Flashback The First Lesson [Khida]

[Sorahi]

Timestamp: 84th of Spring, 511 AV
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The Kelvic lioness, unnamed as yet, played in the sand under the sun of Eyktol. She had found a short, crooked tree by some luck, and scampered around it, chasing a small lizard. High pitched noises of play were emitted from the cub's mouth as it padded along through the sand. She was hungry, and the lizard was a moving, living thing. Instinct told her there was a connection, but, motherless, she did not understand what it was. Instead, she play-chased it under the heat of the morning sun.

At last, she struck her paw down upon the creature... Nay, it got away. Through the loose sands it scurried, up along the leaning trunk of the wispy tree. The Kelvic pouted, turning in the sand in frustration at her belly. She basked, upturned, in the hot sand, and watched the sky, meowing softly to the sparse clouds above.

[Khida]

The day was quite warm, the sun beating strongly upon the earth, hinting at the approach of summer. It made for some quite lovely air currents that Khida had never quite appreciated the year before -- she hadn't really been a good enough flier until after the decline towards the cool season had begun. Now, she had followed the movements of the air out away from the city, to the expanses of desert which exhibited little life. The falcon found another thermal winding upwards through the air; turning into its slow spiral, she circled and studied the empty sands a little more closely. There was a tree, if the spindly thing could be called that, and rocks and sand. As she watched, something moved -- something almost sand-colored itself, but with a surface texture distinctly different. It resolved into the shape of a small feline, probably younger even than Khida herself; the peregrine had her adult size, but was just beginning to replace her brown juvenile plumage with adult gray. She turned through another circuit of the thermal, looking for other felines -- for surely the cub wouldn't be alone. Even her own parents, disparate as they were, had looked after their unfledged offspring. But her eyes saw nothing larger than mouse or snake -- certainly nothing feline, of any age. Did that mean it was entirely alone?

[Sorahi]

The little Kelvic feline blinked up at the bright sky, daydreaming about water and meat. Meat and water. Food. Running and jumping and catching meat. Perhaps a lizard was meat? A lizard was a play thing, meant for chasing. A lizard was meant for catching under a paw and then letting go.

The little lioness suddenly remembered that she was, indeed, chasing a lizard. Where had it gone? She chirped for it, and rolled to her feet, ready to play, again. She wanted to catch the lizard, this time. The cub leaped upon the scrawny, tilted tree trunk, sending the lizard scampering up into the wispy branches. The lioness began to climb. She made it a few feet up, but lost her footing and slipped, yelping, towards the sand. Finding the need for her other form's hands, she shifted, grabbing onto the tree trunk for dear life as she hung from it.

The wild-eyed toddler's stomach growled unhappily, and she growled at it. Soon enough, she lost her grip and fell into the sand. She remained there, lying on her back, bare to the elements, and stared the lizard above her down.

[Khida]

OOCSorry for the delay! The little cat ran for the tree and tried to climb it, not faring very well at it. As the falcon looked on, it shifted into an equally young human child, one no more skilled in the scaling of trees than its feline shape. It was a Kelvic, like her; but what was it doing out here, in the empty desert, all alone? The circumstance piqued her curiosity -- and Khida was still young enough that assuaging her curiosity was a definite driving force. The falcon fell off the thermal, angling herself downwards; she glided down out of the air to land on the sand-covered earth a short distance from the tree. Heat radiated upwards from the sand and stone, stronger than she found strictly pleasant but not yet unbearable in intensity. Not even for her human form, which Khida shifted to shortly after landing; she and the cub had that shape in common, and she thought it would be easier to communicate. If the little thing could communicate at all. She was admittedly dubious on that score. "Why are you out here?" the adolescent asked of the toddler, frowning down at it in perplexed interest. "There are no people to bond to here." And she had it on the authority of both her parents that a bondmate was the most important thing a Kelvic could have -- even if her dam hadn't bonded yet herself.

