[PRP] Catching Up (Peregrine x Organa)

[Epine de Rose]

It had been several weeks since the demise of their leader and for the most part, the Bahari had 'recovered' well. They were functioning just about, with the heads of each profession taking the helm to form some type of council. It wasn't an elected government by any means, but given the importance of ensuring that the pride survived until such times as the determined heir was ready to take his place... they were maintaining the status quo for the most part.

There had been one change though, in the sense that all had been in agreement that for now, there would be no further alliances. Now was neither the time or place to pursue new friendships, particularly in the fact of such a poor result. Nevertheless, they'd all known that Ram was aware he had been playing with fire and for reasons still beyond their comprehension, he had done it anyway.

...Perhaps he really had understood the necessity to intervene and that for once, they needed to take action. Peregrine in particular doubted that many would truly understand this and if they were to understand, it would take more than a few weeks to grasp the complex nature of the King's decisions. However, no matter what their views were, the vast majority of the Bahari were simply continuing with their lives to the best of their ability. What came next remained a mystery, but they had weathered worse storms and they had still come out fighting.

This afternoon was to be of no exception as Peregrine signed off on the last of the funeral rites and laid to rest the final set of lions who had perished in battle. Now that had taken far longer than it should have, but with the last of the victims laid to rest and the blood now dissipated from the white sands... No one would ever know what had taken place unless they asked. It was a small favour in his eyes given there was nothing worse than prying or tactless individuals pushing for information they really had no right to.

At the very least, there would now be closure on this part of that night and should the gods favour them, then they might also find their fallen king eventually and lay him to rest... But the blue lion refrained from counting his chickens before they hatched. On this day he would take this as a victory, they had cleared up the majority of that night's 'mess' and the pride itself, for the most part, looked as pristine as before... What came after that remained to be seen.

With this in mind the lion was finally afforded a rest and it was with a relieved sigh that Peregrine made his way towards a more secluded spot to rest his own weary limbs. He wasn't one for complaining but the last few weeks had almost persuaded him to express his discontent, he was more weary than he'd ever been.

Pollack

 

[Pollack]

The past several months since Organa and Snowflake had made their grand departure from the warm golden sands of the Bahari had seemingly flown by in a blink of an eye. There were days out in the vast emptiness of the Rogue lands that melded together into a jumbled mess. It had gotten to the point where Organa started to second question whether or not the laws of time-space actually applied to the bizarre beaches and now she was adjusting back to natural law, or if she had truly grown so complacent and carefree in her brief time as a refugee. Both were equally fascinating, and yet terrifying notions that brought on a slew of different questions to mind.

Alas, they were questions that she did not have the luxury to spend time musing over.

Now that she was back in the Rogue lands her search for her condemned partner renewed with a rekindled sense of urgency. So much time had been wasted, so many leads no longer valid, and far too much distance had been left open for him to cover for her liking. Despite both Peregrine's and Snowflake's word of caution against the notion Organa had effectively began to push her body to it's limits once more; often going days without much more than a few bites of food and short tid-bits of sleep that she could catch before her mind would jolt her back awake to remind her of her task at hand. Yet, her efforts had proven to be in vein so far. Beyond the occasional vague siting it had seemed that Kenobi all but disappeared off of the face of the planet.

Snowflake, the ever observant child, had taken note of her mother's frustration and disgruntlement due to her lack of procress on her misson - albeit a fool's errand in the young adolencance's opinion - and had suggested that perhaps her mother take the downtime between leads to go refresh her batteries and at the same time fulfill the obligation to go check in with a certain cloud footed healer that had been long overdue.

Reluctantly, if not just to quiet Snowflake's passive aggressive nagging up, had agreed finally cracked and agreed to the suggestion with the promise that yes, the next time they were in the general area she would suck up her pride and go to visit to get a check up by the good olde doctor.

