She rolled the cub between her paws like it was a pudgy little ball, gently batting him from one to the other with an inscrutable expression on her face. Little peeps of delight followed every time he bumped into one paw only to be nudged back over to the other. If she was too slow to roll him again, he would wobble onto his fat little feet just to stagger over and bump against her leg, determined to continue the game himself if he had to.
"Which one is this again?" Aharu asked, bemused, and scooted him across the floor of the cave again.
Yehl came over to glance at the cub her mother was entertaining while the rest slept, pressing her own paw down on him to keep him still long enough that she could get a look at his eyes. Another happy peep chirped its way out of him, and he nommed harmlessly at her toes with the nubs of teeth he had just coming in. "Kalagca."
Aharu made a wordless sound in response to her daughter's answer, and once she'd removed her paw, returned to rolling him back and forth. After awhile, she spoke again, "I thought you didn't want anyone raising kids in the Guild. Something about not being able to trust them to keep their mouths shut?"
Cue Kalagca turning his not-teeth on her paw, which, despite being too large for him to fit in his mouth, didn't stop him from trying. She wiggled it gently back and forth as he made an 'rrrrr' noise and did his very best to be ferocious. It was, of course, an underwhelming attempt, since he was nothing more than a ball of fuzz and baby fat.
Yehl just shrugged. "They're orphans. The hell else am I supposed to do with them?"
"Some people would have just left them."
Yehl snorted. "Bullshit. You wouldn't have left them, either, and you know it."
"Maybe, maybe not." Aharu tumbled the cub away from herself this time, providing just enough momentum for him to roll across the floor and into the cavern wall. Now upside-down, he blinked wide pink eyes at her and let out another peep. "Still, you didn't have to keep them. You could have given them to someone."
The mask-marked lioness rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I'll just tote four cubs around until I find someone, somewhere, who wants them. That'll end well, for sure."
"Hey, I'm just saying. There were options." The goddess watched as the cub righted himself with great effort, and started to work his way back to her in a dizzied, zig-zag bumble.
"Yeah, well I made the rules. I can damn well break them if I want to."
"Careful with that. Break them too often, make too many exceptions for yourself, and you'll lose credibility as a leader. You'll lose loyalty."
"We're thieves, mother." Yehl rolled her eyes a second time and flopped bonelessly onto the ground. "Credibility and loyalty aren't really our strong points."
"Maybe not, but you'll never hold an organization together just on liking to steal other people's s**t and lie." The cub had finally worked its way back over, and made an unsuccessful attempt to pounce on her paw. It missed completely and fell over, and had to flail to get itself upright again. "That's fine enough for the people under you, but you need to watch yourself."
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Yehl groaned, rolling over onto her back. "What's with the lecture, anyway? It's just some cubs."
"It's not about the cubs." She caught Kalagca on his next attempted pounce and bumped him into the pile of his napping siblings, which caused a chorus of peeps. "It's about you saying you can break whatever rules you want. I get making the exception this time, and this isn't a particularly dangerous one to make. Most of your people will understand. But you'd better watch about being so cavalier about breaking other rules that don't tug the heartstrings."
The lioness grunted, and watched through narrowed eyes to see whether or not the entire pile of cubs would wake up. They were in luck, however, and after some peeping and wriggling, Kalagca had been assimilated back into the pile of mostly identical cubs. The lone girl of the four was definitely the odd one out, and not just because she was a girl. "And what will happen if I am, hmm? My sprawling kingdom of thieves will crumble from underneath my feet? Please. There's barely even a couple dozen of us, and I doubt anyone cares that much."
"But they could." Honestly, for someone who was naturally inclined to cleverness, who'd been raised to think, her daughter could sometimes be frustratingly obtuse. But she had always enjoyed being contrary and testing her patience and so Aharu shouldn't have been at all surprised. "It may not be much now, but given time and a solid foundation, it could be. You laugh now about a 'kingdom,' but it's not outside the realm of possibility. Not if you play it right."
"And you think I might not be playing it right, is that it?" Yehl shifted her gaze away from her mother and the little pile of cubs with a stubborn huff.
"Not as well as you could be. Not if you start flouting your rules." Unable to leave well enough alone, Aharu prodded at the pile of cubs, wondering if there was any discernible difference between the boys aside from eye color. "You may be a leader of thieves, but you're still a leader. You need to learn to act like one."
"I do just fine," Yehl asserted, rolling over to glare at the wall rather than look at her mother. "How else do you think we got the people we have?"
"You need to learn to act like a leader all the time, not just when you feel like it. You're a good thief, sure, probably better than any other mortal, especially since I gave you that feather. But what if I give one to someone else, or someone takes it? Maybe Kalagca, even." She delicately pried the cub from the pile, reclaiming her current favorite 'toy.' "It's not good enough just to be the best."
"I'll take it under advisement," Yehl rumbled grudgingly, signaling that she was well and truly over this conversation. Glancing back at her mother again, she scowled. "Could you maybe not roll him around like a rock? You're gonna addle the poor thing, doing that."
Wordlessly, Aharu'kai rolled the cub back into the pile...and rolled another one out of it, starting all over again.