Winds Over The Savanna
Sarafina enjoyed change.
The ways in which the shifting seasons and the weather transformed the land from one day to the next were fascinating to her. The way the whole world seemed to blossom after the dry season passed and the rain came to give new, green life to a dead, withered landscape was something she'd never tire of seeing, no matter where her life led her.
She recalled her first dry season perfectly. She had been born in the heart of the long rainy season and had been three months old when the temperatures rose and the sun began to shine more brightly than ever before. And with that the earth began to dry out and crack, while food became less abundant and her mother and the few other lionesses in their pride had had to go out hunting more often than before.
Sarafina hadn't minded that so much. After all, it had given her more time to play with her brothers and sisters and cousins. When the rains of the next season had come, she had been utterly enthralled with the sudden growth across the savanna. That had been around the time when she'd first learned about the Circle of Life. In the quiet of the dawn, she and her brothers and sisters had gathered around their father as he told them of the rise and fall of both lion and prey and the connection they shared through the ever turning wheel of time. She recalled, with pain, how her father had looked on his six children with joy and told them that they were the pride's future. That her two brothers and her uncle's son would one day form a coalition strong enough to protect their pride for any invading males. That her and her sisters and her female cousins would help to strengthen their pride's numbers in the coming years.
Hers had been a small pride, consisting of only five lionesses, her father, and her mother's brother, aside from the eleven cubs. They were all she had known from the time her mother had first brought her and her siblings into the family fold, until the time of her first hunt.
Her father... Sarafina still remembered her father even after the many seasons. He and her uncle had taken care of their pride together, keeping hyenas and packs of wild dogs away from their hunting grounds and chasing off the buffaloes and giraffes, the elephants and hippos from near their den in the brush. (A buffalo had trampled her mother and uncle's younger siblings and killed their mother. Sarafina had always been wary of the creatures after hearing that tale.) The most dangerous task, she recalled him telling her when she was seven months old and her first dry season was nearly at an end, was keeping other males - especially ones in their own coalitions - from trying to take over their territory. "Sarafina," he had said frankly when she had asked why they couldn't share their lands and be friends with the other prides, "The world is a dangerous place full of even more dangerous creatures. When lions go to take over a pride's territory, it is a win or die situation. They are not there to make friends. They are there simply for power. And if they can-" he had placed his paw protectively around her small body, then (their pelts were the same creamy color, she never forgot that), "-they will not hesitate to kill the lions who rule the pride, or their cubs."
Sarafina remembered those words. How he said them with worry (it wasn't until later that she recalled the creeping grey hair that ghosted her father's muzzle), how his paw felt tense upon her rigid little spine, and how concern clouded his bluegreen eyes as he watched, not only her, but her siblings and her cousins as well.
Despite her youth, Sarafina had had a keen memory for detail that she didn't take advantage of until she'd almost reached maturity. It wasn't hard to recollect the change in both her father and uncle and mother and aunts from the time of her introduction to the pride to when she'd entered adolescence. Their coats greyed and their eyes dulled the further down she wandered upon the path of memories. Her father and uncle's manes thinned and her mother and aunts spent more time teaching her and her sisters and her female cousins how to hunt than how to otherwise take care of themselves.
It wasn't until she'd spoken about it aloud in later years that she realized the harsh truth. Her pride had been in its twilight hour and she and her litter mates had been their last - and greatest - hope for the future.
Sarafina could not help the tears that welled up whenever she thought of the drought her birth pride's territory had suffered through during her second long dry season. She had been nearly two years of age, then, and the short rainy season had foregone its visit that year in favor of a period of dry heat that never seemed to end. Prey had been scarce and scavenging had only gone so far before all the animals that would die of heatstroke rather than migrate were gone as well.
It had been with a mixture of euphoric relief and joyful excitement when she'd managed to track a stray elephant calf that, no matter how loud it bleated, could not attract the attention of its absent mother to a gully not quite a mile from their den. Long after the hunt, the visions of her family's happiness over her success that had blossomed within her imagination when she'd realized that she, dainty Sarafina, starry eyed Sarafina, would provide a proper meal for the entire pride danced about in her dreams for ages on end.
