[LOG/PRP] One Pound Fish [Charybdis/Kampfer]

[Bronze Coffee]

Just before midday and Charybdis found herself at the beach once again, shirking her hunting duties. The curly furred female's mind was on one thing; the starfish farm she started. She arranged a lot of large rocks, buried them in the sand and then brought water painstakingly slow from the ocean to the beach with a banana leaf.

It had rained last night, so the pool should be nice and full, even if it was a bit less salty. When her neon paws rounded the corner and jumped up on the first rock to her pond, she was shocked to see that it was empty.

"What on earth...?" The water was there, it looked fine, but the starfish had clearly gone back to the beach. "Oh no, come back!" Charybdis cried, starting at a run to follow the tracks. Had they reached the ocean already or were there just five or six starfish crawling that way? "Of course they could escape, it wasn't a good enough plan!"

What a way to start a day.  

[Bronze Coffee]

Kampfur's ears laid back at a sudden, jarring howl from the shoreline. He winced, opening his eyes just in time to see the sleek-bodied fish darting away from his paws.

"No, no, no!" He dove for the nearest...

But it was too late. Instead of finding tasty, fatty fish between his jaws, Kamfur dove straight into the brimy sand beneath the waves. He came up sputtering, spewing dirt and water everywhere, as he got his paws back under himself. Once he could stand without drowning, he shot a furious glance at the shoreline where a lioness was racing down the sand.

He'd been standing shoulder-deep in the water just behind a rather large boulder for a long while, waiting in patient silence as the fish gradually adjusted to his presence. Now he was water-logged, muddy, and he had salt-water up his nose.

What a spectacular morning.

"Do you mind?" He snapped as he clawed his way back toward the shore. There was no point in waiting. The fish were scared, and wouldn't be back to this spot for quite some time. "Some of us are trying to fish."  

[Bronze Coffee]

When someone asked if she minded, Charybdis' head whipped around to spot a white lion with a neon green mane. She snorted at him and raced into the shallows before wading out somewhat carefully.

"Me too, just starfish! I made a little pool for them and they ran out!" Her eyes were focused solely on the water now, looking for the tale tell signs of them moving and digging around. Unfortunately it seemed they were long gone and she let out a little wail of disappointment before flopping down to her stomach in the water.

"Argh!" The mainly black female sighed in a very disappointed way when a wave came and hit her in the face, sending seaweed into her mouth and on her face. "Blugh!"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Starfish."

Kampfur stopped in his tracks, still elbow-deep in water, and stared at the strange lioness.

"Why would you eat starfish? They're awful!"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"I'm not eating them, I'm studying them," she sputtered as she spat out the seaweed and stared at this other lion. He had two different colored eyes. She tilted her head as she watched him, but ultimately Charybdis stood back up.

"If you're trying to fish you're not in a good spot. This is an area where turtles and starfish come to rest!" That's what she'd noticed anyway.  

[Bronze Coffee]

"It would have been a perfectly fine spot had a certain person not come bellowing up and scared off all the fish." Kampfur's tail swished indignantly--or tried to. It was hard, bogged in water as it was.

He glanced back out to the spot where he'd been, then at this rather hopeless sounding girl. He really should move on, find another spot. However, her being here presented an issue...

"Are you from around here?"  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Yes, yes. The name is Charybdis. I'm from the Bahari pride near here." As if her curly fur wasn't enough to give her away. After a hard shake, she wandered back to the sandy shore and just looked so pout out and depressed.

"I was trying to figure out how starfish worked! How they live, and breed, and like... Just what they do all day. I see the dead, dried ones all the time, so I wanted to see them alive.."  

[Kisoni]

"Bahari," Kampfur muttered to himself, looking distantly off in the direction he'd seen her come from.

She'd said 'near', this Charybdis, not 'here.' He wasn't in the pride's lands, then, which was good. Kampfur had had his fill of tresspassing and the consequences there in.

Then the rest of what she'd said caught up to him, and he turned another incredulous look on her.

"You were studying them." It wasn't so much a question as a statement, as though he were trying to wrap his brain around this.

