#ffc 2024

He had nearly made it to the end of the hall when Kifaji turned the corner in front of him. The old chamberlain’s satisfied grin made a muscle above his eye twitch to the same rhythm as his ear. “Ah, there you are Prince Leona. I was just looking for you. There is a dignitary—” 

The sandal slapping grew louder along with the insistent shrieking. “Unca Leona!” 

“—who wishes to meet you—” 

Leona twisted on his heel without hesitation. Cheka yelped when Leona snatched him out of the air mid-pounce. Throwing his nephew over his shoulder, Leona prowled down the hallway in the opposite direction of Kifaji. “Can’t play replacement for my brother right now. Busy.” 

The corner of his mouth twitched up into a smirk at the startled stutter that escaped Kifaji. “Prince Leona! This is a delicate business relation Crown Prince Falena has—!” 

Cheka giggled and wildly kicked his legs. Leona swallowed a growl and pinned the boy’s flailing legs beneath his forearm. “Were you not one of the people insisting I spend more time with my precious nephew? Falena will understand rescheduling the meeting. He rescheduled an entire assembly to attend a little play at his son’s daycare.” 

The tired sigh behind him was worth the sharp yank of his hair. He knew he couldn’t argue against Leona’s logic—his brother would be over the moon the moment snitched on him. Leona willingly spending time with his nephew? A new national holiday would be created just to celebrate the miracle. 

Checkmate. 

Leona couldn’t stop the new growl that rose after another yank on his hair. He flipped Cheka off his shoulder to sit on his forearm. Cheka—the oblivious brat that he was—squeezed his face between tiny hands and grinned. “Unca Leona! Unca Leona!” 

“What?” Leona impatiently snapped. He shifted Cheka to his sit on his other arm in hopes the brat would release him. It was a temporary solution because Cheka’s sticky fingers were like magnets to his face. “Stop shouting. You have my attention.” 

Cheka hummed. One sandaled foot kicked Leona in the ribs. The lion mask—a smaller version of the one Leona wore with his liongarb—slipped down Cheka’s forehead. “I been lookin’ everywhere for you! Timmy says you ran off to nap, and I says nu uh ‘cause yous a big boy, and big boys don’t take naps!” 

Timmy was as a big a brat as Cheka was. The amount of times Leona suffered through listening to Cheka complain about his friend disagreeing with him were too many for Leona to count even if he cared to keep track. Leona couldn’t say that without Cheka getting all weepy for his friend though. Sade would give him a death glare until he finally went back to Night Raven College if she found out he made Cheka all weepy when he should have been having fun with his bratty friends during the Cloudcalling Festival. 

He also wasn’t about to admit one of those bratty friends had been right. 

“What do you want?” Leona asked with a heavy sigh. Strategically speaking, dealing with Cheka was the lesser of two hassles. Unlike a bunch of sweat-smelling, greedy businessmen, Leona could slip away once Cheka’s extremely tiny attention span waned. He just had to find the right beetle to distract the brat. “I have other things I have to do before returning to school.” 

Cheka pouted. His sticky fingers found the strands of beads hanging from the lion mask on Leona’s head. “You gotta go back? But why?” 

“I’m only here for the festival,” Leona said with the thin patience of already repeating the same sentence several times. “What do you want?” 

The question distracted Cheka from pouting over Leona’s inevitable departure. Cheka pulled on the strand of beads and pointed to one of the doorways ahead of them. “We needs you for a very big thing!” 

Leona heavily sighed. The last thing he wanted was to waste his time with Cheka’s bratty friends. He wasn’t a kid-person no matter what Sade tried to say. He barely had the patience for Falena, the biggest kid he knew. Fortunately, kids were easily distractible. 

Kalim’s and Lilia’s happy greetings when he turned into the open doorframe made that muscle above his eye twitch again. Grim snickered when the only thing preventing Cheka from flipping over Leona’s forearm in excitement was his grip on the bead strand. “Look what the lion cub dragged in.” 