She remembered every movement she had made toward the oblivious elephant calf. The tension in her muscles and the controlled beating of her impatient heart. The whistle of the hot wind through the dead grass as she leapt from her hiding place. The terror written on the face of her prey and the thrill that she knew had shown on hers. The landing, the noise, her own snarls and the calf's last desperate calls. The taste of blood. The realization that she'd made her first lone kill.
The feeling of being a fully grown and powerful lioness in place of a needy and still dependant adolescent.
And then the utter, heart gripping fear when a series of roars shook the very air and stole the breath from her lungs. Because Sarafina could never forget the powerful roar of her father or the sweeping call of her uncle, and she knew that the lions that had roared were not her family.
That had been the day everything had changed for Sarafina. The first of many jarring transitions in her life.
She'd abandoned the carcass of her kill, forgotten in the gully, as she had raced as fast as she could back toward the den. The scent in the air had been strangely heavy, warning every creature in the savanna of the approach of a violent thunderstorm. She hadn't known, then, what it meant and the unknown only mounted her fears higher.
Sarafina had barely glimpsed the horrible sight of her uncle and another, unfamiliar male fighting each other over the prone form of her uncle's son, who was barely recognizable under the blood and rendered flesh, when her mother had caught sight of her and turned her around with a desperate plea: "Run, Sarafina! Run into the rising sun and do not look back!"
The young lioness had ran, then, faster than ever before, urged on by her mother's words and their shared fear. Away from the den and her childhood and her family she had sprung, with fear and adrenaline providing the energy she didn't otherwise have. Crashing through the grass with her heart pounding in her ears, Sarafina hadn't heard the sounds of more fighting until she was almost on top of the fight itself.
Her two brothers had been with combating one rogue, and her father with another. Both had looked huge, brawny, and in the prime of their lives compared to her family members, either too young or too old to do much to make the fight equal. The male in-between her brothers batted her eldest sibling aside like a cub (they were all little more than cubs, then), receiving a yowl from her younger brother (her half-brother) in protest.
She had been ready to spring on the lion who hurt her brothers when her father had suddenly appeared in front of her and for the second time on that horrible day she was told to flee: "Go, Sarafina! And remember!"
And she remembered. The dust in the air when she turned and blindly ran toward the horizon. The pained howls of her brothers and the clamoring of her father's roar against those of the rival coalition calling her back as much as they spurred her onward. The distant, screaming cries of her litter mates and aunts when her uncle's thundering bellow quivered and broke against the earth shattering roar of the male who had taken down her cousin. The thunder and rain that had swept in and smothered all other noise and the scent of death in the air.
Sarafina had discovered that day that while she liked watching some changes, she did not like the sound of others.
She never knew if they had tried to pursue her, "they" being her family or the rival males. She didn't like to think on what might have happened to them, or what could have happened, too often. Though sometimes, she imagined her mother and aunts getting on as huntresses in the final years of their lives and her sisters and cousins having their own litters of cubs earlier than they should have. And those dreams seemed fine on the surface, save for the nightmare underneath that revealed three monstrous and unknown lions in the place of the rest of her family.
Her flight into the east remained a blurry memory of heat and rain and very little food. She didn't stop for no one knew how long, only ever halting long enough to hunt small game and snatch a few hours of sleep at noon and during the darkest watches of the night. Time bled into an endless stream of fear and torrents of water and blood.
The sudden change from endless savanna into desert had jarred her from her frenzied lethargy. The golden dunes stretched far before her without end, shrouded only by a hazy morning mist that did little to hide its apparent endlessness. A different kind of fear had gripped Sarafina's heart, then, and her limbs had shook as she'd moved first one then two steps into the unknown lands before her. By the time she'd moved some hundred yards into the desert, Sarafina had broken down in tears. She had wept for her parents and her pride and for the lost hope of ever seeing them again, but mostly she had wept for herself: alone, lost, hungry, and terribly frightened. Still, after she'd swept the afternoon and twilight away with her tears, Sarafina had gotten up and walked shakily into the silvery nightfall around her.