...Something she was now regretting promising in hindsight as she walked through the familiar pathways in the jungles neighboring on the Bahari. There was an odd air around the normally chipper and carefree environment. The lack of excited yelling as people body surfed in the sand, young cubs barreling in between the legs of adults as they shot off to another adventure, pairs enjoying quiet walks with each other down the shoreline. Everyone was instead sober, going about their normal days without the normal over-the-top flare for the dramatic that everyone in the Bahari had seemed naturally born with.

Something was very, very wrong and she was hell-bound determined to discover the root of it. She knew that her best chance for a no bullshit answer would have come from the very same person she just so happened to be looking for, if he so deemed it necessary for her to be informed of whatever misfortune had swept across the pride.

Lucky for her, this target of hers was much more predictable than her previous one. It didn't take much searching in his normal hiding spots before she finally caught sight of the familiar grey blue coat that she had grown attached to. Her eyes scanned his form, taking note of the more gaunt look in his cheeks, the dark bags that had formed under his eyes, even his already normally massively messy ball of fluff he had called a mane seemed to have dulled and straightened out since the last time she had seen him. If she wasn't nervous about the state of affairs in the Bahari before she certainly was now!

"Peregrine," she called out in a soft tone. Setting aside her normal teasing nicknames or sarcasm, after all, now was neither the time nor the place for either of those things to be appropriate. Pursing her lips into a tight light she took a cautious step forward closer to his flank. "You look like s**t." She bluntly observed out loud, not out of malice or spite but simply because well...he did. To have such a normally well put together individual suddenly be in such a state? Now that was something of concern!

"What happened?"

Epine de Rose

 

[Epine de Rose]

"Thank you," Peregrine replied without missing a beat. "And here I was thinking that I looked reasonably dapper this afternoon," he added with a lift of his brow. Now there was a sight for sore eyes, someone who was as practical as he was, but was now exhibiting a surprising amount of tact. She wasn't ordinarily one to hold her tongue, and yet here she was measuring her words carefully before talking to him of all people.

Interestingly enough, for all her insults, she was looking a touch battered herself. Nevertheless she had the great fortune of not being subject to his full scrutiny at this time. For the most part she was in good health, though certainly over exercised, and he could at least rely on her wayward daughter to ensure that she was tended to. She might have been regarded as a runt but Peregrine knew a creature with fight in its eyes when he saw it.

As to what had happened...

"Scourge happened," he finally gave her the answer in much the same fashion she had expected. Reliable as always, he went straight to the point and referred to the cause of the solemn air that existed in the pride. "It would appear that the villains of this rather long and arduous tale finally showed themselves, rather than simply being the monster in the shadows of the imaginations of our guests," he shrugged his shoulders loosely.

"They caused some extensive damage and then they fled, the assumption is that our leader took out their leader and without that leadership they lacked the necessary direction to continue their assault."

He paused, if only momentarily.

"Your timing is spectacularly bad, you would have been better waiting a few more months for a revisit if you were looking for a lackadaisical vacation, but welcome back all the same."

Pollack

 

[Pollack]

"You're certainly looking very something this morning, dapper is not quite the world I would have gone with unless we have two vastly different definitions of the world in our cultures." She snapped back in an instant, her normal spitfire personality breaking through the temporary filter that she had installed on herself. Admittedly it was relieving in it's own right to see that at the very least some things had not drastically changed in the time she had been gone. Honestly, if he hadn't responded with anything less her next move would have been to drag him herself to the nearest doctor to have a full mental evaluation. After all, Peregrine being an a** was simply well...it was simply one of the ever constant laws of nature.

Scourge? Her facial expression twisting into a grim, yet inquisitive look was the only reaction she gave to his vastly informative one-worded explanation. She hadn't heard of any sort of organization by that name before, not even a single time in the past few months had even the whisper of this new threat crossed the lips of those that she had come into contact with. It was...odd to say the least. For a group to have enough members, organization, and resources to launch a full on siege assault on such an enormous pride like the Bahari and not simply be smothered by the vast over numbering was not an east feat to accomplish.

