Day 48: Courtyard

[thatdamnedninja.livejournal.com]

"I could tell you some stories," Yuffie suggested brightly, "of unquestionable legality." Illegality, that was. Petty little things like the law didn't usually mean very much to her, except for the times when she had to uphold it. Always fun for the breaking, though, the law, and messy for the clean-up. Just the way she liked it.

Her nurse looked like she wanted to rub her temples. With sandpaper. "No, thank you," she said instead. "Why don't you run along, now?" Please!, was the unspoken request. Before I spontaneously combust. Or commit various acts of violence that would have me arrested, or placed in a loony bin. Like this one. Yuffie had quite a bit of fun filling in the blanks other people left. Sometimes she did it outloud, just to see the reaction; sometimes she kept it to herself. It really, really depended.

"Don't mind if I do!"

She took off, bolting out into the Courtyard. The weather was dour, overcast and threatening rain, but Yuffie didn't care. She'd refused a coat on principle, and had found herself bargaining: Fine, fine, Plucky had conced she could go without a coat, but unless she had at least a sweatshirt on, there'd be no outside-time for her. She ran a little ways down the dirt path, then toppled herself into a series of cartwheels. Straighten, run. Cartwheel. Straighten, run, just for the sheer sake of movement, and the whip of the wind. She laughed a little giddily, checking her gait down to a jog. Gawd, Leviathan, she'd needed this. Right from the get-go, she'd needed this. Every day she spent cooped up in side, the more nervous energy she had.

Nanaki had helped, she realized. Sort of. He'd…helped. In a way. His presence and everything that was wrong with it weighed on her, for sure, but he was still Nanaki. He didn't deserve to be here, didn't deserve to be stuck in a body that he hated and couldn't use, but all the same, she found herself glad to have him.

Yuffie started to hum, as she jogged leisurely around the Courtyard. A cheery little tune, one of her favorites; no, it was her favorite. A Wutaian walking song, with the roughly translated title of Pathway After the Rain. The pace stayed even but the tune picked up, and she found herself half-singing snatches of the lyrics to herself. It felt like ages since she'd last said anything in her native tongue, at least outloud; she wrote in it all the time.

[The Doctor]

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[longlivetheking]

Lions aged quickly compared to humans? The subject had never so much as occurred to Scar, and he could hardly be called an expert. He had to wonder how old humans generally became. Especially male lions generally didn't become much older than ten springs, though that usually had everything to do with growing weaker and less able to fend off nomads, therefore likelier to acquire lethal injuries or being ousted by rival males. If they are lucky, they survive a few more springs before finally being offed. It made the outlook on his own future rather bleak, even if he already hadn't been aware of the consequences of a certain hyena's trio failure to kill one cub. Now that he was aware, though, there was a chance to prolong it until his chosen heir would taken over. He knew it wouldn't be too many springs before he'd start aging and eventually unable to keep ruling, that's why he had already chosen a heir.

"What is the general life span of a human, then?" he asked curiously. "And that of your species?"

So, he had a name. And about time Nanaki here began mentioning it. Regarding his: "Whatever I had been called before I received my namesake is of no importance," Scar merely answered. He certainly didn't plan on telling.

[flamingfurball.livejournal.com]

"It varies on life style, habitat and other outside factors. But I suppose the average human would be..." Ok, he didn't really know. He grew up around the elders who had a longer lifespan. "Eighty." Yes, that sounded good.

He didn't want to talk about his own lifespan. It had been the cause of great distress for a while now. "There's no certainty about my species. It's just.... longer."

That was no fair. Nanaki told the lion his name.

[longlivetheking]

Eighty? Scar blinked at that. "That is ten times my age," he said to no one in particular. Humans grew that old? And that meant Nanaki's species grew even older, despite how 'uncertain' that may be.

And it wasn't like Scar hadn't told Nanaki his name; he had. 'Taka' was hardly one he used, for that matter.

[flamingfurball.livejournal.com]

"Mm, yes," he nodded. Only ten, he was lucky. Nanaki felt Gilligan stir and looked around frantically for a moment, he spotted Cloud and relaxed a little, although a different sort of tension filled his back when he spotted the Turk. He watched them for a minute.

"Are there more Lion's here? Or anything else that has changed form?" Perhaps Scar would teach him to walk and write.