Kerabai

"This is as good a day to measure the queen's worth as any!"

"You were having a nice conversation with Kerabai when she suddenly suggests heading to the jungle to look at the cool fungi! Wait, right now? Really?"
"Upon your approach, Kerabai pauses licking her paw and boops your nose, giggling."
"As you come near, Kerabai wakes up and yawns, then tries to sit on your back and go back to sleep, making you her pillow."

[claimed first, not in tutorial]
[belly scratch from kob hunt]
[right front leg scar from wildebeest hunt,
fulfilled a quest at the same time]
[muzzle scar from 2 warthog hunt]
[right eye, hirola hunt] [removed]
[^ a second one (lol) from ibex hunt, also removed]
[right eye long scar from hippo hunt] [removed]
[hip scar from sable antelope hunt]
[left hind leg scar from giraffe hunt]
[right hind leg scar from dorcas gazelle hunt]
[white right eye scar from an okapi hunt, removed]

* Queen of Tuwarret Araim
* Sister to Athui
* Blood-sister to Bahrut

Kerabai saw the potential in Arahi when no one did, and so she tied her fate to his and became his queen.

Kerabai's belly was scratched by a kob buck's horn when she pounced too early, but with Bahrut's help she was able to bring down the animal. She now proudly displays the newly torn scar and tells everyone she truly is a huntress chief. For her timely intervention, Bahrut got the honour of being the first to dine on the kob.

Arahi asked the lionesses to hunt him a wildebeest, for a bet he made with the green snake. He had thought Bahrut would send the younger females do his bidding, but later that day the queen, the lead huntress and the shamaness themselves emerged laughing and boasting, with an exhausted Mitvanthui dragging a dust-covered wildebeest carcass behind them and a brand new tear in Kerabai's right front paw. Arahi regretfully licked her wound, half expecting to be blamed for it somehow, but Kerabai was high in spirits after the successful hunt and said the scar was going to look just like that of Bahrut's.

Athui and Bahrut have had their chances to become used to tending Kerabai's wounds, due to her tendency to go on a hunt at a whim without bothering to scout the territory. Not long after, she got her muzzle scratched in a valiant fight against warthogs. They downed two, just to spite them. The tougher Kerabai looks, the more pleased she is. She says it'll scare off her enemies.

***

When the war between the gods grew more heated and Arahi chose to follow Apedemak, Kerabai stood by him. He confided in her in secrecy that he hadn't been able to let Apedemak use Tefnut's spirit for his rituals, but Kerabai told him she'd known that. "I believed in you when you were nothing," she said. "I will believe in you always."

It was up to Kerabai to stand up against Zibn when he started a rebellion against Arahi while Arahi was away. She tried in vain to convince him that Athui would return from her self-imposed exile and that Arahi had not swept aside Tefnut's death. His rebellion culminated in a fight against Arahi, which he lost but perished himself in his hubris, and Kerabai was now facing his two main allies, Red Arai and Simgirn.

As Red Arai saw Zibn vanish in the Celestial Stone, she let out a long howl. "Then I must be the one to finish the work here," she growled. "Many more of the pride were on my side than who now have courage to show their teeth." Some of the lionesses laid their ears in embarrassment. "But they will follow, once we put an end to you two. Don't think we need you, just because our king is gone. Kings can be raised, kings can be felled. We will raise one who won't serve the evil gods." She took a step towards Kerabai, followed by Simgirn, while Bahrut started moving closer to Kerabai.
Kerabai took a firm stance on the slope of the hill, laid her ears and looked from Red Arai to Simgirn and from them to each of the watching lionesses. "Come, come every one of you who would!" she cried out with a grim cheer in her voice. "This is as good a day to measure the queen's worth as any!"

When the situation was at its most heated, Athui wandered over the crest of the hill, and everyone fell silent.
"You have kept the spirit of Tefnut for me," she told Arahi in a soft, distant voice, and Arahi bowed his head. As the lionesses watched in silence, Arahi walked to her and lowered his head to lay down the glowing rock shard in her feet.

Kerabai took a deep breath, smoothed the hair on her back, and turned towards Red Arai. "Come," she said as cordially as she could. "I won't fight anyone who won't fight me."
Red Arai gazed at her for a little while, head tilted almost wistfully. "No, I don't think I want to be a huntress if I cannot be a queen. And I no longer want to be a queen here." She turned to look at the Celestial Stone, and for a moment Kerabai held her breath, thinking she'd charge right into it, but she spoke to Arahi instead. "It was I who spoke to Apollyon," she said. "He says there is a way to stop Apedemak from causing any more destruction. But he cannot do it." She held her head high and glanced at Athui, then stared right into Arahi's eyes. "The one who helps Apedemak with his ritual must betray him. Then will you know what you must do?"
Before he could answer, she crouched and leaped over the lionesses' heads, and charged down the hill slope and over the grasslands.

During the great drought, Kerabai earned another scar when she spited danger and went to bring down a hippopotamus for her hungering pride. This one makes her the proudest. Another one brought on by the great drought was a reminder of a chase after sable antelopes, where a buck rammed her at the hip just as she was about to pounce on another animal; her huntmate Ahit kept a cool head and took down the other antelope in her stead.

Her tail was wounded when she was with a hunting party that attacked a bush pig, but its companions weren't far and one of them attacked Kerabai from behind. Her daughter Sharrut, who was closest and paid the most attention to her surroundings, managed to pounce on the animal before it could do much harm to her mother, but got a long wound from its tusks in the fight. There was no end to Bahrut's praises or Kerabai's pride.

Though the rains came, the pride at Tuwarret Araim did not have it easy. Many of the lionesses were injured at hunts or in fights; one day Arahi himself came home with a wounded eye, telling a strange tale of a one-eyed unknown who had attacked him as he was scouting at the hills. Then the queen herself lost an eye at the hunt.
Young Arumzan, who was not quite old enough herself to participate in the hunts, was shy to approach her mother, who was irritable from the pain. Finally, as the wound had begun to heal, she went to napping Kerabai, who gave her a benevolent twitch of an ear as if to apologise for her earlier bad mood. With a concerned look, Arumzan carefully reached her paw and rested it gently against Kerabai's hurt eye. Kerabai raised her head but didn't pull away; years with her sister had given her an acute sense for the supernatural, and she could tell that there was something not of this world - and yet not wrong - in her cub's light touch. Under Arumzan's paw the soreness ran from the wound like water that drips off a lion's fur, and when she lifted the paw, Kerabai could see again. She blinked, lifted a paw to her face, to see if the old scar was still there: it was. "What have you done, my daughter?" she asked. And, as always when she couldn't understand something, she went to Athui.
Arumzan said that a lioness had come to her over the hills and told her to heal her mother's wounds, though she couldn't say anything else about her than that "she was red." Athui took her and Kerabai to spend a chilly night up in the mountains at the temple of Tefnut, and though neither of them saw any visions or had any prophetic dreams, Athui was convinced that the stars had send her, and that the healing was both a blessing and a warning: the stars wanted to tell them that a time would come when they would be in dire need of healing. Athui told Arumzan to try and heal Arahi's blinded eye as well, and the scars of any lioness who would humour them long enough, but nothing seemed to happen.
Kerabai was relieved that her eye was saved, but in her heart she was sad to lose the scar that had made her so proud. But she thought herself to be above such petty concerns as the queen, so she said nothing.