Lilia giggled like the deranged imp he was. The skinny little boy sitting next to him joined his cackling, a pair of small round dark ears flicking from a mop of brownish-red hair. “He certainly does not disappoint! What an excellent sniffer you have!” 

Kalim’s laugh sounded less deranged and more ignorantly happy. The chubbier little boy sitting next to him had a dopey type of smile on his face. “I’ll say! It didn’t even take him five minutes. I can’t even find Jamil that quick!” 

Cheka emitted a happy grumbly noise at the praise. Leona whipped his forearm out from beneath Cheka, making his nephew squawk in surprise, before grabbing him under the armpits. His eyes cut across the room to where Yuu sat on a floor mat with the last of Cheka’s friends, another lion cub dressed in a liongarb costume with strands of beads woven through her braided blonde hair. Neither of them looked up from the pile of beads on the ground in front of them. The lion cub patiently showed Yuu how to string the beads, continuously measuring the length of the strand around Yuu’s wrist. Yuu nodded with an air of unwavering focus. 

Leona ignored the two and turned an unimpressed glower at the others. He flicked his tail at them. “Why am I not surprised none of you stayed at the hotel like I told you to.” 

Kalim laughed, predictably missing the sarcasm in Leona’s voice. “Kifaji came by my suite with an invitation from Cheka after we came back! Jamil was busy packing up everything, so I accepted.” 

“It would be incredibly rude to reject an invitation from nobility,” Lilia added. Leona caught the bright glint in Lilia’s eyes. “As a representative from Briar Valley, I would hate to taint any diplomatic alliances. Malleus would be highly displeased if he didn’t receive future invitations to visit.” 

Leona’s upper lip curled slightly over his teeth. “Like I’d invite the lizard anywhere.” 

That glint became brighter. “Oh ho! Whoever said it would be an invitation from you?” 

Leona’s eyes narrowed at the challenge. If he hadn’t needed Lilia for the Bead Brawl... 

A light tug on his pants made Leona drop Cheka. Cheka landed on the other two boys, who had gathered around Leona’s knees. They squealed and wiggled in a mound of limbs Leona found disturbingly...squishy. Even Leona couldn’t contort into the pretzel positions they did. 

Leona decided to ignore all of them and directed his next question to Yuu. “Did the beauty queen and Jack miss the invitation?” 

Yuu’s eyes barely flicked in his direction, her focus on her current task of stringing beads. “Vil wanted to go soak in the Ivory Springs again before we left. He said it was the least he was owed after the injury he took for you in the Bead Brawl. Jack went with him since he’s been feeling better. He still wanted to see parts of the city even if the festival has kinda died down after the rain.” Yuu glanced up long enough to meet Leona’s gaze. “I made him take three bottles of water with him.” 

Leona grunted. “It’s not my problem if he has another heatstroke. He’s aware of the risks now.” 

Cheka jumping on his leg was the perfect excuse to dismiss Yuu’s unconvinced hum. Leona stiffened when Cheka’s friends grabbed him without hesitation. Was that snot dripping out of the chubbier one’s nose? 

“Unca Leona! Unca Leona!” Cheka demanded. “You gotta play with me!” 

Leona bristled at the command. Kalim’s cheery laugh was the only thing preventing him from punting Cheka and his friends across the room. “Cheka told us only you could play the role in the game he wants to play because it’s one of the most important roles. He wouldn’t even let Vil fill in before he left!” 

“’Cause only Unca Leona can do it!” Cheka insisted. He twisted away from Leona and ran across the room, taking his friends with him. “Unca Leona is leader of the Sunset Warriors! Timmy! Pupa! Come stand here!” 

Leona ignored Cheka haughtily commanding his friends in favor of imagining Vil’s reaction to Cheka’s logic. He almost wished he had been there to see the offended huffing. Leona could imagine that was why Vil had chosen another trip to the Ivory Springs as opposed to an opportunity of running into the rest of Leona’s family at the palace. 