Nevertheless, her curiosity was both sated and yet also passionately fueled by Peregrine's much more detailed explanation of the account. A low hum escaped the back of her throat softy as she slowly lowered herself onto her rump besides his side. "So, Ram's continuous gambles did end up backfiring in the end." She mused out loud, not quite realizing that she was speaking ill of the currently-assumed dead leader.

Her lapse in judgement came full circle around to pick her right on the arse! "He perished in the fight...?" She inquired with a cocked eyebrow, her face not bothering to try to mask the shock and slight hurt that welled up inside her at the sudden news. Despite the fact that her previous statement could be taken completely out of context and viewed in a negative light,Organa had developed a great deal of respect for the older male.He was a beacon of hope and progressive change that was desperately needed from what she could see in her short time there. But if he had died, that would have been a devastation blow to the pride, and in turn in therapy, the lion sitting in front of her.

Shitshitshitshitshit.

"Clou-" Deep breath. "Peregrine," she corrected herself. Lifting a paw up she slowly reached out to it to him before flinching it backwards, not really quite sure what to do in this sort of situation. Pat on the back? Hug? Generic sorry for your loss saying number 23? "That's rough to hear."

Biting down on her lower lip awkwardly hovering paw finally made a decision and lowered, resting down on the small of his back. It was not much, but it was better than, well, nothing. "You know already I have an in-creditable reputation for having the worst sense of timing in the world, my pregnancy should at as proof of that to you."

Epine de Rose

 

[Epine de Rose]

Peregrine shook his head, there was the Organa that he knew... Her lack of tact and inclination to speak her mind came rushing out with an unintended insult to their leader. Granted, to an outsider who wasn't entirely aware of the political affairs of the pride, this was a rather succinct view to have. For all intents and purposes, Ram had played with fire and he had gotten terribly burned...

"Not entirely," Peregrine replied with a touch of amusement in his voice. "If anything it reminded the pride of some very important lessons. The protection we are afforded by divine forces is something that can't be taken for granted," he pointed out quietly. "While we survived this time round, it was not through the force of our own military, our guards would have been swiftly overwhelmed."

He shrugged.

"There are numerous dangers within this world and they will round upon the vulnerable, we in our pacifism are regarded as weak... and our inability to fight was rather apparent. We have been reminded of what lives outside and perhaps our policies will shift more towards sensible ones, certainly more practical..." he pursed his lips. "As for Ram, he is presumed dead."

"He and what I can only assume was the Scourge leader plunged from the very same cliffs that had embraced the King as our pridal leader," he continued. "His body has not yet been found, neither of them have." He concluded.

Pollack

 

[Pollack]

Ah, that...was a fair point he was making. The force of the Bahari's military - or more so lack thereof - was never something that Organa had taken into much consideration before. She had assumed that why yes, they certainly did not have the blustered defenses or have the vast majority of the populous trained in some form of manner to be a functioning solider in the war effort like she was use to back in her own homeland. However she had always been under the assumption that there was more that met the eye to the average visitor, after all to her having an excessive amount of personal stationed around would have imposed on the peaceful atmosphere that the pride was known throughout the land for.

...At the very least it would have killed the whole tourist friendly vibe.

To her personally not having enough foresight to prepare some sort of defense against a attack like that seemed obtuse, but she could respect and admit that not everyone, and certainly not those who had never experienced such an attack in their lives, would have even considered it in the realm of possibilities. "Truly this is then an important lesson for the pride in a whole." She remarked, a touch of pride shining in her voice. Yes, they might have left themselves vastly exposed but instead of wallowing in their own self pity at their situation it sounded like they were making a conscious effort to ensure that this sort of thing did not happen again.

"It's not going to be a change that will happen overnight certainly, but it is a large leap in the right direction." With a tilt of her head lazily to one side Gan's gaze zoned out into the far distances of the beaches where others still could be seen attempting to round out their afternoons out. "People underestimate how much you folk can withstand. You have withstood stronger storms like this, I don't expect you to wallow in the debris left over any longer than any other time this kind of disaster has struck."