The desert between the western savanna and the unknown east had taken her three days of endless, monotonous moving to cross. But after all that time traversing the desert, she had stumbled into a land unlike any other where her kind roamed.
The Pridelands.
After the sweltering humidity caused by the recent rain, everything burned. And yet, as Sarafina had lain there, sprawled ungracefully in the sparse green grass at the utter end of the desert, the sudden appearance of herds upon herds of prey on the horizon made her stomach quiver and her throat close up.
The next thing the young lioness had known, however, was sleep, which had lasted goodness knows how long and had felt greater than every good thing in the world. Aside from food.
From the point when she'd woken up on the edge of the Pridelands and through all the long years after, Sarafina remembered nearly everything. Whether that was a blessing or a curse, she could never decide. The changes she'd been witness to, the rise and fall of kings and the shifting of turbulent seasons would have been enough for any lioness without her background. That long trail of memories began first with the scent of food and then the repulsive smell of a hyena.
With the scent of prey and scavenger clogging her nose, she had quickly gotten to her feet and began to track. Her path veered to the north, and the part of her that hadn't been so fixed on the scent trail had been utterly enthralled with the sight of such abundant prey. And so fixated on the trail toward food had the starved young lioness been that, at the time, she didn't pick up the scent marking that territory as belonging to another, larger lion.
A faint, southward breeze had pushed the smell of blood and sweat toward her and Sarafina had quickened her pace. Weaving through the tall grass like a serpent, it hadn't taken her long to find her query in a dry patch amongst the grass: an old hyena with his face buried in the torn back of a zebra colt, eating ravenously. Recalling that memory always managed to make her hungry and disgusted all at once.
That had been her first fight (aside from playing pretend with her litter mates) and she'd later marveled at how she had managed to come out on top. The hyena had been a worthy opponent, if she could call him that, but her new energy, youth, and hungry desperation were the deciding factors in their fight. Soon she had had him dead at her feet and his partially eaten kill became hers. She had devoured it, and when she'd gnawed and chewed every bone clean she had set upon his body.
For a long time afterward, what happened next always managed to make Sarafina laugh, even after she learned the full story (or figured it out for herself).
She was about halfway through with the hyena carcass and oblivious to the rest of the world when a shadow had crept toward her. She had only looked up just in time to see a wiry young lion leaping at her from out of the grass, and she'd panicked. The lioness had rolled over, narrowly missing the lion's body falling where she had been seconds before. The lion had gotten shakily to his feet, but by then, Sarafina had already pounced.
Over and over they had rolled, until she had managed to pin the lion's heavier bulk beneath her with a snarl. And then they had both gotten a good look at each other.
His mane, not quite full at that time, was black, and his eyes were green, a brighter shade than hers, and the left eye had a crescent scar running down its middle; the first thought Sarafina had had when she'd properly seen him for the first time had been that he was very strangely beautiful.
Then he had spoken and...her image of him wasn't shattered. It hadn't been what he had said so much as the sound of his voice. Every word seemed almost to purr the way he'd articulate it. Despite her enthrallment with the way he spoke, she still recalled what he had said.
His name was Taka, a prince of the Pridelands, and she would do well to get off of him.
Of course she hadn't. She had growled and pressed a paw right at the base of his throat. A prince? She had scoffed. What pride calls their sons princes, only to either chase them off when they reach adulthood or lose them in a takeover?
The lion who called himself Taka had snorted at her words and told her that if she would "kindly quit smothering him," he would tell her what she wanted to know.
"Are you going to kill me?" She had snarled as the familiar fear crept back into her chest.
"No..." He'd stared at her in confusion, and Sarafina was confused too. She was so confused that she'd lifted her paw from its place on his neck and backed away from him.
