Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ai smiles warmly at him. "I am what I am... the shell I wear is nothing more, nothing less... a shell. It has it's plus side and it's down. I can't harp like this, or even pipe, though I can certainly sing... so I suppose it will have to do. I guess you can say I've grown used to being able to express myself through my music... and having that expression limited doesn't always sit well... but when I'm like this, I feel the emotional flows that surround me more clearly."

She blushes slightly and looks down at her feet. "I... I am happy you find it pleasing though."

She's already in motion. He did confuse her for a second or two, but by the time he was turning around to yell at her, she had figured out he was only playing and was quick on his heels. With a leap she launches herself at him and her powerful back legs carry her quite a distance. This is the first time he has ever seen her perform that trick, though he has seen her leap about for short distances, such as when they played pounce and tag about the tree at their home. Realizing he had best move or get flattened, he ducks and rolls away, laughing his head off.

"Missed me!"

Suddenly he loses sight of her and wonders where she's gone. Casting about mentally he tries to pinpoint her location, but she shielding hard. Then he catches a bit of movement from the corner of his eye and thinks it's her. Sniggering to himself, he swings about, only to run square into the unsuspecting lioness who is tailing him silently.

"What the..." she cries as he bowls her over. The two of them wind up hugging each other, laughing their heads off. Then Kero remembers the movement he saw.

"I wonder what that was?" he mutters confusing the heck out of his mate.

Curious as to what has gotten his attention, Ai bounds after him silently, well sort of silently. She's a tundra hunter and twigs really are hard to avoid with paws that wide when you are moving fast, but the ones she breaks are few and far between, though he can hear her curse mentally each time she snaps one.

What they find is a small red kit, trying to hide. Nearby is the slowly dying form of it's mother caught in a bear trap. It has tried to chew off it's foot, which has only hastened the dying part. The kit is thin and extremely hungry and distrressed, and terrified of the two large cat things that have suddenly showed up out of nowhere acting nothing at all like lions it has learned of. But it is also very brave, wanting to protect his parent.

Ai sadly shakes her head. "I can ease her way, but not restore that which she has lost. She's done for, I'm afraid. Let me take the young one away..." she offers shifting down into the shape of a vixen, though the process seems to take far longer adn is far harder to do than she remembers it to be.

"Send her to the All Father gently, Kero." she says sadly snatching up the kit by it's scruff and darting to the woods, leaving Kero stunned and sitting there alone with the dying fox.

(**life training... he may not like the task, but Ai has left him with an important mission... one she would have a far harder time performing than he**)

Ai feels the passage within her and calls to him in her mind. "Kero, come to me. I can't bring the little one back there. It would be too traumatic."

He follows her scent a short distance and finds them beside the river, where Ai has managed to catch the poor thing a small fish to eat. It is tearing into it ravenously.

She looks up with a serious, yet sad smile. "We won't be able to raise it here. The village's chickens wouldn't have a chance and our neighbors would shoot us. And to turn it loose will mark it's death. I'll leave it up to you. It is the way of nature. We've supped often enough on the unwary ill trained young, but you've had enough death on your hands today, I suspect. Want to go visit my home realm? Well, not my "home" realm but the one I lived in as the Lady Inari's child? This little one would be quite at home there amongst it's more intelligent kin."

She nods and walking over nuzzles him worriedly. "Ye ok? You look a little out of it, dear one?"

**mercy killing is not cold-blooded, hard and emotinally nervewracking but not cold in any book**