The road less taken (open)

[ayan]

And why again hadn't he taken the left back there? The one quite some time ago that had branched off to a much brighter looking span of scenery? Right.. because this way had seemed more of an adventure, a change in the same old..diffrent. yeahhh.. different, sure was. He grimaced and lifted an ash covered paw the tan of his toes and white of his leg obscured in Grey soot halfway to his shoulder. It was the same on his other three legs where the light puff each step had stirred had settled on his fur. The Grey powder tickled his nose and brought forth a sneeze that echoed from one hollow silent space to another between the long dead trees on all sides, before him, and behind.

The dead forest seemed to go on endlessly..forever. Or maybe that was just the illusion presented him due to the never ending bank of fog that hazed the air from his feet up into the branched of the trees above. Or what was left of them anyway.. he noted as one crashed down, finally sub coming to its rotting fate of decay and lading with a resounding crack on the ash covered ground. Ayan blinked though the ash thrown up and over him an sighed heavily as it settled over his pelt in whole causing him now to resemble some ghostly Grey apparition or at a distance most likely a disembodied pair of eerie ice blue eyes floating in the fog.

It was going to take seasons to get all this weird dust out of his fur. To make matters worse he hadn't see so much as a leaf twitch..heck he hadn't even seen a leaf! It was all dead twigs and ash and crumbling wood and.. he squinted as something whiter that white caught his eye and he crept forward towards it. Was it some strange form of stone? He sniffed and smelt nothing but ash and decay..and a sneeze coming on..

"ahh ahhh ..CHOO!"

The sneeze sent him back on his rump with a cloud of dust puffing puffing up where it hit and the dust on the stone gusting off from the force of his sneeze. What he saw then made his eyes widen and his ears lay back. A skull.. and not just any skull but a lions skull. Ayan swallowed and glanced quickly around hoping that the fire from long ago was the killer and not something still lurking in the mists. The forest officially wasn't interesting anymore, it was somewhere he wanted to remain for as little more time as his short legs would allow. Standing quickly to his feet he hustled ahead into yet another fog bank hoping this one might finally prove to thin out on the edge of this creepy old forest.

[Raivu]

RAIVU
---

The nearly 8 month old cub had wandered a bit far from where he was supposed to be today, the place where his mother had told him to remain while she proceeded her hunting trip for that day. He knew she wouldn't be back for some time though; almost every day she had putting more effort into finding food as the drought continued.

His nose scrunched up as he took in the scent of the bitterly sweet smell of ashes and decay. Since it had not rained in a while, the scent was slowly fading in the dry heat of the day. Luckily there was so much ash in the air, most of the sunlight didn't reach the ground. The air was thick with it, but it was a relief to get out of the sun and into a more.. sinister location. A location Raivu wasn't supposed to wander to. It was better than wandering to another territory though.

His paws kicked up clouds of ashes around him, which he had gotten used to during the past few months of dry weather. The soil in many places had become fine and loose, and easily disturbed without grass.

The forest was eerily silent, his clumsy pawsteps the only sound he could hear. His pace gradually slowed down to a creep, much like a stalking lioness, his paws now inaudible. Raivu couldn't be heard, but he could hear another lion.. a small one at that.
A grin graced his face as he slowly sneaked up behind the ash covered cub, he looked a tad younger than Raivu himself.
All that could be seen of Raivu was his green eyes that seemed to glow in the dark light of the forest, and his ash covered paws that stalked behind the cub's every step, closer... and closer..
and..
Raivu pounced onto the cub before him and tackled him to the ground, pinning him with his paws, as he smiled with excitement.
"You!! Hey, I don' think I've seen ya around before. Are you a Lowlander?" he asked the last question with a mock look of disappointment.

[ayan]

You know that feeling you get when someone's watching you? Or at least you think someone is, but know that can't be because who else would be out in a place like this? ..Unless of course it was whatever caused that skull to be a skull back there.. no. Ayan shook his head mentally chastising himself for the creeping crawling chill that kept working its way up his spine, causing the hairs on the nape of his neck to stand on end. It was just his imagination..had to be... right? He swallowed hard and glanced over his shoulder just as a sooty ball of fur tackled him full force to the ground.

"OMPH!!..GAHH!!"

Ayan stared up at the chatter box with wide and shocked eyes.

"ME?? what? .. a who?? ,,wait! ..SLOW down would ya??.. what's a Lowlander?"

As the shock slowly began to wear off Ayan glanced around and came to two conclusions.. the cub was alone, or at least seemed to be. And it was getting a bit hard to breath with his lizard and insect fed chest baring the weight of a cub that no doubt got his fair share of zebra.

"And do ya mind?"

He asked the last with a slight wheeze and an obvious look that said could you get off already?

[Raivu]

RAIVU
---

A loud, playful giggle escaped Raivu's maw as he grinned down at the other cub he had pinned. He was still surprised about why or how this cub got here in the first place, especially in the Dead Woods, which was the scariest place Raivu had ever been! Well, this was only his first time coming here, and he didn't feel a bit scared since he had done it.. against his parents' word. Disobeying his parents made it all the more fun, though, and now that he had found another cub, he felt better.

"Ah, so, you don' know whats is a Lowlanders?" he looked at him curiously, putting on a serious thinking face, but that was soon washed away by another grin as he backed up off of the strange cub and sat his rump down on the ash covered soil.