After sweeping a paw over his disorderly mane (his vanity became a source of quiet humor for her in later years), Taka had answered her questions as to where she was and what sort of pride lived there that it had princes.
The Pridelands, he had told her (with a rather puffed up air about him), was the ancestral territory of his pride. "More of a kingdom, really," he had added as a way to explain the princes, kings, and queens that had ruled there time out of mind. The King's title passed on to his eldest son upon his death, which began anew the Circle of Life. That Sarafina had understood, and she'd told the dark lion so. Upon further inquiry, however, she had learned that Taka and his pride's understanding of the Circle of Life far exceeded - or, more rightly, meant something almost entirely different to them than - the way her father and mother had taught her. The fact, however, that the king apparently had "two" sons who wouldn't rule together in a coalition had confused her to no end. This she had voiced to Taka, who, despite himself, was curious to hear more about "the ways of other lion prides." She had told him how two or three or four (or even more in the great, rare prides with over thirty or so lionesses) males would band together to protect the females and the cubs and to mark the territory and do so many other things that a lone male could not efficiently do.
On that day, Sarafina had been shocked to learn that she could have a place in this strange pride whose customs were so different from any she'd ever heard of. "The king will have to approve of you, of course," Taka had told her, and Sarafina had reluctantly resigned herself to that.
Oh how orld weary she had felt then! Barely halfway through adolescence and prepared to sacrifice herself so that when the time came for her to bear litters of cubs to a strange king she would in exchange for a chance at a home seemingly forever safe from rogue males and takeovers!
Taka had taken her to his father, the "great king" Ahadi, who had been at the central waterhole. The ruler of the Pridelands had been much bigger than his almost adult sons; ten, Taka had told her when she'd asked him his father's age afterward. His dark mane had been larger than the one his youngest son had would ever get, and the green eyes he shared with him had held wisdom, where as Taka's were always filled with curiosity whenever they met with Sarafina's. His pelt, however, was like the golden sun, and that he shared with his redheaded son Mufasa, a lion who would always remind Sarafina of the burning sunset. He had surprised the nervous young lioness when he'd asked after the fate of her old pride, and she had told him in low tones how a band of rogue males had taken over. She had been even more overwhelmed when the King had told his son to take her to the queen, and she had been sure that, even if Ahadi and Taka seemed to like her, the alpha female of the pride would definitely have her chased off, because she had always been told how hard it was for a lioness to join a pride that wasn't hers by birth or that she hadn't had a part in founding because the other females would often feel threatened by the new lioness.
Sarafina had been continuously proved wrong that day. Queen Uru, Taka's mother and Ahadi's queen (a dark colored lioness with bright amber eyes; she shared the one with her youngest and the other with her eldest), had been "absolutely enchanted" to meet her. Her eldest son, Mufasa, had been "pleased to meet the girl who'd pinned Taka" (much to her amusement and the dark lion's embarrassment), and many of the lionesses in the pride had been sympathetic toward her story. That day she had also seen the center of the kingdom, Pride Rock, for the first time. The large structure stood then as it did in after years: over sixty feet tall and with numerous caves to be used as dens and with the great jutting promontory that overlooked the wide savanna. So great was its initial impact on her that she'd been embarrassed when she later explained that she and her family had made their den in the brush on the ground. In those first weeks in the Pridelands and at Pride Rock she had built many relationships that would last long into her adult years, many of which she still held close to her heart; she had also, to the pride's delight, proved herself to be an adept huntress that the Queen had said would prove valuable to them all, a complement Sarafina had not taken lightly.
The relative ease in which Sarafina had passed her first two years in the Pridelands was a source of comfort to the lioness as she grew ever older. She had been through so much upheaval in those days that she often felt she wouldn't have made it (or, st least, made it half as well) with any other pride or by herself. She found that change in her life as one of the greatest and most powerful.