[Sorahi]

The little Kelvic had noticed the falcon soaring far above, but had paid it no mind. She was far more interested in the lizard, as it was reachable. That was, of course, if she could only figure out how to get it to stop moving when she went after it. Nay, she stared up at the small creature on legs, watching it twitch occasionally.

But, then, the great bird landed somewhat near her. As it turned out, the falcon was not a falcon, but a creature such as herself; a Kelvic. The older girl, in her human form, frowned down at the toddler and spoke.

The little Kelvic gave the adolescent her attention, though she continued to laze about in the sand, bare to the elements. She frowned, pushing her eyebrows together as she tried to understand the words spoken, for she only knew broken tidbits of Common. She hadn't had the chance to learn, as she had been unwanted and thrown to, quite literally, the dust of Eyktol before she could.

The toddler sat up and shrugged, playing with the warm sand with a finger. She observed the other Kelvic with interest, though she was a bit wary of her human form; humans were not always nice. But, she reminded herself, this stranger was no human. The little lion girl studied the adolescent, noting her amber eyes and the sharp angles of her eyebrows, the slight swell of her chest that the cub did not possess. She was pretty, the little one decided.

Am I pretty, she wondered, looking at the rough ends of her sand-encrusted hair as she tugged at them. In an attempt to answer the woman's question, she pointed up at the lizard in the tree.

[Khida]

The girl-cub didn't speak, confirming Khida's suspicions. Her questions wouldn't be answered, then. She snorted softly, then rolled her own shoulders in a shrug, accepting that fact and setting curiosity aside. Without words to exchange, she felt little need to remain human; already the heat of the desert sun on her bare skin was noticeable, and she had no desire to develop a sunburn. As Khida was thinking this through, the little one finally responded in a way which was clearly communication -- she pointed. The older Kelvic turned her regard towards the tree, studying it with patient interest. It was a tree. A scrawny desert tree, entirely unremark... no, not quite unremarkable, as something small and grayish scuttled from sun into shade along one branch. It harbored a lizard. Khida looked down at the cub, and wondered if lizards were proper things for it to hunt. She'd never been good at catching them -- not as a falcon, anyway -- and while her sire would eat them, she thought they tasted funny. No, the cub could do better than that. The adolescent picked up the little girl and swung her over into the shade of the tree, such as it was, then set her back down on the sand. She held out a hand, palm and fingers flat, in the gesture most seemed to understand as wait or stay -- then shifted back to falcon, and leapt up into the sky, wings scattering sand to either side. First, she had to find a mouse.

[Sorahi]

The toddler giggled as she was lifted out of the stifling warmth of the desert sun and into the bit of shade provided by the scrawny tree. She nodded, understanding, when the older girl gestured for her to stay put. Where was she to go, anyway? The sand was growing hot, and she was too hungry and weak to have the energy to find water again. She had been foolish to leave the little water she had found, but the lion cub was not entirely fond of the traveling humans nearby.

The child watched as the adolescent shifted from human to a bird of prey. The bird looked rather lethal to the girl, with its dangerously hooked beak and talons. The child, also a predator in her other form, admired the other Kelvic. As the falcon took off into the air, the child watched with interest as the bird's grey wings revealed a lighter underside. She observed the way the other Kelvic soared through the air until the sun hurt her eyes, and her attention returned to her immediate surroundings.

It was all sand, really. Sand, and.... well, sand. Dunes of sand, valleys of sand, and vast, hot, unforgiving fields of sand. Maybe the odd scrawny excuse for a tree.

The child tugged at the ends of her dirty, sand coloured hair and waited, watching the lizard with wild interest.