A pause for a moment fell before her as she slowly turned her focus back down on him, her eyebrows knitted together tightly in a concerned expression.

"Even so, you have my condolences for your loss." She finished softly.

Epine de Rose

 

[Epine de Rose]

"We will endure, as you said," he waved his paw dismissively at her expression of sympathy. In the grand scheme of things she would get more use out of that sentiment if she spoke to someone who wasn't coping so well. Peregrine had long learned to compartmentalize his emotions due to the manner in which his seer abilities effected him... In the wake of the scourge assault he (and his mother) had been fine. While they both had the capacity to acknowledge what had occurred was horrific, they had been able to function much better than many of the others in question.

...Even though Chessa had provided fairly frequent guidance to Ram, she had responded well to his disappearance. Just like Peregrine, they had taken a more philosophical view of the events and they had simply laid the dead to rest, including the Vikings who had succumbed as well.

"For the time being those who have fallen have been laid to rest and their farewells have been given. The families who lost their loved ones will be able to grieve in their own time and I assume the Stormborn will communicate their own losses," he hazarded a wry smile and eyed Organa. "So I will express my appreciation for you on behalf of the pride, but when it comes to my personal sphere I am perfectly all right."

"Tired, but there is no need to grieve," he pointed out. "You may wish to prepare Snowflake for this though, I am not entirely confident she will have capacity to respond as you have," he added. Snowflake might have been fairly measured in some things, but Peregrine suspected Organa had been responsible enough to not expose her to too many horrors in her infancy and as a consequence, this would be very new ground for her.

...Not that it wasn't important ground to cover, but it was something she needed to be prepared for as opposed to simply being thrust into the deep end!

Pollack

 

[Pollack]

Why was she not shocked by his lackluster response? Oh yes, that's right, because this was Peregrine she was speaking to. With a undignified snort her eyes rolled at his quick dismissal of her words. "Now, give me the common decency not to toss my attempts at being nice and empathetic back in my face." She teased, her paw darting forward to flick against his nose gently. "This kind of opportunity only comes once in a lifetime!" ...Hopefully.

Still, she wouldn't push him on the matter. What he felt in this situation and how he was currently dealing with it was something that was not her place to ask. Still, she wouldn't argue against the sense of a strange relief to hear that relatively speaking he was holding up quite well, if not for concern for his sake, but also for her lack of experience on how to actually properly handle if he wasn't okay!

Letting out a exasperated sigh she leaned back heavily onto her rump, her paw running down her face at the thought. "Yes, I'm certain that she is not going to be taking the news well. I don't doubt that as soon as I return she's going to insist that we turn our arses right back around to come pay our respects." She moaned painfully through her fingers before her paw dropped back to the ground. She loved her child dearly, but she swore sometimes if she didn't regret not chucking her in a bush and leaving some days.

"Still, this is a matter that she's going to have to learn how to experience and move on from if she chooses to return back to my home with me when the time comes. I hate to say it but I am relieved that we can have this discussion sooner rather than later in her life. If anything to dip her toe in the water before I end up pushing her a** full on in."

Epine de Rose

 

[Epine de Rose]

"Then might I suggest you make the point of doing it sooner, rather than later?" Peregrine suggested. Snowflake had her mother wrapped round her little paw, even if the newly blooded mother would never admit to such a thing. No sooner had the grey lioness left, than she would find herself right back on their sandy shores...her daughter in tow. Whether Snowflake would bring flowers was another matter entirely, but she would at least have the opportunity to express her sympathies.

...She would also been in the perfect position to be blunt, lack tact and fail at social nuances in a safe environment. While the wounds were still fresh, she could only do limited damage and learn from it properly. At least this way anyone she insulted would have the capacity to forgive her and be afforded comfort elsewhere!

"I'm not certain as to when you will be exposing her to your home, but at the very least this is a place she is familiar with, so it would be appropriate for her to learn the lesson here," he added. Not that he would be the one to teach it as his own demeanour had rubbed several of the Bahari the wrong way, it was only his actions that had made them realise that he mourned in his own way.

