[PRP] Keep your nose clean (Sarani x Raizen)

[Princess_Feylin]

Sarani thought she probably wasn't supposed to be at the river by herself. Actually, she knew she definitely wasn't supposed to be. However, she'd just had dinner, and that meant that there was blood around her muzzle and on her paws, despite her best efforts to keep both of them clean while eating. At least she'd managed to keep her whiskers mostly out of it this time, though the concentration required to do so meant that the rest of her face had suffered.

So now, despite being a little over-full and slower than usual, she was sneaking away from her family and making her way to the river so that she could give herself a thorough washing. She'd already performed a cursory grooming with her tongue, but the little lioness would not be satisfied until she had also washed with water. It was an oddity that her family teased her about, but she didn't care. Cleanliness was important.

She paused and crouched low, her rounded tum brushing the ground. There had been a noise!

AstoriaFallen

I just realized I don't know your cub's name.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Sarani's lips pulled back from her tiny fangs in a silent snarl that threatened violence at the first hey, but quickly relaxed as she rapidly determined that this was not someone who could get her into trouble. Nobody who made remarks about the color of a stranger's nose was anyone Rani felt could pose much of a threat.

But still. What a weird thing to say to someone.

"Um. Yes?" she agreed, rising up to her full (and yet still diminutive) height. "Is that important?"

Although she was standing up once more, the tip of her tail twitched in agitation and her ears were not still. She had been alive just long enough to realize that normally lone cubs were not lone cubs at all, and either had a gang of other cubs with them, or a parent somewhere nearby. In either case, Rani would be kept from her goal of a Good Wash.  

[Princess_Feylin]

Rani tilted her head from one side to another, a little too quickly, so it was not really clear what she was trying to convey. In fact, she wasn't really trying to convey anything, so that was fine. It was just one of the things she did unconsciously when she was considering.

"I guess it is kind of interesting," she agreed. "Maybe we're related. I have a lot of family on my mum's side. A lot."

She was a little more cagey about sharing where she was going with a stranger though. While it was true she had decided he did not present a threat to her, there was always the chance he was a tattling sort, who might run to find a family member or a gang and get her into trouble.

"I'm going to have a wash," she said cautiously. "You can come if you tell me your name. I'm Sarani."

Her family mostly called her Rani, or sometimes Sara, which could be confusing, but Rani wasn't going to offer that familiarity to someone she'd just met. Even if they did have the same color nose. Noses weren't everything, after all.

AstoriaFallen

Sorry Rani's being kind of a brat. I'm still trying to find her voice, I guess.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

"Raizen," Rani repeated, doing her best to commit the name to memory. Remembering names had not turned out to be one of her strong suits so far.

"Okay. Let's go. But we'll have to avoid being noticed. I'm...not really supposed to be out right now." Rani was not an adept liar. Blood rushed to her face as she understated the degree to which she wasn't supposed to be out, turning her white nose and the pale skin inside her ears faintly pink.

Before they could set off, a thought occurred to her, along the lines of remembering Raizen's name. "Can I call you Raizen Frostnose?"

Rani had no way of knowing that when she was older, after she'd gained something of a reputation as a reaver, she would acquire a similar moniker, and answer to Sarani the Bloodless.

AstoriaFallen

Sorry. Had to drive home and fix a plumbing problem.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

"That's great" Rani replied, referring both to Raizen's willingness to be a lookout and the name he'd bestowed upon her. She did kind of like the sound of it, though it wasn't perhaps as dangerous as she hoped to one day be.

"So, where'd you learn to be a lookout?"she asked in a whisper as they strode toward the river. "There are so many people in my family who think they're sneaky and who try to be sneaky and silent like ghosts all the time, it's...feh."

She didn't know how to finish her thought. What she wanted to say was how frustrating it was to be born into a family with gods and lions who spent a lot of time in the spirits' forest and were all basically silent and invisible when they chose to be, and how hard it was to feel like she was any good at any stealthy things when everyone else was so much better.

AstoriaFallen

I don't think they're actually related, but Sarani's family tree is a little more opaque to me than most of my SB.

 

[Princess_Feylin]

"That's pretty impressive," Rani said, and meant it.

Rani huffed as she tried to come up with a satisfactory answer to Raizen's question. She wasn't huffing at him. Mostly at her family, which she absolutely loved, but also found exasperating. Especially when they teased her about her need to be clean.

"Some of them are really good at it," she admitted grudgingly. "But that's mostly the grown-ups. Everyone else just kind of gets by either because the grown-ups don't mind as much as they say they do, or they were distracted by someone being dumb. There's a lot of dumb in the world."

Sarani knew she wasn't making her family sound very good, and that she should backtrack and explain better, or at least say something really great about her family, to balance out her criticism of their sneaking, but nothing stand-out came to mind. They were good lions and good Stormborn, but that was hardly interesting enough to mention.

Finally, she lamely added, "I do like my family. But they make fun of me because I like to be clean."

AstoriaFallen

 

[Princess_Feylin]

"Exactly!" Rani exclaimed. "There's nothing wrong with being clean."

It was nice that someone else understood. Or at least wasn't teasing her the way her family did. She didn't really require understanding, just acceptance without obvious judgment.

"'Course, that's what my family says, too. It's being..." She fumbled for their exact word for a second, and then pronounced it with the greatest care. "Being excessively clean that's not normal."

She didn't realize that her family worried her penchant for cleanliness would make her an easy target for crueler teasing once she got into the world. Nor that, in the more immediate future, they worried she might inadvertently drown herself if she went to wash herself unsupervised. All she saw was that they refused to understand.

"There's a bit of a field up ahead. We'll have to cross it all in a rush. So first we have to know if there's anyone around."

AstoriaFallen

 

[Princess_Feylin]

Rani answered with a shrug. It didn't much matter to her, most of the time, but it did sometimes impede her ability to do as she liked, when she wasn't allowed to go wash by herself, for instance.

"That would be good," she agreed. "Thanks."

As she spoke, Rani slowly shifted her weight backward until she could raise both her forepaws off the ground and cautiously sit up and back on her hindquarters to peer around, too, like a spectral meerkat. She didn't see anything, but she would leave it to Raizen's expert opinion to decide whether or not it was safe to make a break for it.

She plopped back onto all fours and looked toward Raizen expectantly.

AstoriaFallen