[Khida]

The falcon's form faded away into the distance, a diminishing speck of darkness in the sky, as she surveyed the desert in search of her quarry. Some rodents preferred to burrow in the sand, others at the base of stones, or so her sire had it; she kept an eye out for signs of either sort. Tracks were hard to see in this light, but at the right angle, she might spot the deeper shadow of a burrow. And where there was a burrow, there was apt to be a burrow-dweller -- such as a mouse. The first hole she found, Khida circled about for a time, but to no avail; nothing went in or out, or even came near the tunnel opening. Maybe something else had eaten the mouse. Maybe it wasn't even a mouse burrow. Maybe -- well, what did it matter? She moved on. The peregrine Kelvic cast about for another, eventually finding a burrow dug into a flattish stretch of sand. She observed this one in the same way, scrutinizing the surrounding area for any mice out foraging, or returning home. Waiting for something to stick its nose out of the burrow. Waiting... and realizing, as she flew about, that the angle of the sun meant her shadow sometimes crossed the very space she was interested in. Not usually a problem in the city, but here -- here, that shadow was a concern, because any wise mouse would take caution at it. Feeling rather annoyed with herself, Khida left off the second burrow and sought out a third. This one lay in the shadow of a solitary boulder half-buried by sand -- and here, the falcon chose not to circle. Instead, she dropped down to land on the stone's edge, her shadow becoming just an extension of its. That solved that problem. She had only to find the burrow's owner... which was another exercise in patience. The falcon let her eyes unfocus, looking not at things, but alert for motion. And something moved. Khida was off the rock before her thoughts had quite caught up with her reflexes; the mouse below froze, perhaps hoping it hadn't actually been seen. She angled her wings and dropped, talons extending; it dashed jaggedly away, bolting for the safety of its burrow. It nearly made it, too -- the falcon just got a talon into the rodent's hindquarters, the creature squeaking sharply in panicked complaint. Its protest fazed the raptor not at all, who lifted herself and her burden back up into the open air. Khida oriented on the light and the shapes of the dunes, then made her way back directly towards the tree -- and the small Kelvic who had better still be waiting there.

[Sorahi]

(OOC: Eek! Sorry it took so long. I kept getting distracted every time I had a chance to reply... >.>)

Soon, the sand-encrusted toddler grew bored of sitting on her bottom. The sand was starting to make her itch in uncomfortable places, and she needed to move. She stood, a mere few feet tall at her young age, and itched her torso. Her ribs were starting to show. In her short life thus far, she had learned not to be picky when it came to what she ate; food was scarce, and meat was difficult to catch in either form.

The little Kelvic wandered from the scrawny tree and its inhabitant, padding along the sand with curiosity. Her interest in the desert around her, however, soon plummeted, and she returned to the plant and its shade. The sand made a funny noise between her toes, causing her to look down. She wiggled the phalanges of her feet, watching the little grains be sifted between them. A small fistful of sand was picked up and poured slowly along the slanted trunk of the tree.

A shadow fell across the desert before her. The toddler raised her white-green eyes to the sky and smiled when she spotted the peregrine returning. Missing the creature caught in its talons, the little girl raised her hand as a perch for the great bird.

[Khida]

The girl was playing with the sand and the tree trunk when Khida returned; at least she hadn't wandered off somewhere. As the falcon looked down, the girl looked up, and raised her hand in... it proved not to be a wave, which had been her first expectation. Instead, the girl just held out her arm, steady and constant, for a reason the peregrine couldn't infer. If human, Khida would have shrugged; that she didn't understand the cue didn't unduly bother her. She shed altitude, swooping down a few feet above the sand, then abruptly backwinged to a stall; releasing her grip on the mouse which had been shivering between her talons all the while, Khida let it drop to the ground a short distance in front of the girl. Injured and terrified beyond measure, the little rodent simply huddled motionless on the warm sand, as if waiting for some cue of its own. The peregrine then worked to regain altitude, rather than coming to a perch anywhere. She would watch from overhead to see what the girl did. Khida simply wasn't sure what else she could or should do. The young Kelvic had her quarry now, something rather better than a lizard. By her mind, that should be the end of that.