Sort of.

"That and I'm fairly confident the lioness is likely to already be loitering dangerously close to the border with a toe practically in it. So you would probably be well timed in your intervention," he mused. Organa might not have been the best at dealing with sensitive matters, but this really was something a mother needed to be present for (at least in Peregrine's opinion anyway)...

Pollack

 

[Epine de Rose]

Pollack

"I don't believe I have a choice in the timing of it anymore," She replied with a dismissive wave of her paw, "The matter has been thrust to the very top of my priority list when it comes to life lessons I must impose upon my hellspawn myself." Which was very much true! She had a sneaking suspicion that no matter how messy Snowflake's reaction would be to the news, or however much of a pain in the arse it would be to turn right back around and tromp back to the Bahari to pay the proper burial respects, all of that would hold nothing to the drama and rift between her and Snowflake if she had simply attempted to brush the breaking news under the rug for the sake of convenience.

Hell hath no fury like a teenager scorn sounded like a much more accurate saying, although admittedly this particular teenager would have very valid reasons behind her anger!

Letting out a heavy sigh her shoulders slumped forward at the mention of her old home. The ever looming burden of what was expected of her and the overwhelming amount of stress that came along with the difficult task breaking forward to show a rare glimpse of vulnerability that Gan was not particularly well known for. "Luckily for her that test of strength won't be thrust upon her until she's much, much older." If her mission ended in success that is.

Pursing her lips together in a tight frown Organa solemnly nodded in agreement. It seemed machabe to use this kind of tragic event for a glorified life lesson, however Peregrine did make valid points on the fact that this was the closest thing to a free range sandbox that she would ever be able to find in the world. Despite her not being a true member of the Bahari Snowflake had been born on these shores, grown up on them, and well...had basically only known them! This was just as much her home as it were to those who had lived there for decades, even if the teenager had a hard time admitting to it.

With a bitter chuckle Organa slowly eased herself onto her belly next to him, resting her chin against the backs of her front paws. "Yes, I'll get to it in due time. I'll let her enjoy a moment of respite and teenage freedom before I go back to drop this bombshell on her." Tilting her head to the side she regarded him with a cocked eyebrow. "Besides I do believe it has been long overdue for us to have a checkup with each other. Sooo..." She paused popping her lips before she continued, "How about we get that the hell over with so I can invade your den again for a proper nap, and then we can handle the rest of the business in the morning...agreed?"

Epine de Rose

Organa with all due respect I have no intention of providing you with any medical examinations," he shook his head. "When you left my care you were in fine physical form, more than well enough to recover fully on your own," he pointed out. Simply put, if he had known she wasn't recovered enough he wouldn't have released her. She might have preceived it as her decision but in the grand scheme of things it was his. The fact that she had survived so well since then, that Snowflake remained healthy and had developed enough sass to rival many queen bees, and for the most part... organa's limp was slight, was something he counted as a success.

She was fine; and quite frankly he was impressed with just how well she had healed.

"Your leg will never look the same again but its strength is there, I'm satisfied that you are more than capable of looking after yourself," he pointed out and chuckled. "Provided you don't let anyone else take out more chunks, I think it's safe to assume you have a perfectly clean bill of health," he added. It was then that he paused to mull over her next remarks; why was it that lionesses seemed intent on invading the households of males? Solomon had suffered much the same fate, but he had also found himself the father of more than his fair share of cubs.

...Fortunately he'd taken it in his stride.

"You may however take refuge in my den if you see fit," he said at last and pursed his lips. "It shouldn't smell too musty despite it not being used overly much in recent days," he murmured. Granted, Organa had never struck him as someone who cared for glamour that much, she could probably rough it whenever she needed to and if she desired her rest, then that was what she would need on this occasion!

"You will know where to find me," he finished and raised a brow, she did seem to have a knack for locating him (credit where it was due on that one); for now though he would leave that decision in her capable paws and seek out his own rest. It was safe to say that the conversation was over for now and he already knew Organa was astute enough to work that out for herself..."

/fin