[PRIVATE: DGFone & Thewhistlerify]

[DGFone]

When the group finished assembling, the trainer regained his composer and walked in front of everyone. "This is it," he announced, "the big one. This is how I will know who will finish, and who won't." He waited, scanning over them. "Get the rock, get back here. One per lion. Avoid danger if you can." He sighed. "You will be outside our lands. For a few of you, it will be a new experience. You won't be operating under our laws anymore, but by no law. It's a free-for-all world out there, and while rare, lions have been killed before trying to complete this last task. This is what makes it so dangerous." As he looked around again, Delano felt as though the trainer was looking deep into them. "Remember what you learned here. It might be the difference between life and death for some of you."

The trainer looked at the sun that was rising behind him. He turned back towards the group. "Deadline for passing is the second morning from now. Alright, now what you have all been waiting for..." The trainer paused again, purposefully stalling. "Go."


The group made its way down the hill. Delano started grinning again next to Muroki. "This is it!" He looked up at the direction where they were supposed to go. The horizon was flat. "Going to be a long walk."

[TheWhistlerify]

Muroki got up and walked alongside his brother once the trainer told them to begin, also noticing the flat horizon. If it wasn't the trainer who told them he wouldn't have consider the existence of a hill in that direction. "I've been thinking, we shouldn't go in a straight line. We want to get past the first hill. Now the trainer said it's high, which means it's wide for it to be measured and climbable, otherwise we would be sent to another hill. I say we stray a little bit to the side so to not waste time walking past the hill..." he looked at Delano and waited to hear his opinion. "Or maybe we should wait till we can see the hill so we wont stray too far..."

[DGFone]

"I thought the hill was simply farther than the horizon," Delano said. "If it will take us a full day just to get there, I think that the reason why we can't see it is because, well, it's not here." He looked at the horizon again, thinking. "What I think we should do is go until we see that first hill. Or when we feel that the ground will start rising, edge off to the side and not climb as fast."

As they continued to get closer to the border, Delano saw that the horizon remained stubbornly flat. Either the hill was very gradual, like Muroki suggested, or it was still out of sight.

[TheWhistlerify]

Muroki nodded at what his brother said, realising that his brother was right and that the hill could actually be a very slight and long rise of the ground which wont be noticeable. They would have to pay closer attention to the ground, or the weather which will turn colder the higher they climbed. "Yeah, makes sense." the horizon ahead of them was still completely flat. It will probably be the late afternoon or evening when they will notice the first hill.

[DGFone]

Delano looked around and saw that the others in the group were dispersing, all going their own way while still following the same general direction. Soon after that, he felt like for the first time in a long while, he and Muroki were truly alone. As they walked, he wanted to ask Muroki a question that, while they had talked about before, he still wasn't sure about.

"Hey, Muroki, what do you think we'll do once we come back?" He asked his brother. "We won't have anyone telling us what to do anymore... We'll be free again, but at the same time, without any direction." He wondered what he would like to do, but came up blank. This was really something he would have to make up as time would go by.

[TheWhistlerify]

Muroki thought. He knew what he was going to do once they got back, he was going to finally ask Umeme out so he could stop being nervous around her all the time. "Well, we didn't have any specific direction when we lived with mom and dad, we just lived... So I guess that's what we'll do." it might sound boring, but he had no problem with just living a normal life. And now they will actually see what it's like to live with an actual pride. He wondered what will life be like now that they were part of Kasi's pride.

[DGFone]

Delano smiled slightly. That time seemed so long ago, he had, ironically enough, almost forgotten about it. It wasn't that he had forgotten about their parents as much as he almost forgot how it was to live like without having a goal to accomplish. "Yeah, I guess we can do that," he said. "Just live... our lives." He didn't know why that concept seemed so foreign to him now despite living it for most of his life.

He settled with walking next to Muroki for the rest of the day, not really talking. Eventually, the rolling savanna slowly transformed into a rougher shape. The horizon in front of them no longer flat. "Look, there are the hills," Delano said, motioning. "We're getting close." What he didn't mention was that the hills also gave him a weird, unpleasant feeling. Like he'd been here before, despite knowing that he never ventured here before. Delano shrugged the feeling off. "We'll need to find someplace to rest for the night," he added, seeing as the sky was slowly darkening, and the sun setting. "And tomorrow, we'll climb."

[TheWhistlerify]

Muroki smiled as the hills came into sight. Not because the walk was that tiring for him, but because it meant that so far they were on the right track. "So far so good." he said, falling silent for a few moments, "I bet there are some caves around the bottom of the hill. Oh, and remember, we need to make sure we climb another hill and not the first one." it would be really embarrassing if they forgot that in the morning and ended up climbing the first hill.

[DGFone]

Delano nodded. "I think this bigger one is the one we want to avoid," he said, motioning. "and that one right there looks to be roughly the same size, so we can try it out first tomorrow."

They walked some more, and Delano got a new idea. "While there is still some light out, we can walk around this first hill so that we will know not to climb it," he suggested. "We still have some sun left before we'll really need to look where to spend the night."

[TheWhistlerify]

Muroki nodded, "Alright, sounds good." they might as well make good use of the time they had left for the day, since they wont be tired enough until the sun went down anyways. So far things were going according to plans, and Muroki was still as confident as he was at the beginning. [b]"This hill is obviously higher than the one we climbed the day mom and dad died, but we climbed that one hill a lot of times. And now that we trained quite a lot, I don't think we'll find this too difficult, only long."[/n]