coming from him anymore.

Despite the crowd, Ruzski was surprised that it had taken him so long to realize that the lioness on the boulder was calling after him to stop. Had she not leapt onto the boulder, likely he would not have noticed her at all, but he was accustomed to watching for people behaving out of the ordinary.

He stopped amid the flow of other lions and looked back at the mostly purple lioness, who seemed to have some of the furs he'd been carrying for Kazul. He must have dropped them. With some effort, he turned around and began cutting across the other lions to move toward the boulder. Why were there so many lions moving about in this area today?

Annchen

Sorry it took me so long to reply. Minor emergency at work kept me later than I anticipated.

 

[Annchen]

Oh, finally! He was turning around now. She hadn’t been able to see exactly who it was she had been following before. It turned out it was someone very familiar, even if she’d only talked to him once. It was the former warlord! Would he remember her? Her family was old blood, but there weren’t many of them. She remembered the warlord visiting her parents, back when her brother didn’t come back with his viking band. Tuuri had thought it was a nice gesture, but probably unneccessary. He’d get back, eventually. He always did. Of course her famous brother the Captain would get back! Some day...

Was it really that long since he disappeared? A sadness passed over her, but she shrugged it off and jumped down to try to meet Ruzki half way.

”Wa... Captain Ruzski,” she said, ”You dropped this.”

Smooth. Very smooth. She had nearly called him Warlord!

Princess_Feylin

No worries! I’ll be up kind of late tonight after my late shift so hopefully I can get another reply or two in

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Ruzski met the lioness in the middle of the thoroughfare, his head very slightly tilted to one side as he considered her. She looked familiar. Of course, he'd encountered literally hundreds of lions in his time living with the Stormborn, to say nothing of the outlanders he'd met on vikings, so a mild tingling of familiarity didn't mean much to him. The fact that she could call him by name was also not much of a surprise. She was old enough that she would have been around during his time as a warlord.

"Thank you," he said. "I don't know how you even managed to notice in this crowd. Obviously I didn't."

Okay, yeah. He wasn't using the lioness's name. He didn't remember it. Instead he was borrowing one of Kazul's tricks where he just tried to avoid using it as naturally as possible by encouraging the other lion to do all the talking. Of course, there were risks that came with that, notably the fact that he was already late to meet his son, but he could still take the time to be polite to this lioness. It wasn't like he could become un-late by being rude.

Annchen

That sounds good. I'll do my best to stay up, too, getting purge things taken care of,

 

[Annchen]

Tuuri beamed at the ex-warlord. Noticing the dropped bundle was part luck and part being good at noticing things. She’d also been lucky enough to manage to figure out who had dropped it.. No one else seemed to have noticed or cared about the bundle, so she was happy to receive a thanks for it.

”I just notice things, I guess,” she said, but she wasn’t noticing that Ruzski hadn’t used her name or asked for it... ”I wonder what’s up today. Everyone wants to walk right here for some reason.”

Perhaps it was just the time of day. It was the natural path to take from one area to the other, and with those boulders in the way people kind of clogged up. How hard would it be to move them, and would that result in less crowding? She forced herself back to the presence. Figuring things out was fun, but spacing out while in company was just not nice.

”Oh, would you like me to help carrying this,” she asked, ”I’m not really doing anything right this moment so...”

Princess_Feylin

 

[Princess_Feylin]

It was not manly to require assistance with something as simple as carrying things. No indeed it was not. On the other hand, Ru was already dreading the glare he knew Peril would level at him when he arrived late, and if accepting help would get him there faster, it probably wouldn't kill him. Even though everyone would absolutely see. It was a quandary.

In the end, Ru decided that he had already made a fool of himself by dropping things and failing to notice that he'd done so, and so he made the difficult decision to accept help.

"Thank you," Ru said. He was proud that it didn't sound nearly as stiff and awkward as he felt. "That would be helpful."

He adjusted the things he was carrying to be sure that he would not lose any more items and wondered if maybe he should look into acquiring a thrall to do these things for him. It would certainly be useful to be able to have one. Perhaps the next time he went viking, whenever that ended up being, he'd look for a likely thrall. The thought of breaking one in definitely appealed to the dark side of him that he only let out to play when he fought or when he was with Kazul.

"You're right. Maybe there's an announcement taking place that I've completely managed to miss. Are you sure you don't mind taking that chance?" He was joking. Just because he wasn't the warlord didn't mean Ru wasn't informed. It was rare that major happenings in the pride occurred and he didn't hear about them in short order.

Annchen

 

[Annchen]

Tuuri hadn’t considered the possibility of Ruzki losing face over accepting help. Their family thrall was pretty old and useless, so she was accustomed to picking up some of the chores a healthy thrall would have taken care of. Her brother had promised to get them a better thrall to help Blända with her duties (they couldn’t get rid of the poor old thing, she was almost like family!) but... Tuuri forced a smile instead of thinking further about that last time he left and the things he’d promised.

”Oh, sure, sure,” she said, sounding a bit distracted.”I’ll just hold on to this then.”

She laughed as Ruzski joked, thankful for the change of topic, even if her thoughts were the only things needing a topic-change at the moment.

”I’m sure I’ll survive!” she said, ”Maybe it’ll just be a bard running a potty-mouth contest or something.”

Princess_Feylin

I need to head to bed. Thanks for helping me flesh out Tuuri!

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Once they'd both taken on their assorted items, Ru could feel himself relaxing. It was ridiculous, of course, that a former warlord should dread encountering one of his children just because they were likely to be rude and awful, but he did. Despite everything, he loved his children, and their mother, too, and he hated to disappoint them, as he frequently felt he did.

"Don't you care for the flytings then?" he asked, his smile coming easily. "I think it's wonderful how a particularly creative insult can make its way into the vocabulary of the younger Stormborn for a while. Remember a while back when everyone was being called a whiskerless wingle? I still don't know what a wingle is."

This was veering dangerously close to old lion talk but Ru didn't notice. That was usually how it started though. Not noticing that you now fall on the side of "don't young people talk funny?" instead of being one of the funny-talking young people. If he had realized what he was doing, Ru would have been horrified. Absolutely horrified.

Annchen

My pleasure. Thank you so much for helping me bang out this RP. But I'm drawing a loss. When did he and Tuuri meet before?