Timestamp: 31st of Fall, 514 AV
Night lions were beautiful but deadly things in Kavala’s mind. She didn’t like that they preyed upon her livestock and threatened her horses when they were running loose on the grass. No matter how big The Sancutary was, there was never going to be enough room to house all the stock all the time except during emergencies. Kavala kept the young horses and mares with foals or heavy in foal in the facility when they were close to term and at night, but the rest of the time they were out on the grass in true Drykas fashion.
One problem she’d had a hard time wrapping her mind around was the night lion issue. So she’d taken to studying the creatures, observing them, trying to blend with them to learn more about them in order to counter their threat. Morphing was key in this. And the first dead night lion – killed by Ghost in his herd stallion capacity – had gone straight back to the facility for study. That female had become Kavala’s model, and one she took very seriously. She studied size, morphology, and even internal anatomy in her isolation lab, spending hours taking notes and jotting down things she’d learned.
For example, she’d witnessed night lion cubs year round and the female ghost had killed had indeed been pregnant. Kavala guessed by the examination of her uterus that she would have given birth in the winter, which made sense because it was often times a time of feast for the predators on the grass. But she’d also seen newborn and dead pregnant lions in the summer which made her guess they could be fertile all year round. A high ability to reproduce meant they had a high mortality rate. Kavala wondered at that, perched on a stool studying the creatures paw. She could see her breath as she worked, writing by lamplight in the isolation lab. She was keeping it cool to slow the decomposition of the lion.
The Konti took measurements of the corpse. Length from nose to vent was five foot exactly with a three foot one inch tail. Her weight was two hundred and thirty one lbs which seemed fairly large to Kavala though she did note that the weight wasn’t fresh weight but a day after death in which some liquid weight might have been lost. She also measured paws and brain size, claw length and examined the night lions’ teeth extensively. She took notes, sketches, and then did a necropsy on the animal and found it was eating mice, hare, and what she thought was coyote. There was no sign of horse meat or anything else she would consider the lions stealing from her facility. That was a shock to Kavala and one that maybe got her thinking she’d been wrong to think the lions were that dangerous – unless it was to the pregnant mares and foals. Of course, this was just one corpse, one kill, and wasn’t decisive at all.
To get to the real truth, she’d have to become one… join them… go out among them and see how they really lived.
So to that end she studied the corpse, and began working on her morphing with it. Kavala couldn’t become as heavy, as large, nor as powerful as the night lioness she studied. But small, compact, and easily nimble she could do. So the Konti left the sanctity of her Sanctuary, walked out into the grass after her intensive study, and sat down to quiet her mind. Having removed the light robe she was wearing, Kavala simply let herself exist among the wilds awhile, meditating on life. She lost her sense of being Konti and slowly gained a sense of being one with nature, alike all things natural, and more apart of the world than she could be when her awareness was trapped in one body.
It was then, and only then, in that particular mindset, did the magic of morphing come easily.
She removed all her thoughts, those endless circular preconceived notions, and simply let the trees of the fringe forest exist around her. Beyond them she could sense the grassland. Kavala slowly poured power into her hands morphing her digits from fingers to toes, her nails into claws, and her hands themselves into paws. Fur sprung from her and she cried out as the bones of her head rearranged and took on a new shape. Her back elongated and then her sides thickened, as her body mass rearranged itself gathering in about her loosing its human form for the night lioness shape that was so firmly fixed in her mind. Blue eyes remained the same color, but the pupils elongated and switched, suddenly flooding her awareness with new visual abilities as cat eyes replaced Konti eyes and she saw far more far crisper in the slowly dying evening light.
Her backbone elongated and a tail sprung from just above her buttocks as she went on all fours and dug at the ground, her paws trenching the loose loamy soil under the trees. She stretched and the last of the black fur sprung from her back, sides, covering her stomach and neck, bringing her more fully into the form she chose to morph into. Chimes had passed, long ones, as she crouched there shifting. And then, finally, it was done.
Kavala tipped her head back and roared, first a short series of calls then a longer territorial cry. Then, without an ounce of worry, she set off at a trot, beginning her patrol of the property she called her own and perhaps further out to scout into the darkness and look over the herds deeper out in the grasslands.
She kept her eyes open. She knew other night lions were around and even other creatures as well. Some were dangerous to the morpher and some in danger from her as well. Kavala would patrol out, making a huge circle and scout out how the night lions marked the territory they were controlling first and foremost, then figure out how she could mark over their marks and start reclaiming some of her land from them in hopes of keeping them away. The first thing she smelled was urine. It was a strong marker and off to the east. She found a well sprayed snag with large clawmarks running up and down its length. Snags were standing timber that were dead, most lighting struck or bug killed. Aniamls often used them to mark territory so she wasn’t surprised to find the score marks and urine at its base.
Kavala knelt and urinated all over the old urine. There was no shame in doing so. She firmly set her scent then rubbed her chin glands that also carried scent against the tree as well. Then she added her own scratches over the older ones and trotted off in the direction the scent was, determined to cover more ground and find more marked spots on her land.
