Entrance!

[slobbery_shenzi]

Luxury

Comments

[grabber_fray]

Oh boy, we'd better be glad Hana and Loo are with their Daddy right now, because what we wouldn't want would be Mel to be all maternal and cornered when she sees an animal lose in the street.

She's agressive enough as it is, seeing as it's only days since she cleaned up bodies that had been eaten, so that's why her foot draws back and the axe in her belt is drawn out the second she sees it.

She doesn't think to talk to it.

[slobbery_shenzi]

Ooh! Ears pricked and Interested Face!

"What do they say?" she asks -- well, that's if humans have the subtle skill of hearing to pick out the meanings and nuances of howls. "Is this their territory? I didn't smell any markings on this side of the wall, but still..."

[grabber_fray]

Mel gives Shenzi a Look.

"Mostly just 'howl howl howl'," she says.

[slobbery_shenzi]

Giggle. "Have you tried talking to them?" Because everything with a voice can talk. True fact.

[grabber_fray]

"No," Mel says, thoughtfully now. "I don't speak, um.. howl."

[slobbery_shenzi]

This gets a little "Bzuh?" look, because in the Pridelands, there's only English and Swahili, and everyone speaks both tolerably well.

"Well, do you know what kind of howls they are? As in, what animal?"

Please, please, please let them be hyenas.

[grabber_fray]

Mel spreads her hands.

"I know they're not vampires, and I know they're not Magog."

She doesn't even know what a hyena is.

"You wait til tonight, you'll hear them yourself."

[slobbery_shenzi]

Well, obviously they're not vampires. Vampire bats squeak, they don't howl.

"A Magog being...?"

[grabber_fray]

"Furry aliens that like to use people as incubators," Mel says. "If they were around, I'd definitely let you eat them."

[slobbery_shenzi]

Ha-ha! "I couldn't say no to that," she grins, starting to nose around the aisles, sticking her snout into shelves and pawing around produce. "Fur isn't half as tricky as packages."

She heaves her front paws up onto an ice-cream bin, so that she can peer in through the plastic top. More flipping packages. "So what do you people do for fun around here?"

[grabber_fray]

Mel follows, an amused smile on her face.

"I've got kids," she says. "Only spare time I get is when they're asleep or their daddy can be talked into babysitting."

[slobbery_shenzi]

Kids, hm? "Never had pups myself," muses Shenzi. "No-one I wanted to have them with." Banzai's the brightest hyena she knows, and she has the sneaking suspicion that even he would pass on more than a fair share of Stupid Genes.

She manages to nose open the lid of the ice-cream bin, and yelps as she's hit by a cloud of escaping cold.

[grabber_fray]

Mel laughs, but not unkindly, and opens the bin all the way.

"You'll like this," she promises, pulling out a carton of lager and lime flavoured sorbet and setting it on the floor.

[slobbery_shenzi]

Cardboard's easier to open than plastic, when you have a mawful of teeth at your disposal. Wagging her tail interestedly, Shenzi chews away the lid and gets a big mouthful of the tasty frozen treat.

"Wo-ho-how!" she laughs, shaking her head about madly. That is cold! And all kinds of sharp! "What is it?"

[grabber_fray]

"Sherbet," Mel says.

Even in the twenty third century, Americans are still deprived from actual sherbet.

"It's a sort of dessert."

[slobbery_shenzi]

Shenzi's making strange waving motions with her head. It's a symptom of that celebrated watershed, a person's first brainfreeze.

"Hurts my teeth." She's still laughing, though. "Tastes amazing! You all eat this stuff?"