She recalled with regret, however, how things had begun to change for her not long after she'd turned four. King Ahadi had been wounded in a confrontation with hyenas and had recently passed, then, leaving Mufasa and his mate, a warm lioness named Sarabi, to ascend the throne of Pride Rock. (She had again voiced her confusion to Taka, who had become her closest friend when she had joined the pride, about the absence of a joint kingship. He had been more interested than ever to listen to her words and Sarafina often felt that she should have seen the signs of her friend's fall, but she hadn't, not until it was too late, and she would never not blame herself.) She, newly an adult and "at that point" (as both her mother, aunts, and even Queen Uru had called it) had gone to Mufasa, prepared to let him mate her.
The fact that he wouldn't, and had actually been surprised at her request, wasn't Sarafina's first clue that the lions of the Pridelands were vastly different than other lions, but she was still rather confused at his refusal. Unwilling to go to Sarabi or Taka with her problem, she had gone to Queen Uru for answers. The elderly lioness, who everyone, including Sarabi, still referred to as the queen, had understood Sarafina's plight. Ahadi had been a rogue before he came to the Pridelands and she had asked him to rule alongside her as her mate and king, so she was no stranger to helping other lions understand their ways. Most cubs, Uru had told the confused young lioness, were fathered by either rogues, other males in the pride that had not left, or by the king after he and the queen had produced an heir to the throne.
Unwilling to wait on a cub that hadn't yet been conceived to have her own and too embarrassed to ask Taka, Sarafina had soon thereafter ventured beyond the boundaries of the Pridelands for the first time since stumbling across the desert in search of a male lion that would be willing to mate with her with no strings attached.
Every time she thought of her return home, five months after she had left, she cried. But while she had cursed herself repeatedly for what she did (or did not do) before she had left her adopted pride, she could never regret the fruit of her quest: a creamy cub that she had carried proudly to Pride Rock in the quiet of the dusk.
Nala, her gift in that unsure time when she had found herself caught once again between the practices of average lions and those of the Pridelanders. Nala, the single remnant of a short affair in the wilds beyond any pride territory, common or royal. Nala, the daughter of her desperation and the fulfillment of a stranger's desire. Nala, the only cub to represent the lost future that her father and mother and uncle and aunts' had wanted for their own pride. Nala, Nala, Nala...
Taka. He had been the first one she had encountered upon her return, looking more tired and wan than she had ever seen him. With his eyes fixed on her cub in a peculiar expression of wonderment and terror, her dark friend had told her that in her absence Queen Uru had passed on and that Mufasa and Sarabi had produced an heir to the throne, Simba.
Simba. There were moments throughout the son of Mufasa's life where Sarafina was sure that she'd hated him. Upon approaching the King with her young cub for the first time, he had told her - told her, never asked - that a betrothal between Nala and Simba would be a good idea as she was the cub closest in age to the Prince. Betrothal had been something entirely new to her, then, and she could only nod her head dumbly at the King, unsure if she should ask for an explanation or deny his proposition altogether. In the end she had done neither, and while she later saw the relationship between Nala and Simba that had blossomed from the seeds of her and Mufasa's agreement, for the longest time she had worried over the full implications of their engagement.
There was a single moment in time when she had said she hated Simba aloud, and even when she was the only one who would ever know it now, the memory had burned its image in her mind and she knew she would never forget it.
Nala had been six months old and she had asked to go play with Simba. The Prince had run up, looking more excited than any other cub she had ever seen, to where she had been sitting with Sarabi while giving Nala her bath. The hopeful look on both of their small faces had made first her and then the Queen give in, and off they had run, even while protesting at being accompanied by the King's majordomo. With Nala gone, Sarafina had chosen to take a nap. While she loved her daughter more than anything else in the world, taking care of her needs had made it harder for her to sleep as much as she was used to. She'd slept well into the evening, only to be woken by the call of the majordomo, Zazu, who had brought a sniffling Nala to her. The cub had clung to her leg as the hornbill explained to her what had happened. Simba and Nala had ventured into the Elephant Graveyard, and they and he would have been eaten by the hyenas there if King Mufasa hadn't found them. All she could do was thank him for bringing her daughter back to her and nuzzle the cub as she cried.
