Disclaimer: Don't try any of this at home. Zoos are dangerous, and Puns can lose you friends.
-OOO-
They climbed on the back of the bus. The two taller Schnees took a seat and pulled out a pamphlet and whispered fun animal facts behind it. There was a railing, and Weiss leaned over. Blake watched Weiss point at things.
And, when the bus roared awake and started rolling on a path around the zoo, Blake was, momentarily, disorientated, for just a moment, She took a step back and clutched the snake around her neck in one hand and held out her other arm out for balance. Weiss saw Blake stumble and grabbed her hand and held it throughout the ride.
They saw an overview of the whole zoo- a little further away from the exhibits, but tall enough to get an idea of which ones they thought they'd like to see up closer, and the whole tour took less than half an hour, so Weiss had an itinerary for the next few hours by the time the bus slowed to a stop.
As soon as the bus tour ended, Weiss pulled Blake by the hand into the zoo. Weiss seemed to have a very clear idea of what she wanted to show Blake first.
Weiss pulled Blake to the railing on the edge of one of the exhibits, a pit of dirt meant to resemble a Savannah landscape. There were thin trees with wide branches and tufts of yellow grass and several outcroppings of brown boulders. The whole place smelled like tourism and captivity and megafauna poop, but this place in particular smelled a little drier and more sun-baked.
Weiss turned to Blake. "Okay, so you didn't like being called a a wild animal-"
Blake blinked.
"But that's because you're not just any animal, you're a kitty!"
Blake blinked again.
"So you'd like to see kitties, just like you! Look Blakey, lookit lookit! Kitties! Look Blakey! Kitties, Right here, just like you!"
Weiss put an arm around Blake's shoulder and pulled her head close, so that Blake could see what Weiss was pointing at.
Specifically, Weiss was pointing at several lions, some yawning lazily, other's sleeping lazily, rolled on their side, in the middle of the pit.
"Look at the kitties, Blake! They're just lion around!"
Blake blinked.
Weiss turned to Blake and jumped on the tips of her toes, slightly. "Do you see, Blake? They're just lion around! Lion around, Blake!"
Blake blinked more. One of the lions- a male one, judging by the mane- peaked his head up at the visitors. Blake and Weiss weren't the only ones looking in on them, but Weiss was by far the most enthusiastic of the tourists.
"Do you see, Blake? Or maybe I have to underlion them?"
Blake's mouth flattened. The taller Schnees were catching up to them.
"Maybe they're hard to see, though, because they're not where they should be; they're all out of alionment."
Blake blinked again.
Weiss tugged on Blake's hand. "Maybe I need to pour acid on them, so they're not quite so alkalion?"
Blake blinked several times.
"Ooh ooh, I know!" Weiss dug through her day pack, "We can look at them through my binoculars! Up close, maybe we can see their crystalion lattice structure?"
Blake blinked once more.
Weiss frowned slightly. "I don't actually have binoculars. I just needed to say I did to set up the joke."
Blake autonomically and simultaneously shut her eyelids and reopened them.
Weiss put an arm around Blake and shook her side to side in time to the rhythm. The plush snake flopped against Blake's side and stomach. "~There's a lion that we'll cross and there's no return, there's a time and a place, no bridges left to burn~ Anymore!" Weiss sang.
"are you done?"
Weiss smiled cheerfully, horribly. "You could say I'm not inclioned to be!"
Blake blinked twice, then took a breath, and then she blinked three more times.
Blake brought her hand up, limp and open. Weiss regarded it.
Blake put her hand on Weiss's face.
Weiss giggled and took Blake's hand in her's. Then her face went more serious. "But do you like them? I can ask the zookeepers if they can make the lions do things? I just thought it might be fun to see what lions are like in person." Weiss sunk into her shoulders and poked her fingers together at that last part.
Blake cleared her throat. She turned to the pit, and gestured towards the feline megafauna. Blake exhaled wistfully. "are they really lions? a captive life renders them merely oddities, not true lions."
Weiss raised an eyebrow. "Oh? So you're saying that the descriptions of them aren't really true, they're just lion about them?"
From behind them, Blake heard the taller Schnees fail to suppress matching groans.
Blake put her hand on Weiss's face again.
Then Blake twisted to hold Weiss's upper body out over the pit. More lions peaked up. Some of the little lions turned their little lion heads to the girl dangling out over the pit.
"Blake noooooo!" Weiss squealed in terror, or perhaps delight.
Blake pulled Weiss back. Weiss started giggling. Nobody around them remarked on the occurrence. And Blake wasn't really going to do it.
Blake leaned on the railing and watched the lions mewl about for a while. The lions here (All the animals, but Blake was thinking specifically about the kitties, just like her) didn't run, they didn't hunt, they didn't fight or migrate or explore or discover. But they had food, and a doctor to look them over and a cave to hide in and all they had to do was look like lions for visitors. Most importantly, they seemed content, as far as Blake could tell after watching them. And Blake did watch them, next to Weiss, until the human girl tugged on her arm to lead her away, at Weiss's mother's bidding, for lunch. Blake did not object.
Right before they left, Blake found out it was lunch time for the lions as well, and her nose twitched and her stomach growled when the scent of raw steaks mingled in the air with the typical zoo smells.