It might have been said that Ur was hiding. He wasn't, exactly, but he was certainly avoiding certain things. He had been for quite a long time, though he wasn't doing so consciously. How could he? It wasn't like he had any sort of grudge or abiding reason to avoid those particular lions. Not truly.

But it had recently occurred to him, what with uneasy relations with them, that he had already been... less than welcoming towards their neighbors. It had been disconcerting to come to this realization, needless to say. Without being aware of it, ever since the Kizi lions had begun showing up, since an alliance had been made, he had not been at all comfortable with them.

One could hardly call him prejudice against outsiders... he was originally an outsider himself! He hadn't been born to the sea as so many others had. He'd undergone his swimming trial a good deal older than most who were born beside the ocean. He could still clearly remember the experience, and the uncertainty of finding a new home here with his mother. This was not the reason for his unease.

No, it was that somehow, those Kizi lions had always been... well, odd. Not normal, to his way of thinking. They said and did strange things. Some of them had very strange markings. Their ways were so vastly different from the norm that he had come to accept and be comfortable with here. They had brought some of that odd flavor to the pride, especially with the encouragement to intermarry. It just felt off to him, and because he never quite knew why, he had dismissed his feelings and merely worked around them, mostly by being present only as much as he needed to be when a Kizi was around.

It wasn't even that he was feeling justified, now that things were uneasy. No, rather it was making him come face to face with his inclinations, making him really examine what he was feeling and why.

To be honest, he still didn't feel any closer to understanding the why, and that troubled him. Perhaps he really was prejudiced towards those lions? Could that really be? It was distressing to his heart, which had led him here, to the base of distant cliffs, were at high tide the water would crash against the rock with dramatic thunder and spray. Now, at low tide, it lapped anxiously along the sand and among the exposed tidepools. He sat here, in isolation, mulling over and re-examining his feelings. He'd kept this from his mate, mostly because he wasn't sure what to tell her. He couldn't even puzzle it out himself!

As he sat and brooded, he was nearly oblivious to everything but the motion of the water in front of him. Consequently, he was taken entirely off-guard by a severe pinch near the tip of his tail. With a yowl he shot straight up in the air, pivoted mid-air to face his attacker, and came down with extended claws scraping on rock. Sitting there quite calmly was a large specimen of crab. He stared at the other creature for a moment in shock, and the cheeky thing waved a claw at him!

"What did you do that for?!" he demanded in outrage, lashing his (truthfully only minorly) injured tail about behind him, flinging arcs of tidepool water into the air. He had half a mind to slap a paw upside the crab's shell and send it spinning out into the water!

The thing gave a scraping, raspy sound that Ur finally understood to be laughter, after several seconds of it. "You are a lion. I am a crab," it finally answered him, waving it's claws once more in a gesture of finality, as if that was all there was to it.

Ur stared dumbly at the thing, completely nonplussed. "Yes, that's true," he replied. "There is much evidence of that, not the least of which being that it would be relatively easy for me to eat you." His ears pinned back in displeasure, but the crab began tapping his claws together. Oddly enough, it gave Ur the impression of scolding or tsking.

"You are lion," it rasped once more, pointing a claw at him and waggling it's eyestalks, "not crab. Stop crabbing."

Ur stared more at the crab, his brain spinning wildly as he tried to grasp that... the crustacean had just made... a joke? Or was it a joke? He frowned, but took a step back and sat down, pulling his still outraged tailtip between his forepaws.

Crabbing? As in... being crabby? Was he? He turned his thoughts inward, and tried to imagine himself from the outside. Well... perhaps he had. He certainly wasn't his normal, chipper self. He was naturally an upbeat lion, but this issue had him feeling very down and confused. But crabby?

He eyed the crab, which was now sitting quite still, aside from twitches of his eyestalks. The crab had certainly brought out the crab in him, but maybe it had a point. He wasn't being himself, that much was certain. And he had been crabby at... the crab... after he'd pinched his tail. (Oy, this was getting hilarious, and he wasn't quite ready to be amused yet!) "I'd be less crabby if someone hadn't tweaked my tail," he said instead, with a slight showing of teeth.

"You looked so crabby, I had to test to see if you were or not." That scraping laughter mocked him once more. "You are lion, though, to be sure. Crab would have tweaked me back. Silly, furry lion."

Ur just stared. He'd not spent much time conversing with crabs, and now he knew why. What a strange creature! Even so, he didn't feel the aversion to the crab that he did to the Kizi. Which meant this was a 'him' problem and not a 'them' problem, if he was honest with himself. That indicated that he needed a change of heart and attitude. It was not something he savored needing to do, but he had never been one to shirk his responsibility, and this was undoubtedly on his shoulders. He squared those shoulders and lost his angry, crabbish look. The crab rasped more laughter, but seemed to indicate approval by the way it waved its claws this time.

"There, now you are lion. I am crab, and we both live happy now." Ur gave a snort of part indignation, part amusement.

"Except for my tail," he added, which was still smarting from the ungentle tweak it had been given. The crab waved one claw as if in dismissal and began scuttling sideways towards a nearby pool. Taking that as indication that it was time for him to leave, Ur rose and padded off back towards the pride's dens. It would take some work, but he was sure he could alter how he viewed and treated the Kizi lions. Now it was time to turn his mind back to more pleasant things, like his mate!