A tug on his fingers made Leona glance down at the little girl. She stared up at him with narrowed blue eyes. Leona narrowed his eyes back down at her. She barely stood taller than his knee, yet she had already mastered the same judgmental stare Sade gave him when he skipped “important” family activities. 

Her glare never wavering, she held out one of the beaded bracelets she and Yuu made. “Take this” 

Leona’s fingers twitched, but he didn’t immediately obey her command. “Why should I?” 

A jab to the back of his ribs made him turn his glower on Yuu. She rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “She’s not asking you to eat a cactus. You can accept a gift without pretending you’re offended.” 

“A gift?” Leona questioned. The girl tugged on his fingers again, and he fought the urge to snatch his hand from her grasp. "Being told to accept something doesn’t sound like a gift.” 

“It’s not a gift,” the girl confirmed. She yanked on one finger hard enough for Leona to feel the hollow pop of a joint. Her tail angrily swished behind her when he conveyed his displeasure with a muted growl. “You gotta take it to give to her.” 

Leona frowned. He shot Yuu a suspicious glare, but she only shrugged. She held up the bracelet she made and gave it a little shake. “Don’t look at me. I’ve got my bracelet.” 

The little lioness emitted an annoyed huff. “That’s not yours either! Come on. Cheka! We’re ready.” 

Cheka jumped at the sudden shout. He ran back across the room to grab a patterned throw blanket draped over a bench. He climbed up on the bench and threw his shoulders back. Timmy and Pupa ran over to stand on the right side of the bench. Without receiving any instructions, Kalim, Lilia, and Grim moved to stand on the opposite side. Kalim grinned widely at Leona while Lilia softly snickered into his hand. 

Grim put his paws on his hips. “Let’s get this thing over with. I wanna go grab some more food from the festival stalls before they pack everything up!” 

Cheka solemnly nodded at the girl. “Bring Unca Leona and Ms. Yuu to me, Zahara.” 

Zahara slipped between them to grasp their hands, dragging them forward behind her. Leona loudly sighed and questioned his earlier decision to avoid Kifaji. There was no escaping Cheka with the others here. Especially the prefect, who jabbed his ribs again when he when he didn’t budge from Zahara’s tugging. “Just play along.” 

It was Leona’s turn to roll his eyes towards the ceiling. He stood his ground for about half a second—finding the little girl’s impatient grunting to be amusing—before another jab forced him to “play along.” By the time Zahara presented them to Cheka, his nephew had already become distracted with adjusting the throw blanket over him like a robe. A polite cough from Lilia snapped Cheka’s attention back to them. “Oh, right! Estimated peoples! We came here today to, uh, join the macaronis!” 

“Macaronis?” Timmy—or Pupa, Leona honestly didn’t know which of Cheka’s friends was which, but it was the scrawny looking one—repeated. His head bobbed around in a way that reminded Leona of a meerkat peeking out of his tunnel. “What does macaronis gotta do with anything?” 

“It sounds tasty,” Pupa said with the same dopey smile he’d had since Leona arrived. 

“I dunno what the macaronis do,” Cheka said with a shrug. He pulled the blanket over his shoulders again when it slipped. “But that’s what they said.” 

Timmy’s entire face wrinkled. Zahara jabbed his ribs in the same way Yuu had jabbed Leona. “Hush! We’re not done yet.” 

Leona never thought he’d empathize with one of Cheka’s friends, but the exasperated sigh from Timmy had him nodding in agreement. Lilia leaned over and whispered quietly in Cheka’s ear. Cheka’s ear twitched. Leona glared at Lilia when he fell back into his place with a giggle. 

Cheka threw out his hands. “Present the bracelets!” 

Yuu offered her bracelet to Cheka without hesitation. Cheka shook his head. He leaned forward and in a loud whisper said, “You gotta give it to Unca Leona, Ms. Yuu!” 

