It was fortunate that Leo had much better directional sense than Dominic himself, the former-human reflected as he padded through the savannah. He’d travelled far enough away from the pride that he would have been hopelessly lost or reduced to following the few traces of his own passage to find his way back to them.
With Leo’s help, though, he was able to use landmarks in the landscape as well as important scents on the wind to orientate himself. On the way, he saw a bit more of his ‘territory’. While still feeling a bit uncertain about this whole ‘marking’ business, he did sharpen his claws on a few trees as he went through the area.
Despite Leo’s exhortations, though, he was unable to bring himself to spraying.
‘Come on, just a little spray,’ his leonine companion tried to wheedle.
When that didn’t work, he turned to threats.
‘Other males won’t know just how strong we are; they won’t be sufficiently deterred by simple markings of claws. They will come to test us, try to take the pride from us.’
‘Then we fight them off,’ was Dominic’s unmoved response. ‘More Prey Points for us if we kill them.’
Finally, Leo seemed to accept that Dominic wasn’t going to budge.
‘Let me take over for a little, then. We can switch back when we get back to the pride.’
Since that seemed to be a more reasonable suggestion, Dominic only hesitated for a moment before acceding. They quickly swapped over control and Leo happily lifted his tail and sprayed the tree before continuing on.
Dominic wasn’t quite sure why he was so against it, honestly. It’s not like he’d never urinated outside before. On long car journeys, hikes in the woods, at festivals when the porta-potties were too busy or too disgusting…. The urge to piss could come at any time, and it wasn’t always when he was anywhere near a toilet. He’d decorated a few trees in his time, not to mention a couple of fences, the side of a building a few times and, on one notable occasion, some snow.
But this felt different. Then, it was because his bladder hurt and he had no other way of relieving himself. It hadn’t been to mark territory like a dog or something.
Actually, that was probably it. Spraying made Dominic feel like one of those dogs which widdle on every post, fire hydrant, and bollard just to make it clear that this was his walking route.
He’d accepted that he was a lion, and that meant he was even more of an animal than he’d been as a human, but he clearly hadn’t completely come to terms with everything that that meant.
With the frequent stops to mark his territory, it took them a while to get back to where they’d left the pride. As it turned out, the females were still there – sleeping off the big meal of the buffalo meat.
As Leo approached, the heads of the napping lionesses lifted, two with interest, the rest with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.
The two mothers were still not completely certain about having him around their cubs, but his actions so far seemed to have mollified them enough for them not to meet him immediately with aggression.
‘So are we going to swap back and try to convince them to come with us hunting?’ Dominic asked impatiently.
‘Not yet,’ Leo replied with a slight air of distraction, moving over to butt heads with the closest lioness.
‘Not yet? Why not?’ Dominic demanded in frustration even as Leo went from lioness to lioness, including the mothers.
He then hesitated a moment, clearly unsure about whether to approach the cubs. His instincts appeared to urge him to greet all members of the pride – which included the cubs now he’d managed to convince himself that they were indeed part of the pride. However, his new, more reasoned thoughts recognised that the mothers might not want him getting closer.
The dilemma was solved when one small and bold cub stumbled over its own feet as it approached him, rubbing its head as high up his leg as it could reach. Even Dominic couldn’t help but be charmed, distracted from his desire to take control again by the cuteness of the little lion cub.
Leo reached down to rub his head very gently against the cub, his scent being rubbed onto its fur. Its mother had been tense from the moment the cub had approached him, but now she relaxed a little.
After greeting the first little one, Leo moved over to greet its siblings and then, after only a short pause, its half-siblings, more than twice the size of the smallest litter.
‘Alright, greetings done,’ Dominic said after all the head rubbing had happened. ‘Swap over now?’
‘Do you wish to do some mating?’ Leo asked pointedly. Dominic recoiled;
‘You know I don’t!’ he responded strongly. The lion just turned his head and looked at the two females in heat. Dominic took a moment to interpret their postures and the way their tails curled before groaning. ‘Not again!’ Then he sighed. ‘Just…tell me when you’re done for now, OK?’
