Leo woke to an extreme pain on the side of his head. Annoyed and sleepily confused at this rude awakening, he opened his eyes and saw Max, his older brother, standing over him.
Seeing that he was awake, Max hit him again. "Come on, Leo! Dad's gonna continue that lesson on foraging and you said you wanted to come."
"Yeah," answered Leo, still trying to wake up. "but I didn't know it'd be so early."
"What in this colony isn't early? Come on, sleeping too late is lazy anyway. Mom says you can't call yourself a meerkat if you're lazy."
"Ok, I'm coming."
"Better hurry up, Dad's leaving now."
This helped Leo perk up. He sprang up and followed his father and brother outside.
It was cool and the sun was slowly rising, making the sand and dirt underneath them warmer by the minute.
Leo was always excited to get to go with Max when their father taught him all about the duties of a meerkat. As he was only three months old, he would still normally be being babysat by his mother or another of the colony members. While that would suit some young just fine, he'd much rather get a head start and start learning the things his five-month-old brother got to.
As he was trying to keep up with their strides, they passed some of the colony's babysitters with their respective charges.
Max was right, their colony rose with the sun. It seemed sometimes even before the sun. It seemed many of the adults had already gone out foraging or standing guard or adding to the elaborate tunnel system that lay beneath Leo's feet.
He stopped when some of his young friends called out to him.
"Leo! Hey Leo!"
He paused. He desperately wanted to keep up with his brother and father, but he hadn't seen his friends in a few days and he didn't want to seem rude. That was another thing his mother warned against. Hoping that they would wait for him, he answered his friend's call and went up to meet them.
"Hey Leo. Where have you been?" asked a small meerkat pup with a rather large reddish-brown nose.
"Yeah, you haven't come to play with us in a while." chimed in another, this one's fur looking considerably ragged.
"Well, my big brother's been letting me come with him when Dad takes him out to teach him stuff." Leo said with a huge smile.
"Oh, neat!" the scraggily one said. "Wish I could go."
"Yeah, me too." agreed the big-nose one.
He swelled with pride as they oohed and ahhed. As far as any of them knew he was the first out of all their friends to start his adult training. He liked impressing them, but he thought he shouldn't dwell on it anymore.
Once he was done sharing his good fortune, he politely asked what they had been doing.
"Well, Joey and I haven't gotten to do much. Lately our sitter has been Clea, Ms. Ruth's daughter. I mean, she's alright and everything, but she won't let us out of her sight." said the scraggily one.
"Isn't that what she's supposed to do?" asked Leo.
"Well, I guess. But there's no fun in that!" Joey said. He then looked around before he spoke again. "Plus Clea makes us hang around with her daughter and her stupid friend. We've been trying to ditch 'em, but they just keep finding us!"
"It's her kid that keeps finding us. Then she goes on and on about how we should be staying with her mom, like we care." chimed in the other.
"I think Scruffy likes her." Joey whispered to Leo.
Scruffy had apparently heard him. "I do not!" he said defensively.
"Maybe not, but you do like her friend, the quiet one. That Laita."
Scruffy pouted. "Girls are stupid."
"My dad says it won't be long before we don't think like that anymore." Leo said.
"Ha, that'll be the day." said Joey. Then all three of them heard someone calling out.
"Joey? Scruffy? Where are you guys? We have to stay with my mom!"
Just then they saw two little female pups running towards them, one gently pulling the other along to get her to come.
They watched the one pulling the other tumble, taking her friend down with her. They both sat up and brushed the dirt and sand off of themselves and continued on.
Once the two girls had finally gotten to the three boys, Leo could see them properly. The first one, the one pulling her friend, had light orange fur on the top of her head, and bright green eyes. She wore a big smile, proud that she had been successful in finding them. The other girl, a bit smaller and a tad thinner than her friend, didn't stare up at them like her friend. Her blue eyes were scanning their feet and the brownish fur on her head still has sand clinging to it. She looked like her friend had made her come looking for them.
Leo had seen them before, but he hadn't spent a lot of time with them. "Hi Kavie, hi Laita." he said to them.
"Kavie, why can't you just leave us alone?" Joey asked her somewhat rudely.
The first girl changed her glance from Leo to Joey. "Because My mommy is in charge of us, and my grandmother is in charge of everybody!"
"So that makes you think you're in charge of us, too?" Scruffy said.
"No," Kavie answered. "but I do think I know what's best for everybody, and if you two run off from my mommy than you might get in trouble, and that's not best for you is it?"
Scruffy and Joey both looked at her, thinking, and came to the same conclusion.
"No." they said in unison with matching amounts of distain at her being right.
Leo couldn't help but smirk at his friends. At first they were so adamant on not caring about what Kavie said, and then their tune changed immediately when she was actually there.
"Hi Leo." Kavie said, answering Leo's greeting, not missing a beat. When Leo returned his greeting again to both of them, Laita gave a polite wave, but stayed silent.
"Where have you been, Leo?" Kavie asked. Leo happily re-counted what he'd told Joey and Scruffy. The girls seemed just as impressed as the boys had been.
"That is so neat Leo!" Kavie said excitedly. Even Laita was looking interested. "I really want to start learning about being in the colony. My mother said she and my dad and grandma will teach me, but only when I'm older. What have you been learning?"
"Well, I just started tagging-along, so I don't know what my dad and Max have covered already, but we started on the lesson of foraging, and that's really fun so far!"
"I bet it is." she said, with the merest trace of longing in her voice.
Leo didn't have any more time to tell his friends more, because at that moment Max came striding over to him, looking annoyed.
"Leo! Come on! You said you wanted to come, Dad and I have been waiting, we thought you got lost!"
"Why would I get lost?"
"Doesn't matter, just come on now!"
Max grabbed Leo and pulled him, more forcibly than Kavie had pulled Laita, onward. Leo waved and said goodbye to his friends.
He heard Kavie, Scruffy, and Joey answer, and saw all four of them wave to him before his brother had drug him very quickly out of sight.
Author's Note: Sorry that these chapters have been short, but I'm hoping the next one will be longer. Haven't figured out how many chapters there will be, but we still have some more characters to meet. So it might be a few. I've got a whole mess of characters in this one, I think I'm taking a leaf out of some of my friends and their stories. :-)
