The light glinted playfully across my face, awakening me from my slumber. I reluctantly got up from my warm, furry haven curled up beside my mother with all of my siblings around me. I stretched luxuriously, and winced as I remembered yet again how hard the floor of that cave was. Cautiously, I tried to crawl over Hashim, who had odd brown stripes across his forehead, and Malishkim, with the white paws, without waking either of them up. I warily crept up the natural stone stairs that circled their way around the inside of the cavern and peered into the shallow freshwater lake in the room at its zenith. The reflection that looked back up at me didn't look anything like the faces of my family. My face was tanned from the sun, but it was still starkly naked and pink. Everyone else in my pride had rich, deep golden fur over their entire bodies, and the papuas, or fathers, in our pride even had a long brown fringe of fur around their faces. My hind legs were much, much longer than theirs, and I had peculiar miniature extensions with tough plates at the ends of them coming out of my paws.
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