‘Of course,’ Leo agreed cheerfully. Then Dominic pulled back into his sanctuary before he had to see – and experience – anything he couldn’t unsee.
*****
A while later, Leo ‘poked’ Dominic.
‘We’re done,’ he reported, sounding far too happy and satiated for Dominic’s sense of comfort. He didn’t wait any longer before passing the reins back to Dominic, the former-human being pushed back into control almost without needing to agree.
He settled in the back of Dominic’s mind, his whole being radiating satisfaction with his lot in life.
Oh well, Dominic said quietly to himself, at least he’s happy. It would certainly be more difficult if he had a presence in the back of his mind which was always snapping and snarling.
So, time to try speaking to the other lions through telepathy.
The other chimera hadn’t been particularly informative – apparently it had just ‘done it’ to speak to other animals with its telepathy. So, Dominic decided to relax and, hopefully, ‘just do it’.
He was lying down, one of the lionesses next to him, almost touching, one of the cubs playing with the flicking tip of his tail. It was a bit distracting, but he did his best to ignore it. Closing his eyes, he tried to just…speak.
‘Testing, testing, one, two, three. Can anyone hear me?’
Nothing. Not surprising. Maybe he had to focus on someone? When the chimera had talked to him, it had been staring straight at him. Opening his eyes, Dominic looked at the lioness directly in front of him. Sekhmet, as it turned out.
She was relaxed, her eyes closed, but maybe that didn’t matter. Dominic hadn’t met eyes with the other chimera until it had already spoken to him, after all.
He focussed on wanting to talk to her, on making some sort of telepathic connection.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked tentatively. She twitched, raising a paw and batting it at the air in front of her face, as if a fly had landed on her nose. Maybe it had and it was just coincidence that it was at the same time as his attempts to speak telepathically.
‘Sekhmet, can you hear me?’ he asked with a bit more confidence, looking at her intensely.
This time, she twitched again, opening her golden eyes and meeting his gaze. A strange kind of…itch fluttered at the edge of Dominic’s mind. He wouldn’t have been able to identify the sensation except that he’d already had experience with Leo. Though the male lion was a presence which was more properly ‘seated’ in his mind, the ability to compare meant that he was able to identify this as more to the periphery of his mind.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked again, excitement rising at the apparent success. Well, the beginnings of success, anyway.
There was no verbal response, but he got a sense of…confusion. Wariness. Understandable.
‘Sekhmet, it’s me…the lion.’ The confusion and wariness were not eased, if anything they were increased. Dominic saw her lips starting to lift from her teeth and knew that he was in danger of losing her.
I need another approach, he told himself.
‘You’re being too human about this,’ Leo chimed in with his opinion. ‘She won’t understand words, just like I didn’t until soon before level 10.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’ Dominic asked, a little exasperated, a little hopeful that he might have a good idea, being a lion himself.
‘How do we identify each other?’ Leo asked patiently. Dominic took a moment to think about it.
‘Scents, appearance,’ he realised. Not names, especially not names which Dominic had himself come up with without the lioness’ own input. ‘Thanks.’
This time, instead of trying to send words, he tried to think about his own appearance, his own scent. It was hard to ‘send’ that to the lioness. He was used to speaking aloud, and now, thanks to his time with Leo, he’d become used to speaking mentally. But sending over nonverbal concepts? That was harder.
In fact, he thought it was only possible to do it because he’d actually had a bit of practice with sending images and thoughts to Leo. He hadn’t really sent scents, but it had come up once or twice in the reverse direction.
This time, he watched carefully as the lioness’s reaction was a bit different. There was still caution, but more interest. Her ears twitched, as did her tail, her head tilting to one side and then the other, inspecting him.
‘Alright,’ Dominic said to Leo, ‘let’s try the next step.’ Standing up, he pushed an image at the lioness of himself, and then the veten he had attacked. He then sent an image of the lioness and tried to attach a questioning feel to it.
The lioness felt confused, but seemed to have understood something of what he’d tried to communicate, sending a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. If she had understood Dominic’s invitation, she was rejecting it.
