by AustralianChaos » June 4th, 2010, 3:48 pm
Auni...Tanga forced himself to commit that name to memory, along with all the others. In his whole life, he had only ever had to remember three names; his own, and those of his two parents...and he was struggling to cope with all these new people in his life. He could tell that Auni was frustrated with him for his shoddy memory, and did his best to offer the lion an apologetic look, whilst also showing his appreciation for him sticking by them.
But Neru's words helped Tanga steel himself for what he was almost certainly going to be a nasty fight. There was no doubt in his mind that Imani, despite her silence so far, would want to head back after her sister once more, and Tanga would willingly - if nervously - follow her. As Auni had said, there were four of them - five if Imani's sister was still alive - and no lion, even one as vicious as Mufalfa, could possibly stand up against such odds.
If Imani's sister was still alive...Those words threatened to bring Tanga's hopes down, but he refused to believe it. Until he saw the lioness' body himself, he was going to hang on to that small hope that she was still alive, that Mufalfa had, for some reason, spared her.
"She's strong," he finally said in response to Neru's statement. "She'll have found a way to survive. And Auni's right...even someone as deadly as Mufalfa can't take on four of us at once...no-one is that good."
But even as the words left his mouth, he began to feel apprehensive about this upcoming fight. "Even so...if we're going to do this, and do it right, we need a plan. Mufalfa's almost certainly expecting us to come back sometime soon."