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Louie shudders, his pelt rippling as he steps out of the time pool. With a quick swivel, he leaps away from it and turns to face it. His nose wrinkled in a snarl, he curses the thing in his mind. "This is /your/ fault! I'm not supposed to be here, and yet you- /you/ keep bringing me back here! Let me go /home/!! I'm not a lion, I'm a housecat! I'm a housecat and I'm supposed to be-"
"Louie? What are you yelling for?"
A gentle voice reaches Louie's flattened ears. He sucks in a breath and looks over his shoulder, forcing his fur to lie flat. The fury in his gaze can't be hidden, and that's perhaps the reason Hana backs away. Mr. Foxsocks gives him a confused, worrisome look.
"Is there someone there? What have they done to upset you?" Asks the vulpine, stalking forward in hopes to comfort his partner. Louie shakes his head and sharply turns back to face the now vanished time pool. It's gone. It's gone again, and so are his hopes of returning home. All he can do is sag with sorrow and rise to his paws, claws sinking into the earth below. "I'm alright." He says, hoping to soothe himself as well as his friends. Mr. Foxsocks swipes his tongue over the spot between Louie's ears, hoping to comfort him. It works.
Hana comes up to him, as well, giving him a soft nudge with her nose to encourage him to feel better. Louie can't turn away his closest friends, so he sighs and leans into the lioness's embrace. The duo of fox and lion sink down beside the housecat, their warmth welcoming and soothing in a way that tugs at Louie's bones and begs him to lie with them.
With a hesitant snarl at himself, he begins to speak up.
"I...I haven't told you everything. My dreams...they aren't dreams, they're really happening. The whole 'time pools messing with the space-time continuum', they sound implausible, but they're as real as the ground underpaw. I think...I think I'm going crazy, most days."
Hana gives Louie an uncertain look, tilting her head. "Well," she starts with that soft tone of hers, the same one she uses for the cubs Fuwasuteki sits. "Well, maybe you're experiencing visions, like the shamans. Or, maybe you're just eating too much tuna. It's very high in mercury." She teases gently, trying to encourage Louie to laugh. The housecat does let out a little chuff of amusement, something he's picked up from lion culture. His tail whisks at the thought. "Speaking of tuna," - prompts Mr. Foxsocks, - "how are you getting your supply of that? Aren't the fish absolutely massive? There's no way your tiny self catches and hauls all that seafood here. Unless you're secretly a cat with lion-sized strength, love."
"And what if I am?" Louie challenges, his whiskers twitching. It's hard not to feel better already.
"Then I wouldn't be able to do /this/." Mr. Foxsocks suddenly hops onto four paws eagerly and dips his head, latching his fangs around Louie's scruff and picking him up. The dotted cat hardly gets a chance to react before he's being flown through the air, rigorously shook like a toy rabbit he remembers gifting Mr. Foxsocks once before. "AAAAAAAHHH!!" Squeals the housecat, resisting the urge to cackle because Hana is already doing so. Admittedly, the scene /is/ hilarious, but Louie isn't any less strong just because he can be flung around like this! The housecat lifts a hind leg and then pushes as hard as he can on one of his partner's black-gloved legs, which, thankfully, causes Mr. Foxsocks to gently let him down.
As soon as the housecat's soft, cushioned paws reach the grassy plain below, he huffs in embarrassment and begins to groom his chest fur. He chances to look over beside him where Hana was laying and finds the lioness deep in a fit of manic laughter, probably induced from watching Louie flail around like a ragdoll. Suddenly, Louie forgets what it was he was even upset by. A delighted purr builds in his throat and he sinks down, curling his tail absentmindedly around his fox partner's with a short, affectionate bunt delivered to said fox's head.
Hana lets out the last of her giggles and calms down as well, beginning to recount her recent patrol and how she'd found an arrogant submale from another pride who had challenged her and, as she put it, 'gotten his arse kicked by a girl'. As Louie and Mr. Foxsocks listened to their friend's story together, the former realised that although he faced many challenges and pain was abundant within his life, he would always have a home in his pride to come back to. Maybe, just maybe, this home could be even better than his prior one, even with the time pools.
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