"I'm sorry, dear," Mother Glen spoke looking down, "I should have informed you, but until the lupman Jessie died, and Blackie found out about what he did, I had thought your grandfather had died, and it drove me into a deep sense of mourning."
"Blackie?" Gillie asked.
"You know him as Patrick or Mr. P," Mother Glen explained.
Gillie only nodded. She had no clue who "Blackie", "Patrick", or "Mr. P" were, but it would be best to play along. Mother Glen continued with her explanation.
"I was so deep in mourning that I withdrew inside myself," Mother Glen continued, "it took a while for Vincent Glen to get me out of that depression."
"Vincent Glen? That's..."
"Penny's grandfather," Mother Glen nodded, "has since died of old age."
"I'm related to one of my own officers?" Gillie thought to herself.
"Anyway," Mother Glen continued, "by the time Vincent brought me out of my depression, you were growing up well and happy and I didn't want upset you..."
"I would have liked to know who is in my family," Gillie said firmly.
"I didn't know if Gillian III and Julia Long-Tail had told you about what happened to Gillian II and didn't want to upset you by saying what happened to your grandfather," Mother Glen spoke, "If I could go back and tell you, I would..."
"But you can't change the past," Gillian II commented, "and in the end, it doesn't matter. You grew to become a beautiful lioness, you've earned my old job, and we are all together again. Best to forgive and forget."
Gillie didn't know how to answer that.
"I'm sorry if I sound overly harsh," Gillie said after a few moments.
"You have every right to be, dear," Mother Glen sighed, "I shouldn't have let what happened to Gill hurt me so much. My only hope is that you can forgive me."
Gillie sighed.
"Of course," Gillie sighed, and extended one paw, expecting a crude handshake.
She gasped as Mother Glen swung massive paw in a wide arch to pull Gillie into firm hug.
"Thank you, dear," Mother Glen said softly.
++++++++
1681
The men that had stumbled onto the three leoman cubs were members of one the few native tribes in that part of the country that had not that much trouble with the colonials. Some might have thought that they were a foraging member of the Iroquois Confederacy, which had put pressure on the tribes of Massachusetts from he west, preventing them from moving away from the advancing Europeans, but the cubs were hungry and scared... and they had wandered a fair distance away from Glendale, which was surprising, considering that the pride there would have likely adopted them if they went to one of the other adult lions for help.
"Who are they?"
"Humans," the first cub spoke, and noticed their spears, and instantly wished his father was there. One good roar and they would run, or at least think twice before starting a fight.
One of the men approached crouched in front of the three cubs and spoke in his own language...
"These are the maned cat people," the man commented, "male is too young to have grown it yet."
"They must be of the pride that lives on our lands," a second man replied, "what are they doing here?"
"I do not know," the first man spoke, "but we should take them back to camp. They look starved. Tomorrow we can take them tour cat-man neighbors."
+++++++
"Cat man?" Cassandra asked.
"The Native Tribes didn't have a word for "lion"," Marie explained, "now lions did live on North America at one time, but they went extinct before man arrived. The natives referred to leoman by terms that they understood. Some tribes in western states even used the same words for the Mountain Lion, or Cougar, or Puma, whichever name you use, for the Leomen."
"There were leomen in the New World before the Europeans arrived?" Maddex asked curiously.
"As well as lupmen," Marie nodded, "the lupman were the first to cross the land bridge among the sentient races, with humans and leomans following. It would create some interesting debates when scientists found the fossil records of the North American lion and came to the conclusion that the "native" leomen evolved from that specific subspecies of Panthera Leo."
"Did they?" Betty wondered.
"No," Marie shook her head, "genetic testing has proved that all leomen evolved from the African Lion. The North American Lion died out more then ten thousand years ago, but I do not know what caused the extinction."
"Did European lupman and leoman have the same problems with native lupman and leoman?" Samantha asked.
"The leoman largely had no problems with each other," Marie answered, "war for conquest isn't civilized, and they even tended to lean away from violence for the sake of "civilizing" someone. For the most part, European and Native Leomen peacefully amalgamated rather easily... the human governments generally kept the leomen at arms length and thus never really noticed. Native Lupmans faired about the same as Native humans did against their European counterparts."
"Are there any still out there?" Samantha asked hopefully.
"Most live the state you call Wyoming, near Yellowstone," Marie sighed, "but we're getting off track here."