He sat up a bit to make himself appear a bit taller, for Raivu was a lot smaller than most cubs his age. Raivu's green eyes looked him over as he studied this other cub. He was white with a brown underbelly as far as he could see through the soot, and it was topped off with a yellow, mohawk-like mane.

Raivu put his paw over his mouth as he snickered and said between a laugh, "Ya looks is funny!" He stopped himself from laughing more and put his paw on the ground, a small scowl forming as he watched more dust settle on his faded brown legs, which were slowly getting darker as he aged.
"Sorry abou' tha, laughed, ya know, my mommy says not to laughed at other lion," an apologetic smile formed over his maw as he lowered his ears.

"Soo, who are ya? I don' seen ya around here before!" he asked him excitedly in the awkward voice of his.

[ayan]

Ayan watched as the other cub backed off of him and settled it’s rump in the dirt. Rolling to his side he followed suit, settling himself down on the ash cover ground. His ice colored eyes took in the other cub as the little fellow rattled off about Ayan’s looks and laughed only to apologize for it before Ayan could even process the words and decided whether to get upset by them. His muzzle pulled into a half grin and he watch the smaller cub. Yep, definitely smaller than himself, he could see that now that the cub wasn’t literally on top of him. Why had he seemed to weigh so much? A quick glance down at his ribcage brought a grimace to his muzzle as he had the fleeting thought, maybe I should start eating the whole lizard and not leaving behind the parts I don’t like… shrugging off the notion he centered his attention on the cub again the half smile once again present as he chuckled.

“You sure are chatty you know that? And no, I don't know about Lowlanders. “

Ayan considered asking about the way the cub talked, but thinking back on the way the the kid had apologized for picking on Ayan looks he thought better of it. It seemed being blunt and open tended to hurt feelings in this cubs circle and while normally he could really care less what others thought of him or his ideas this cub seemed like someone who could potentially be fun to hang out with for a bit.

“Name’s Ayan, and I don’t really hag around in one place very long.”

That comment having stirred memories of ‘why’ he didn’t tend to spend long with the few cubs he’d come across he glanced around a bit nervously.

“Er.. Speaking of around here.. Your uh, folks don’t happen to be around do they?”

[Raivu]

RAIVU
---

The cub in front of him.. Ayan, was it, looked very skinny, as if he hadn't eaten in a while. Raivu glanced at Ayan's ribs that could be seen through his skin and fur, and then he glanced back at his own. He could see there was a difference. He grimaced as he started thinking about how dedicated his parents and pride really were. For the past few months they really had been giving him a fair share of the meat they could find. Raivu glanced up at the sky through the ashes and mulled this over before he came to a conclusion. From now on, he'd make sure they ate more of the food themselves instead of giving it all to him. Besides, this cub was making it on a little diet, why shouldn't he?

Raivu turned his focus back towards this cub before answering him, "O-oh yah," he smiled as he let out another small laugh, "I guess I is so, righ'?"

His ear flicked as he watched Ayan mention something about not sticking around in one place for so long, and then look away, but he pretended not to notice.

"Oh no, my p'rents don' be 'round right nows, they are being hunting aminals, momma is, ands m' father is patrol the borders I thinking," he told Ayan without hesitation, which would've been a bad choice if Ayan had any evil plotting parents. "Huh, ya don' have any p'rents do ya? Or any of a prides? No one?"

[ayan]

Ayan missed his mother. He missed her companionship. He missed having some other soul in the world to talk with besides the occasional brief chat with random cub. Chats split by endless days and nights of nothing more than the pitiful squeak of the occasional prey he found even capable of noise as it fell beneath his small claws. This cubs blunt questions which outlined just how lonely he hadn’t even really realized he had become caused a pain in Ayan young heart. A pain that his youth and sense of self preservation chose to channel into indifference and arrogance as a way of protection. Shrugging he grinned and shook his head.

“ Nah.. Like it that way. Parents can get in the way you know? Of adventures and fun, that sort of thing. I do alright on my own, go where I like, do as I please… so anyway, what’s your name? “

Glancing around he wrinkled his nose and grimaced.

“ And tell me there's more to this place than these ashy old woods. There has to be right?”

He thought for a second and added quickly.

“Some other than the places you said your folks are that that is. “

[Raivu]

RAIVU
---

Raivu stopped himself from scowling as Ayan pointed out that parents got in the way. In the way of fun, adventure, stuff like that, sure, but Raivu couldn't imagine not having any parents. What would he do without his father? His mother? Even his pride. Would he end up like Ayan? As young as he was, even Raivu could see that this cub was pretty arrogant and independent, but his mother did indeed tell him that rogue lions were like that. Usually hot-headed and completely dependent on themselves, and even greedy. Raivu shrugged it off though, maybe Ayan was different than the rest, besides, there wasn't any other cubs in the pride.

"M'names Raivu," he answered simply before he added, "Oh, of courses there's others places," he paused and took a breath to think for a moment. "Yah, well.. There are the uhh.. wells the borders not good places to go, prides be patrollim them. Uhhmmnn.. M'homes area is n't bad idea. We could go ons to tha village. Not lots lions there, s'alone,"
He glanced back at Ayan and tilted his head, "So yah wants to go there? Or we could goes to m'home area, p'rents not there for a whiles,"