Sarafina had carried Nala out of the shadow of the promontory and underneath the stars. There she had told her of the sad fate of her own pride and of the fear she had felt as she ran away. She hadn't had a chance for that fear to develop again, she explained softly, but if she had known the danger Nala had been in, she would have felt more terrified than ever. Through all that, the cub hadn't stopped sniffling until she had cried herself to sleep. Even after that, Sarafina had sat over her, thinking dark thoughts about the one who had endangered her child. Under the silvery night sky, the fire in her chest had raged until she had uttered the deadly words toward Mufasa and Sarabi's son aloud. And almost instantly, the fire had gone out, her anger had cooled, and she had assumed that that was the end as she gently carried Nala back to the den.
She hadn't known that she'd been overheard.
It was only a few weeks after that the Stampede crashed across their lives like a falling tree in a storm. She remembered that day vividly. Taka had trudged despondently up to the underside of the promontory where a great many of the lionesses in their pride had been reclining and resting away from the heat of the late afternoon. The dark lion had looked first at Sarabi, and then her, and then lastly the present pride members as a whole before he...cried.
There had been a wildebeest stampede in the gorge, he had said softly, and both Simba and Mufasa had been caught in the heart of it.
Sarabi had jumped up at his words, and she was quickly followed by several other lionesses as she darted away toward the gorge. Sarafina, however, had just stood there and stared at Taka.
Everyone called him Scar. Long before she had joined the pride, when Taka had been just a cub, there had been an accident. No one had ever told her what happened, but she knew that whatever it was must have greatly effected Taka. Scar. She was the only one to ever call him Taka after Queen Uru had died. Even Mufasa had called his brother by that horrible nickname, and he'd raised Simba to do so as well.
The dark lion had been staring at the ground after Sarabi and the others had ran off, but when he saw that Sarafina remained, he had looked up.
Her verbal abuse against Simba plagued her mind as she looked at his uncle earnestly. "But are they..." She had started, though she hadn't been able to bring herself to continue.
"Yes," was all Taka had said in reply before he had turned and collapsed atop one of the shaded rocks in a miserable heap.
She remembered feeling very numb in those first few hours. Sarabi and the other lionesses had returned with Mufasa's body and no sign of Simba. His poor mother was convinced that he'd been forced into the river that ran along the gorge at one point by the stampeding herd in a failed attempt to get away. Sarafina had had to explain to Nala what had happened, which had distressed the cub so greatly that that night when they buried the Lion King, she could only lull in tired fear between her paws.
That was when Taka had ascended the throne of Pride Rock. He spoke of their loss and the pain it inflicted on him, the Queen, and the entire pride. But then a gleam had appeared in his eye, strangly familiar and yet unlike any Sarafina had ever seen in his eyes before. And then the hyenas had come, and nothing was the same after that.
Aside from the fights between the lionesses and the hyenas over food and other, simple things, their world didn't appear that drastically different at first. And for once, she was thankful beyond relief that the lions of the Pridelands weren't like other prides, because then Taka - her friend - would have killed Nala - her daughter - just to mate - with her - and that would have been crushed her very soul. She didn't know how Sarabi had done it, how she lived through the loss of her only child and her mate, but she admired the Queen's strength of heart.
He hadn't killed any cubs, but nearly everything else Taka had done during his reign would forever stretch across her memory like a dark and heavy rain cloud that never poured.
He hadn't even been Taka anymore. In her eyes he had truly become the dark figure everyone called Scar. The rainy season had ended almost early and yet the lionesses were charged to hunt more than what they would during even the wettest and most abundant of seasons. Most of what they brought back was then given to the King and the hyenas and they were often left with what few scraps that could be spirited away. The dry season had stretched on through endless days of blazing heat and frigid nights, and even during what was meant to be the short rainy season no rain came, making an almost unnoticeable stretch of time pass between the dry seasons.