Leona’s fingers rolled over the beads of the bracelet Zahara had forced onto him. A memory whispered at the back of his thoughts, but Lilia’s giggles and Grim’s bemoaning “Hurry up!” chased it away. Yuu did as Cheka said and offered the bracelet to Leona instead. When Leona didn’t immediately accept it, she gently swung it from the tip of her finger. “Don’t make me put this on you myself.” 

Leona snorted. Deciding the quickest route to escaping all this was to play along, Leona took the bracelet from her. He tossed the other bracelet he held at Yuu, figuring that was his role in this weird game. He smirked when Yuu scrambled to catch it before it hit the ground. 

“The bracelets are presented,” Cheka happily exclaimed. He hopped in place on the bench. Leona took a small step forward when Cheka’s bouncing put him perilously close to the edge of the bench (because Sade would chew his ear off if Cheka broke an arm). “Holy macaronis is complete! Now you go whoopsie, and I get a cousin!” 

It was the first time Cheka’s prattling had left Leona completely speechless. His ears twitched from Kalim’s happy applause and Cheka’s friends’ mixed reactions of excitement and childish disgust. Lilia’s giggles had morphed into deranged cackles again. Grim’s head swiveled between them all. “I don’t get it. Is this another weird human thing? ‘Cause last I checked, macaroni was for eating, not...whatever this is.” 

Leona whipped his head towards Yuu. Her expression had completely flattened save for the small wrinkle between her eyebrows. She slowly blinked when Cheka jumped off the bench and tackled her legs. His thin tail swished behind him like an excited dog. “Can you give me a cousin before you leave? I want him to come to my next birthday party!” 

The whispered memory roared to the forefront of Leona’s tangled thoughts. Sade’s stupid friend—the one who had a shotgun wedding last summer. The one Sade kept calling a “whoopsie wedding” because she wasn’t about to sit down and explain to Cheka why everyone kept whispering about a missing baby. Sade had even said the couple exchanged bracelets they had made instead of rings because it was trendy or something equally as stupid. 

The kids—being kids—didn’t notice the new stiffness in the prefect or the shift in Lilia’s cackles. They huddled around Yuu and celebrated with happy cries. Cheka was the first to break away, and then it was like nothing had happened. Cheka took off across the room, and the other three naturally followed, the two boys grabbing an unsuspecting Grim and dragging him along with them. The direbeast sputtered when he was forced to sit between Cheka and Zahara while Timmy and Pupa served them imaginary plates of grilled beetles. 

Kalim was easily pulled into the game, “eating” his pretend beetles with gusto alongside Cheka. Lilia cackled and patted Leona’s elbow. “What an exciting way to end our adventure here! Now, you take care of our dear prefect. I know plenty of young men who will have a thing or two to say if you make too big of a whoopsie." 

An awkward cough from Yuu was the only thing that prevented Leona from snapping at Lilia’s retreating back. She wouldn’t look at him, fiddling with the bracelet on her wrist. “So, uh, that was something. Cheka has such a creative imagination.” 

Leona’s scowl flipped into a wide grin. He flicked his tail in her direction. She jumped when his tail brushed the back of her hand. His grin widened. "Imagination? You were the one who made the bracelet for me. You want me to believe you didn’t understand the significance behind it?” 

Yuu’s head snapped in his direction just as he had anticipated. Her eyes narrowed at him with obvious doubt. “It’s just a bracelet.” 

Leona hummed. He plucked at the larger red beads of his bracelet, feeling the shallow engravings in the glass beads. “I’m shocked you don’t have the Sunset Savanna’s traditions memorized by now. Jack brags about your dedication to learning Twisted Wonderland’s history after every little study session you froshes have.” 

The sunburn Yuu had developed over the last day slightly deepened in hue across her face. “I don’t exactly have the time to memorize every single country’s traditions. I’m the only one responsible enough to clean up all you boys’ messes after all.” 

Leona held back a derisive snort. He saw straight through her attempts to distract him, and he wouldn’t let her divert the embarrassment so easily. “Now I’m hurt. You’ve memorized the magical principles of alchemy but not engagement rituals? If I didn’t know any better, I'd say you were toying with my emotions.” 