Dominic tried again. He sent the same first image of himself, but then showed several vetens, all dead. Then he had to use his imagination a bit as he tried to show himself gaining in power. After a moment of thought, he sent the idea of him growing physically, his teeth growing longer, his claws sharper, his whole body bigger and more powerful. He followed it up with an image of the lioness also growing and a questioning feel connected to it.
This time, the lioness showed more interest. There was no immediate refusal, but she wasn’t wholeheartedly saying ‘yes’ either.
Trying to turn that ‘maybe’ into a ‘yes’, Dominic showed an image of more hyenas surrounding the pride, attaching a feeling of fear and desperation to the image. Then, a golden lion started tearing through the hyenas. As it stopped, with them all dead at her feet, it was clear that this was a bigger, more powerful Sekhmet.
The lioness was more interested, but still questioning whether it was necessary to leave her comfortable position here in the shade, her belly full of meat.
So Dominic pushed himself to his feet, stretching and yawning widely. As he did that, he sent her a casual thought that he was going now, and might not invite her next time.
Apparently even lions could be affected by a hard sell with time pressure. Sekhmet climbed to her feet and started padding next to him as he moved away from the rest of the pride. He’d wanted to convince more of them, but given how hard it had been to convince this one, he decided to just go out with her. Hopefully she would be able to help him convince the others by gaining a couple of levels or something while they were out.
Besides, it probably wasn’t a bad idea to get used to not fighting alone with a single other pride member – fewer things to keep track of.
The other females seemed confused about why one of them was leaving the group – and not the lead female who would usually indicate that the pride was changing positions. But for now, none of them chose to follow.
Dominic had to admit that he was a bit excited about this. Not to mention a little nervous – he had no desire to return to the pride sans one of the females, but of all of them, Sekhmet was probably the best choice. She’d held off three hyenas by herself and had shown intelligence in learning how to Consume from example.
We should be fine, he said to himself, mentally crossing his fingers – and then his paws, just to spite Leo.
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It was fortunate that Leo had much better directional sense than Dominic himself, the former-human reflected as he padded through the savannah. He’d travelled far enough away from the pride that he would have been hopelessly lost or reduced to following the few traces of his own passage to find his way back to them.
With Leo’s help, though, he was able to use landmarks in the landscape as well as important scents on the wind to orientate himself. On the way, he saw a bit more of his ‘territory’. While still feeling a bit uncertain about this whole ‘marking’ business, he did sharpen his claws on a few trees as he went through the area.
Despite Leo’s exhortations, though, he was unable to bring himself to spraying.
‘Come on, just a little spray,’ his leonine companion tried to wheedle.
When that didn’t work, he turned to threats.
‘Other males won’t know just how strong we are; they won’t be sufficiently deterred by simple markings of claws. They will come to test us, try to take the pride from us.’
‘Then we fight them off,’ was Dominic’s unmoved response. ‘More Prey Points for us if we kill them.’
Finally, Leo seemed to accept that Dominic wasn’t going to budge.
‘Let me take over for a little, then. We can switch back when we get back to the pride.’
Since that seemed to be a more reasonable suggestion, Dominic only hesitated for a moment before acceding. They quickly swapped over control and Leo happily lifted his tail and sprayed the tree before continuing on.
Dominic wasn’t quite sure why he was so against it, honestly. It’s not like he’d never urinated outside before. On long car journeys, hikes in the woods, at festivals when the porta-potties were too busy or too disgusting…. The urge to piss could come at any time, and it wasn’t always when he was anywhere near a toilet. He’d decorated a few trees in his time, not to mention a couple of fences, the side of a building a few times and, on one notable occasion, some snow.
But this felt different. Then, it was because his bladder hurt and he had no other way of relieving himself. It hadn’t been to mark territory like a dog or something.
Actually, that was probably it. Spraying made Dominic feel like one of those dogs which widdle on every post, fire hydrant, and bollard just to make it clear that this was his walking route.
He’d accepted that he was a lion, and that meant he was even more of an animal than he’d been as a human, but he clearly hadn’t completely come to terms with everything that that meant.
