It was strange, Kenina thought, to feel more regret over leaving behind a male she had only met on a chance encounter than it was to feel such over leaving behind the pride she had been born and raised in. It wasn't that she didn't care about the sands of her birth, nothing could be farther from the truth, it was only that she was looking toward her future and finding her place in the world beyond the rolling golden dunes. For some odd, unknown reason she felt like Tabari could have been a part of it.

Fate was a fickle mistress, it seemed, and she wasn't apt to let her inkling weigh her down.

He had places he needed to be and so had she - after all, the entire reason she had even been given the chance to meet the handsome warrior was because she had decided to take the risk and seek out her family. She would have been as useless as the females that gossiped and swooned over new blood if she had given up on her dream in order to pursue a pretty face and a handsome smile. No, she would not have been the female Tabani wanted if she had chased him.

"Listen to me," she mumbled to herself, "I've been spending too much time alone, obviously.."

Kenina stopped with a sigh and looked up at the sun to judge the time and the direction. He'd said if she smelled the ocean then she had gone too far - she hadn't smelled the ocean since before she ran across him and at the very least he had walked with her a ways to make sure she stayed her path. It would be, what, another day? Two? He hadn't been able to tell her exactly but she trusted his sense of direction at least better than her own. She had been taught many a thing in her days among the warrior pride but her knowledge of the world beyond it was.. lacking.

"Well, you don't have to be alone."

The dark lioness turned with a start, whirling in the direction of the voice she had heard, immediately in disbelief that she had failed to see another creature that sounded so damnably close. Yet, as she turned.. there was nothing? A frown creased her brow and her eyes narrowed at the rolling green grasses and sparse trees. She had heard of mirages in the desert, seen them in fact, but illusions in these pretty, bountiful lands? That seemed unlikely.

Despite not seeing who it was immediately, her claws still unsheathed and her belly dropped a fraction, ready to pounce on whatever beast lurked.

"Where are you?"

An odd, breathy laugh sounded above her and her golden eyes snapped up to catch an eerily similar pair staring back down at her through the leafy boughs of a tree. Of course. A damned bird.

"She said you would be difficult and mistress is never wrong. I suppose I shouldn't fault you though. She wouldn't be any happier at being surprised."

There wasn't much about a bird that made her feel threatened and, satisfied that this mistress could not be lurking somewhere close by without her having realized it by now, she pushed herself back up to her full height and narrowed a suspicious gaze on the feathered inkblot. Her claws didn't retract though, as a warning.

"You have two minutes to explain what you and this mistress want with me and then I'm leaving. Understood?"

The bird laughed again, clacking his beak at her as he did, and hopped a few steps forward so that he could stare at her without puffs of leaves blocking the way. He knew she wouldn't be grateful that he'd been sitting here for the better part of three days waiting but many of the creatures Katiti sent him after never were - it was a simple art of his duty.

"Fine, to the point it is! Your Aunt Katiti would you like you to come to her in the Ukulwa Izwe. There are dark things in the Pridelands and she does not think it is safe for you to head there until it is resolved."

At first, Clio thought that she was going to dismiss him for foolishness but as Katiti's name passed his beak there was an unmistakable widening of her eyes even if she immediately schooled them back to passive. He shifted his wings excitedly and leaped from his branch, landing at her feet with all the grace a war torn raven could muster. Her claws sheathed as he did and he knew, in that instant, that Katiti had not been wrong.

She would come. She would follow him to the Outlands and, if the Queen's Soul had her way, the firekin lioness would join their ranks. Blood and bone and power, this dark lioness would commit all of that and more to the lions that had settled their roots among the redstone at last.

"I would ask you how she knows where I am but my father said she has always been very strong in the sight." Growing up the formidable foreign-born male had spoken of his family so that his children might know where they had come from but as Kenina grew more and more convinced that her place in this world was somewhere outside their desert, he had made sure she knew anything that might await her. Katiti was one of those things, discussed in equal parts awe and wariness, and truth be told, Kenina had been hoping to find her most of all. A lady that used her mind to control others and gain what she wanted? She was a lioness after her own heart.

"Alright," she sighed at last, stepping past him in and into the direction she had been heading before. Behind her the raven emitted a triumphant cackle and took to the sky in a bound. He swooped low, passing her at the shoulder, then soared up and ahead so that she might keep her eyes upon him.

Katiti was going to be so pleased with him.

(1,023 words)