Sala paused again, ignorant of the big cat who watched her from downwind, to once again sample the air. She caught the scent of a small group of deer, but judged it to be several hours old. They had come this way to reach the river to drink, and then left the same way. They were far too far away by this time for her to follow in her current condition. She'd need to keep looking.
A faint sigh huffed from her, and she stuck her tongue out and no one in particular, and the gesture brought a smile back to her. Oh well, it was no big thing was it? She would just...
She spun and froze, lifting her small, regal head to gaze warily in the direction of the movement that had caught her attention. A huge feline clicking its tail, its fur orange with black stripes, easily as large as a male lion, with strangely hypnotic green eyes... well, the one he still had anyway. She eyed the creature cautiously a moment - she was utterly confident of her ability to outrun anything on the savanna, had yet to find something other than another cheetah that she couldn't outrun, but this cat was a big fat unknown. She hadn't yet run across any native feline predators to compare herself to... was this a native then? He certainly looked much more at home with his fluffy fur and heavier body. Well, surely with that heavy body he could not run nearly as fast as she maybe not even , so it was likely safe to indulge her curiosity.
She took a few rapid steps in the male's direction, relaxing into a more friendly stance. "As-salāmu ʿalayka," she called out - she'd come to the conclusion that natives in this land, disappointingly, did not learn Arabic as they should but that was no reason for her to be rude.
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