With the frequent stops to mark his territory, it took them a while to get back to where they’d left the pride. As it turned out, the females were still there – sleeping off the big meal of the buffalo meat.
As Leo approached, the heads of the napping lionesses lifted, two with interest, the rest with a mixture of curiosity and wariness.
The two mothers were still not completely certain about having him around their cubs, but his actions so far seemed to have mollified them enough for them not to meet him immediately with aggression.
‘So are we going to swap back and try to convince them to come with us hunting?’ Dominic asked impatiently.
‘Not yet,’ Leo replied with a slight air of distraction, moving over to butt heads with the closest lioness.
‘Not yet? Why not?’ Dominic demanded in frustration even as Leo went from lioness to lioness, including the mothers.
He then hesitated a moment, clearly unsure about whether to approach the cubs. His instincts appeared to urge him to greet all members of the pride – which included the cubs now he’d managed to convince himself that they were indeed part of the pride. However, his new, more reasoned thoughts recognised that the mothers might not want him getting closer.
The dilemma was solved when one small and bold cub stumbled over its own feet as it approached him, rubbing its head as high up his leg as it could reach. Even Dominic couldn’t help but be charmed, distracted from his desire to take control again by the cuteness of the little lion cub.
Leo reached down to rub his head very gently against the cub, his scent being rubbed onto its fur. Its mother had been tense from the moment the cub had approached him, but now she relaxed a little.
After greeting the first little one, Leo moved over to greet its siblings and then, after only a short pause, its half-siblings, more than twice the size of the smallest litter.
‘Alright, greetings done,’ Dominic said after all the head rubbing had happened. ‘Swap over now?’
‘Do you wish to do some mating?’ Leo asked pointedly. Dominic recoiled;
‘You know I don’t!’ he responded strongly. The lion just turned his head and looked at the two females in heat. Dominic took a moment to interpret their postures and the way their tails curled before groaning. ‘Not again!’ Then he sighed. ‘Just…tell me when you’re done for now, OK?’
‘Of course,’ Leo agreed cheerfully. Then Dominic pulled back into his sanctuary before he had to see – and experience – anything he couldn’t unsee.
*****
A while later, Leo ‘poked’ Dominic.
‘We’re done,’ he reported, sounding far too happy and satiated for Dominic’s sense of comfort. He didn’t wait any longer before passing the reins back to Dominic, the former-human being pushed back into control almost without needing to agree.
He settled in the back of Dominic’s mind, his whole being radiating satisfaction with his lot in life.
Oh well, Dominic said quietly to himself, at least he’s happy. It would certainly be more difficult if he had a presence in the back of his mind which was always snapping and snarling.
So, time to try speaking to the other lions through telepathy.
The other chimera hadn’t been particularly informative – apparently it had just ‘done it’ to speak to other animals with its telepathy. So, Dominic decided to relax and, hopefully, ‘just do it’.
He was lying down, one of the lionesses next to him, almost touching, one of the cubs playing with the flicking tip of his tail. It was a bit distracting, but he did his best to ignore it. Closing his eyes, he tried to just…speak.
‘Testing, testing, one, two, three. Can anyone hear me?’
Nothing. Not surprising. Maybe he had to focus on someone? When the chimera had talked to him, it had been staring straight at him. Opening his eyes, Dominic looked at the lioness directly in front of him. Sekhmet, as it turned out.
She was relaxed, her eyes closed, but maybe that didn’t matter. Dominic hadn’t met eyes with the other chimera until it had already spoken to him, after all.
He focussed on wanting to talk to her, on making some sort of telepathic connection.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked tentatively. She twitched, raising a paw and batting it at the air in front of her face, as if a fly had landed on her nose. Maybe it had and it was just coincidence that it was at the same time as his attempts to speak telepathically.
‘Sekhmet, can you hear me?’ he asked with a bit more confidence, looking at her intensely.
