Ruzanski had been feeling something all day. He didn't know what it was, exactly, but it had been tugging at something inside of him since he woke up and it had been all he could do throughout the course of the day to keep himself from simply walking away from his mother and her lessons and going in search of whatever it was that called to him.
He would not be so rude to his mother as to just get up and walk away from her while she was speaking to him, even if what she was saying held very little use for him and even less interest. It wasn't a courtesy he would have done his sisters, but there was a marked difference between being a fellow's sister and being his mother. Though if Pur'Jed hadn't been Ru's mother, the odds were very good he would not have given her as much of his attention as he did when she went on and on and on about things which made no difference to him.
Not that she got a lot of his attention anyway, or even most of it. He paid enough attention to her when she was lecturing that he was sort of aware of what was going on around him. It wasn't easy for Ru to listen to her lessons and lectures and to attend as closely as she would have wanted him to. The way his ears delivered speech to his brain didn't always make sense, and sometimes he heard words a little oddly, or in the wrong order. It wasn't difficult to puzzle out what had been intended, but it still took a fraction of a second, which made him slower to respond and react than his sisters.
The reason Pur would not ordinarily have gotten too much of his attention was that she seemed to Ru to be a very silly creature, overall, and concerned entirely too much with things that made absolutely no difference in the world they inhabited. Maybe wherever she had been born and raised these were vital, crucial things to know and care about, but Ru and his sisters had barely seen anyone besides their mother since the day they were born. How could they use any of the silly stuff she seemed to care about with no one around to use it with?
That, and it really did just seem stupid and petty. It didn't make the slightest difference where people sat when they ate, or who ate first, or any of that stuff. And dancing. Ru saw absolutely no point whatsoever to dancing. Not the way his mother wanted him and his sisters to do it, anyway. This person does this, and this person does that, and boys do something different, keep in step with everyone. It took all the fun out of what his mother said was supposed to be a fun activity. Ru didn't see it.
Ru did dance, though. Or something like dancing. At night, sometimes, after he'd patrolled the area around their den, he would take himself a little distance away, close his eyes, and move with the sound of the wind and the night birds' cries and the insects' humming and chirping. It wasn't music like his mother described it while she tried to teach them to dance and to sing, but it resonated with Ru as her music didn't. It was wilder, and his dancing was wilder, at at the same time more martial. Unconsciously he included elements of fighting which came from somewhere inside himself. It was a release to dance his way.
But it wasn't the drive and urge to dance which tingled in Ru's spine and made him want to get out of the den and move. It was something else. A different kind of movement. He needed to run. Not from anything or to anywhere. He just needed to be in motion, fast motion, covering ground and seeing new things. Doing it at night was better, since Ru was more in his element in the dark which came after dusk, but it had been hard to wait.
He patrolled the area around the den dutifully, but perhaps a little bit cursorily. His attention by that time was elsewhere, and it was a challenge for him to make himself walk the perimeter. He couldn't afford to rush, because if he rushed and missed something it would defeat the whole purpose of guarding his family as he did. It was a self-appointed task, and no one would scold him if he didn't do it, but he would know, and that would be enough. He would not slack off in this duty. Just the same, it was good to be finished.
Satisfied that he had done his duty by his family, Ru allowed himself - finally - to give in to his desire to run and set his paws on a firm patch of ground to begin with, to help him get the best possible start for his run. He didn't know how long or how far he would go, except that from the way he felt inside, it was probably going to be a good long one that would leave him sore and exhausted.
The first few minutes were slow as Ru got a feel for the ground he was running over and fell into a rhythm and a pace to match it. This wasn't sprinting like cheetahs did, where each stride was more than fifteen feet. It wasn't about speed or distance, really. It was just about the prolonged activity, feeling his muscles ache and then the ache subsiding into a pleasant looseness before beginning to burn. The burn, he was convinced was weakness leaving him and being replaced with...something better.
He didn't keep track of time while he ran, but he actually kept up a pretty good pace for about fifteen minutes before his breathing became too heavy to ignore and he saw spots swimming red and black in his vision. This was, he told himself, nothing to get concerned over. It had happened before and he'd pushed through it. It did mean that it was time to turn around and come home, though, because his stamina was shot and his feet felt like lead every time he put them down and lifted them once more.
The run back took twice as long and he needed to stop to rest several times along the way, but it was a good feeling as he stumbled into the den and gave himself a few cursory licks before falling into a deep and deserved slumber.