The world had dulled into greys and browns, with the sky taking a dismal, thunderous-but-never-stormy appearance and a dead look to the grounds. Sarafina hated it. She had always been fond of watching the savanna shift and thrive throughout the passage of the seasons through various shades of greenery and animal life. But this...time crawled on, but nothing changed. Everything was always the same: dark and desolate and dead.
All except her Nala, that is. The cub had been detached from her and the world for a long while after her playmate's death, and it had broken her heart to see her once sunny little girl so grief stricken. After a while, though, as their world went from bad to worse and fell further still, Nala grew more responsible, more mature, and more beautiful than she had ever expected, but always hoped, for her to be.
Beyond the blooming of her cub over the seemingly endless dry seasons into a lioness that any mother would be proud of, the bleary grey memories of Taka-Scar's reign were enough to make her wish she'd been thrown into the stampede in the gorge right after Mufasa instead of being made to witness the depths of despair that had plagued her adopted pride.
She knew, now, of course. Hadn't the truth been revealed to every lion, hyena, and prey animal in the Pridelands less than an hour ago?
She didn't know why Nala had vanished, though something in her told her that that was likely for the best. But as it was, her daughter had been gone for well over a week. Part of her had feared that she'd managed to push the hyenas too far one too many times with her aversion toward their presence and had become their scrap meat. Another part, deep inside her heart, was terrified that she'd taken it into her head to run away from the death and destruction that her home had given way to. Those fears had warred inside her for the better part of a week and more as her Nala remained missing.
But then, not even a half a day before, Nala had returned. Her brave daughter had rallied the lionesses together and told them that if they would follow her and trust her word, that the end of Scar's tyranny would come by sunset.
The return of Simba and his confrontation with his uncle had been the result of Nala's absence. Sarafina still couldn't wrap her head around it, that Mufasa and Sarabi's son was alive, that her daughter had found him, that he'd return to the Pridelands to save them.
That Taka had not only gone mad and abandoned his pride to the hyenas, but that he was also a murderer.
Even now, the rain poured down over the dry land, ending the drought that had ravaged their land. The hyenas in majority had fled and any that lingered were being chased away by the other lionesses. On the tip of Pride Rock, Simba roared, his call echoing for miles and miles, warning any other lions that the Pridelands had a strong ruler once more. And at the base of Pride Rock, Sarafina made her way through the burnt earth and rainwater toward the charred lump that had been her Taka hours before.
No, not her Taka. He hadn't been Taka for a very long time. Not since Queen Uru's death, or even before that.
"I," Sarafina started as she came to a standstill before the burnt body, hardly recognizable under the burnt fur and rendered flesh. Her ears twitched and her tail flicked back and forth in agitation and sadness. "I think, Taka and I were alike. We both wanted to belong. But I think, Scar, that you veered from the path long ago." She sighed and bowed her head. She couldn't find the words to say, even to someone who was dead. The love and friendship lost between her and Taka, the guilt she felt for telling him how he was being cut short by his pride (when he wasn't), and the pain that it all had to end like this, with his death, bubbled hotly in her heart, but still Sarafina couldn't speak, so she turned away.
The world would transform once more into a thriving green wonderland of life and growth, but even until her dying days, Sarafina would remember the winds whistling over the cracked earth and dead grass during the reign of the dark lion who had been the first to welcome her into her family, and she would smile for the memory of that first meeting in the grasslands.
This is my entry to the summer contest over at The-Bards-College over on DeviantART. I'm pretty sure mine is the only Lion King entry amongst Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age pieces, but everyone needs a little change. That's the theme, by the way, change during summer. I hope this documented that well. Most of the story is dry and hot or has "sudden summer storms" as it follows Sarafina's life. I wanted to add Mheetu and an actual relationship between Sarafina and Scar (you caught me, I'm on that particular ship), but that would've made the story go on for too long and it would have taken away from the main, observational sort of thing I had going.
Feedback would be nice. I really tried to make sure Sarafina's ideas on how an actual lion pride function match reality.
So, all in all, this was rather fun. Thank you for reading!
Disclaimer: The Lion King © Disney.