This time, she twitched again, opening her golden eyes and meeting his gaze. A strange kind of…itch fluttered at the edge of Dominic’s mind. He wouldn’t have been able to identify the sensation except that he’d already had experience with Leo. Though the male lion was a presence which was more properly ‘seated’ in his mind, the ability to compare meant that he was able to identify this as more to the periphery of his mind.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked again, excitement rising at the apparent success. Well, the beginnings of success, anyway.
There was no verbal response, but he got a sense of…confusion. Wariness. Understandable.
‘Sekhmet, it’s me…the lion.’ The confusion and wariness were not eased, if anything they were increased. Dominic saw her lips starting to lift from her teeth and knew that he was in danger of losing her.
I need another approach, he told himself.
‘You’re being too human about this,’ Leo chimed in with his opinion. ‘She won’t understand words, just like I didn’t until soon before level 10.’
‘Then what do you suggest?’ Dominic asked, a little exasperated, a little hopeful that he might have a good idea, being a lion himself.
‘How do we identify each other?’ Leo asked patiently. Dominic took a moment to think about it.
‘Scents, appearance,’ he realised. Not names, especially not names which Dominic had himself come up with without the lioness’ own input. ‘Thanks.’
This time, instead of trying to send words, he tried to think about his own appearance, his own scent. It was hard to ‘send’ that to the lioness. He was used to speaking aloud, and now, thanks to his time with Leo, he’d become used to speaking mentally. But sending over nonverbal concepts? That was harder.
In fact, he thought it was only possible to do it because he’d actually had a bit of practice with sending images and thoughts to Leo. He hadn’t really sent scents, but it had come up once or twice in the reverse direction.
This time, he watched carefully as the lioness’s reaction was a bit different. There was still caution, but more interest. Her ears twitched, as did her tail, her head tilting to one side and then the other, inspecting him.
‘Alright,’ Dominic said to Leo, ‘let’s try the next step.’ Standing up, he pushed an image at the lioness of himself, and then the veten he had attacked. He then sent an image of the lioness and tried to attach a questioning feel to it.
The lioness felt confused, but seemed to have understood something of what he’d tried to communicate, sending a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. If she had understood Dominic’s invitation, she was rejecting it.
Dominic tried again. He sent the same first image of himself, but then showed several vetens, all dead. Then he had to use his imagination a bit as he tried to show himself gaining in power. After a moment of thought, he sent the idea of him growing physically, his teeth growing longer, his claws sharper, his whole body bigger and more powerful. He followed it up with an image of the lioness also growing and a questioning feel connected to it.
This time, the lioness showed more interest. There was no immediate refusal, but she wasn’t wholeheartedly saying ‘yes’ either.
Trying to turn that ‘maybe’ into a ‘yes’, Dominic showed an image of more hyenas surrounding the pride, attaching a feeling of fear and desperation to the image. Then, a golden lion started tearing through the hyenas. As it stopped, with them all dead at her feet, it was clear that this was a bigger, more powerful Sekhmet.
The lioness was more interested, but still questioning whether it was necessary to leave her comfortable position here in the shade, her belly full of meat.
So Dominic pushed himself to his feet, stretching and yawning widely. As he did that, he sent her a casual thought that he was going now, and might not invite her next time.
Apparently even lions could be affected by a hard sell with time pressure. Sekhmet climbed to her feet and started padding next to him as he moved away from the rest of the pride. He’d wanted to convince more of them, but given how hard it had been to convince this one, he decided to just go out with her. Hopefully she would be able to help him convince the others by gaining a couple of levels or something while they were out.
Besides, it probably wasn’t a bad idea to get used to not fighting alone with a single other pride member – fewer things to keep track of.
The other females seemed confused about why one of them was leaving the group – and not the lead female who would usually indicate that the pride was changing positions. But for now, none of them chose to follow.
Dominic had to admit that he was a bit excited about this. Not to mention a little nervous – he had no desire to return to the pride sans one of the females, but of all of them, Sekhmet was probably the best choice. She’d held off three hyenas by herself and had shown intelligence in learning how to Consume from example.
We should be fine, he said to himself, mentally crossing his fingers – and then his paws, just to spite Leo.
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