Kampfur shook his head slowly, clearly in disbelief, before he finished lumbering himself from the shallows and shook his body head-to-tail. The water flung from his fur, but it did little to dry the heavy mass, now dingy with bits debris stuck all over and sand caking his paws.

When he was done, he continued up the shore past her. "I'm pretty sure they're just fish, Charyb-b-bliss? Char-I-bliss? Chary-b-duh---"

Kampfur stopped, clamping his mouth shut with an obvious wince at his butchering of her name.  

[Bronze Coffee]

When he absolutely slaughtered her name, those pink eyes of her rolled hard. "Char is fine. Chary if you want. But just... stop. Yeah.." She wrinkled her nose and then snorted a little more, her tail flicking this way and that.

"They're not like fish. They can come out of the water for a while longer than fish! I don't know if they come from eggs...Or what they eat! I want to know these things. Starfish are interesting, they can climb rocks, and I know they have mouths, but do they talk? Do they have prides or communities?" Her ears flicked and those pink eyes lit up again. Clearly Charybdis could go on and on about what she wants to know about them.

"They already come in all colors and sizes! Do you know anything about them?"  

[Kisoni]

Again, Kampfur cringed in a way that was almost apologetic. He still didn't apologize.

"Char," he agreed and made to take another step away before realizing she had continued to speak. The more she spoke, however, the more amusing the whole thing became in a somewhat perplexing way.

Why on earth was this girl so obsessed with starfish?

"They don't taste great," Kampfur said when she'd finally paused long enough for him to get a word in edgewise.

Much to his surprise, he found a bit of a grin pulling at his maw as he lifted a paw to twirl a single claw in the air near his throat. "And they wriggle aaalllll the way down."  

[Bronze Coffee]

The black female gaped at the male as he said he'd eaten them. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before it just snapped shut and she glared at him. Charybdis didn't enjoy this at all. She huffed and pouted at him.

"You're totally lying, aren't you? You haven't even introduced yourself and you're lying to me to try to get a rise."

She was onto him.  

[Kisoni]

Kampfur chuffed, shaking his head again. "No, actually. I'm not. You eat what you can get on the road, and if what you can get is a slow, weird looking fish, then..."

He cast another wary look back behind them, where she'd come from. "Don't worry yourself, princess, I don't eat them when I have a choice about it."

"Though given someone scared off all my fish, I might not have much of a choice today."  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Hey!" She snorted and frowned again before actually starting to feel guilty. Maybe it just hit Charybdis that he didn't have a pride to help provide him with food. Her ears started to lower and she cast a look toward the treeline she'd come from.

"You know.. chances are pretty good you could get a few rabbits.. It's warming up again. They should be out and about. I happen to know that if you go toward the sunset you'll get to a hunting ground where there are usually some fat, lazy zebra..."

She paused a beat.

"You could introduce yourself. You know my name."  

[Kisoni]

"Rabbits?" Kampfur hated how hopeful that sounded and tried not to bristle. It wouldn't do any good, and the girl would only think it aimed at her. "Didn't think they'd be so close to the coast."

In an attempt at controlling himself, he glanced her over again. She was darker overall than him, but she had blazing patches that should have given her the same sort of hunting issues he had: namely, he stood out. A lot.

Or maybe she was just better than him, and he was making excuses again. Whatever.

Finally, he sat. "Kamp," he said with some obvious reluctance.  

[Bronze Coffee]

"Kamp." Okay. She'd go with it. There was this little nagging feeling in the back of her head that made Charybdis think he was lying, but she was going to let it slide right now.

He sounded so hopeful. Damn, she was starting to feel really bad now. "Listen. Uuuh, I can go get you some food from the pride stock. It's not that uncommon. Sometimes we bring food to outsiders who we're nursing to health to carry them on their way after. Uh.." The lioness squirmed on her paws and sighed.

"I do feel really bad, though. So, like... I'm sorry I scared your dinner away? I just...was so disappointed they escaped... Or you can go hunt and I can bring you breakfast in the morning? We could meet here?"