The Myrsky Syntynyt was plagued by famine, and though the lions were managing to get by it was easy to see that the lands were changing. The insects stopped their noisemaking, and in their place the air was filled with the groans of starving prey breast. The lands were in trouble, and in some ways it showed and in others life carried on its normal, if not unusual ways.

Mitama was a cub on the verge of adolescence, at that terrible stage where she was trying to figure out who she was. To say she had guidance in this wouldn't be... incorrect. Her mother was a very self-assured, confident and competitive lioness. Her father was not much different, and they fought and bickered so much that Mitama was convinced that was the norm for parents. The dark cub had seven siblings, and they usually moved together like a little gang through the Stormborn lands. It was easy to tell they were a family with such prominent bone-like markings. Mitama usually followed suit with her siblings, roughhousing and causing trouble as any Stormborn brat was given cause to do.

But she was also a... little different. In her blue eyes reflected dark brown, enraptured by the sight of a dead mouse. She had no intention of eating it, because then an adult would scold her for playing with her food. Mitama had seen plenty of dead things, but this was the first time the cub had managed to seclude herself from the rest of her family to really investigate it. Before she could only play with crickets, and while they jumped far they could never run from her!

They weren't soft, but they crushed easily underneath her paw. The mouse was very different, and she picked up the lifeless body by its tail and brought it close to her face. Curious, she leaned forward to sniff the carcass. "Bleh!" the cub squawked and held the mouse back at a fair distance. It had been dead a while, and the decay was starting to set in. Something had picked away at it before Mitama had stumbled upon it.

"...What are you doing?"

Her brother, Gatito, stood behind her with a wrinkled nose and a curiously arched brow. Gatito was one of the larger siblings, and clearly took after their dad in stature. If god blood flowed through their veins, Gatito had hogged a fair amount of it (in Mitama's esteemed oinion). One of his front legs was covered by a bone marking, bold against his dark coat. Mitama's own markings were darker and more obscure, but she did not mind.

"It is dead," she purred.

"Well, I can see that much. But, seriously... what are you doing with it?" Gatito could not hide his disgust at finding his sister playing with a long dead mouse. It wasn't good for eating. He was pretty sure he saw that one of the legs had been stripped clean of whatever good meat had been on it. It was left dangling by tendons alone and he wasn't sure how long that would last.

"It's beautiful!" Mitama gasped, turning her head to look at her brother with enraptured blue eyes. In her excitement, she had dropped the corpse to the ground.

'There goes the leg...' Gatito mused silently.

"Everything's dying right now, well not us because we're strong. But all the bugs, and the things that eat the bugs! All the weak things are dying. Don't you think that's cool?" She didn't expect her brother to see eye to eye with her, but that did not stop Mitama from hoping he would. Despite their rowdy upbringing, the siblings were close to one another. Family loyalty was already engraved into her bones.

"...Uh," Gatito's ears flicked back as he tried to come up with an answer that would appease his sister but also prevent him from being dragged into her weird hobbies. "Sure." There, that was political enough! But, the moment he saw his sister's eyes light up he realized his mistake. "Wait, wait! Don't! ...Ugh."

Mitama had used a claw to slice open the mouse's belly. The cut was hardly refined and clean, but it did the job. Watching the guts spill out of the mouse made Gatito nearly gag - seeing the insects that fell out of it as well made him actually gag.

All the while his sister giggled, amused by the circle of life and her place in it. She didn't quite understand why she found it to be so interesting, but it was. There was something alluring about watching the things around her die and knowing that she was strong enough not to. Her parents were very strong, and she had seven healthy siblings too. There was no way she was going to die despite the crisis the pride was in.

That was very comforting to the young cub. "Don't be such a baby, Gatito!" she taunted her sibling. She turned on him, waving a bloodied claw at his face, giggling madly when her sibling scuttled back as quick as he could manage.

"Ew! Mitama, stop!" Gatito tried to sound like he was ordering his sibling around, but the sound came out as a wail instead of a bark. "Look, I'm only here because mom asked me to get you home for dinner. Tanis fetched us a prey beast and there's plenty of it to go around if we get back in time." Not that he wanted to eat now that his sister was playing with something that had been deceased for more than a few days.

"Oh, dinner already? Why didn't you say so!" Her mind switched quickly away from her games at the mention of food. She was a simple cub - she liked to play with dead things and she liked to eat. "Race you back?"

"No." Gatito answered flatly.

Mitama had already taken off at a sprint back towards the family den. With a heavy sigh, Gatito dragged his feet and followed after her.

(WC: 1007)