“Engagement ritual?” Yuu didn’t sound nearly as scandalized as he would have liked, but where she was able to control her tone, her flush spread unhindered down her neck. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. What does a child’s imaginary game have anything to do with engagement rituals?” 

Leona clicked his tongue. He lifted his forearm and twisted his wrist for her to get a good look at his bracelet. The lie unfolded with the same ease as one of Vil’s flimsy little hand fans. “You see the symbol on these red beads? Couples once used the same symbol to proclaim their intentions of courting. If both parties accepted the courting, they’d paint the symbol on their foreheads with the same juice from the baobab fruit used to paint the Prince of Beasts forehead at his birth.” 

Yuu’s eyes remained narrow, but Leona caught the quick flick down to her own bracelet. She lifted her arm a second later and shook it with enough force to make the loose bracelet bounce against her smaller wrist. “All right then. Say I believe you. What’s the green beetle and yellow lion faces on my bracelet meant to symbolize in this so-called courting?” 

Leona barely blinked. “The green beetle is a promise to provide in even the harshest times. It was once said that the Prince of Beasts survived on a diet of insects after he became lost in the wilds beyond the savanna. Hence the symbolism.” He paused until he saw the slight widening of Yuu’s eyes, a subtle sign of her buying his lie. “I’d say the lions are pretty obvious. A promise of strength and protection.” 

That subtle hint of naivety instantly disappeared behind the prefect’s default blank expression. She crossed her arms and tilted her chin up to fully meet his gaze. The flush had paled to nothing more than a sunburn again. “Strength and protection, huh? Then shouldn’t the lions be on your bracelet? A promise from me for strength and protection? Because last I checked, it’s a pretty accepted fact that lionesses are tougher on the savanna than you broody, princely lions.” 

Leona sighed. He mimicked her posture, though his added slouch gave a hint of natural conviction. “Strength doesn’t come from just brute power. Wit can outmaneuver a flying fist with the right amount of flexibility and awareness.” 

“You’re so full of crap. Next, you’ll try to tell me a baboon’s ass is the symbol of wisdom around here.” 

Leona chuckled, finding her shift from gullible embarrassment to sharp skepticism amusing. He casually flicked his wrist while at the same time turning away from her. “If you want to be so dismissive of our traditions, I won’t stop you. More sympathy for me—the poor prince so callously rejected by an ignorant proposal. You can be the one to tell the brat he won’t be getting his whoopsie cousin anytime soon.” 

Yuu didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll tell Sade you made Cheka cry for no reason.” 

Leona stopped short and shot her a narrowed glare. He lightly hissed between his teeth. “The guards wouldn’t allow you close enough to speak to Sade even if Kifaji wasn’t the one watching the brat today.” 

Yuu arched one eyebrow. “Did you forget I have her cellphone number to video call Cheka? She’s even told me to text her if you ever gave me trouble.” 

Leona was going to have a chat with his sister-in-law. This was why he had never brought anyone around to visit—even if he had cared to bring anyone from NRC home, giving Falena and Sade direct access to people he associated with? Leona would rather eat vegetables for the rest of his life. 

Still, he couldn’t help but prod at Yuu’s renewed confidence. “And will you be telling her about our whoopsie marriage too?” 

Yuu’s eyelids lightly fluttered. “Well, someone has to confirm if Cheka has the authority to officiate a marriage, being a recognized prince and all.” 

Leona snorted and left when he caught Lilia shooting a wide grin in his direction. He wasn’t about to be stuck playing pretend with Cheka and his friends because the prefect thought she could use the threat of Sade to manipulate him. It was worth the risk of running into Kifaji again and being dragged to a boring, business luncheon. He could handle a slime-ball businessman; he wasn’t about to sit around here and lick the air pretending it was a grub soup with Lilia giggling on the side. 

for @februaryficletchallenge. the prompt is "yesterday/today/tomorrow." this is a negative-first draft; in fact I am actively playing gambit as I edit this story.