For all that her entire life had been leading up to her leaving the desert and becoming just another stray rogue, now that it had happened, Dautha'in had to confess herself at a bit of a loss. She was hardly alone - huria weren't exactly uncommon these days, and as her mother hadn't been the only lioness to choose to have an outsider's cubs when given the opportunity, she'd grown up with several other huria of varying shades. All of her own siblings had been perfectly acceptable - albeit mostly fireless - while she had been close, but not quite. In the right family of warm colors, overall, but too pale. Who knew? They'd loosened up a little on color restrictions once already, and maybe one day they'd do so again, and she'd finally qualify as an acceptable color. Or maybe they wouldn't. She wasn't going to hang her hopes on the thought, and she certainly wasn't going to deliberately linger nearby just in case. What a silly waste of time that would be!
She knew that some, whatever their reasoning, did choose not to stray far from the birth pride, making homes in places like the Ithambo'hlabathi and Pridelands. The former was an option she had considered, as they were fairly close allies, with blood ties on both sides, but she had no desire to spend her life sitting just over the border, hunting and gossipping and having babies, or whatever else it was the females over there did. She had no intentions of living what she viewed as such a little, unremarkable life. She knew less about the Pridelands, but she knew enough that it wasn't an especially attractive option, either. Too big, too already been done. Maybe it was immature of her, but she wanted adventure, and she wanted to be different. So she just wasn't making a decision yet, except to decide that...she wasn't.
Perhaps she should have been better-prepared and had a plan in place, like Mot, who was all full of notions about challenging his way into the Bonelands as an Inselelo. That was all well and good, she supposed, but even if it did work out for him, sooner or later he'd have to leave. A better fighter would come along, or even just a bad day, and he'd be right back here with nowhere to go and not much to show for it. To Dautha'in, his grand plan to sire cubs in hopes of having a few red ones to send back to his mother didn't seem the least bit grand at all. He was a nice enough lion, but really? Didn't he have any imagination? Anything he wanted for himself?
The young lioness glanced over to wear he lay on his back, basking in the sun as though he didn't have a single care in the world, and shook her head. They were friends, and yet...she found that she really didn't understand him at all, now that they weren't cubs anymore. Not that it made him any less her friend, but...
It was just one more troubling thought among many. Tired of being alone with them, she made her way over to the snoring lion and shoved at him none too gently with her paw. His snoring ended in an abrupt and unflattering snort as he started into a semi-upright position, searching groggily for the source of the disturbance. Gold eyes fixed on hers from under his unkept, almost grown-in mane, and he scowled.
"C'moooon, Dauth, really? Did you have to wake me up? I just got comfortable!"
Dautha'in just rolled her eyes and sat back on her haunches to watch him. "Liar. You've been asleep for at least an hour, and snoring like a warthog for half of it. It was getting annoying."
"Sorry?" came the half-apology as he shook the sleep from the corners of his mind, with the unintended side effect of fluffing out his mane. It, like the rest of him, still looked just a bit awkward.
"So. Are you going to just sit around here forever, or what?"
"Huh?" Mot tilted his head at the odd question, made even more perplexing by his being only seconds into wakefulness. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Exactly what it sounds like," she 'clarified' impatiently. "You said you wanted to go to the Ithambo'hlabathi and challenge your way in. Are you going to do it, or just keep talking about it?"
"Of course I am," he huffed, pushing himself up into a sit and looking in the direction of the subject at hand's territory. "When I'm ready."
"Which will be...?"
"When I'm ready!" he rumbled gruffly at her. "Like you're one to talk about sitting around. You're doing just as much sitting around as I am, even if you don't snore. You don't even want to join, so what are you still hanging around for?"
"I'm here to make sure you go through with it, of course," she answered, smoothly providing a lie to cover that she was harboring her own lingering doubts and indecision. A lot of exciting possibilities lay before her, true, but once they went their separate ways, she would be alone, and that was one experience she wasn't looking forward to. "So you really ought to do us both a favor and get it over with already, and I can be on my way."
Mot grimaced. "Not yet. That earthquake we felt the other day..."
"What about it?"
"After what that bird told us about what it saw, it just doesn't seem right to go barging in right now, you know? The Inselelo guy might already be hurt, and that wouldn't be a fair fight."
"That's it? Really? You're waiting because you don't want it to be easy?"
"I guess you could put it that way," he answered with a shrug. "I just get a bad feeling about it, that's all. So if you're in a hurry to go, you might want to just go ahead and go. I think I'll be here awhile longer."
"I can wait a bit, I guess. Like I said, someone has to make sure you don't back out. And if you get your a** kicked, well, you don't have a backup plan, so..."
"What, staying with you is my backup plan?" Mot snorted. "Fine. If I lose, we can wander around aimlessly looking for something to do."
"Deal."