Looking down, looking back
"A great and glorious future, huh?"
A thin, tawny lioness lay on a narrow rocky ledge, peering down at the grassy hill below Priderock. She remained entirely motionless, save for her eyes scanning the lands beneath. There they were, palling around in clumps of four or five, seeking shelter from the noon heat under the scattered acacias. A sneer fixed itself on the lioness' face, and she turned to her companion. The lioness next to her looked much the same as she did, gaunt with matted fur, but of a fairer hue.
"Sounds like a load of crock to me," the tawny lioness continued, "A smellier, mangier future more like it. This pride sure ain't what it used to be."
The lightly colored lioness made no reply, much to the chagrin of her companion. She did respond eventually, but only because the tawny lioness wouldn't stop glaring at her.
"What would you have me say, Zira?"
Zira, kept up her piercing stare. The pale lioness swallowed, then continued.
"I don't like this any more than you do, you know. I can't imagine any of the other lionesses being too happy about this neither..."
"Oh yeah? How can you even tell? Heard nary a peep from them. They can't seem to shut up otherwise, but yesterday all they did was blubber, and look all shocked. But no-one raises a paw, or even just their voice."
Zira peered down again. She still couldn't believe what she saw: hyenas, dozens of them, and all perfectly comfortable and unmolested, not just in her pride's territory, but right on the doorstep of the lions' den. All at the invitation of the pride's resident male - no, pardon, their king, Scar, at present only a day invested. Madness!
"You think it was a mistake settling here, Tuli?"
The lightly colored lioness called Tuli frowned. "I don't know," she admitted.
Sure seems like a mistake now, doesn't it? What lions in their right minds would want to live out their lives alongside those vicious scavengers?
Neither her nor Zira were born in the Pridelands - they had fled their land of birth, and the late king Ahadi had taken them in. Thinking back to that time, though, made Tuli realize that the Pridelanders had never been just any ordinary pride. She started reminiscing out loud:
"Come to think of it, Zira, these lions have always been a bit of an odd bunch, no? What with the whole "king"-thing, that weird monkey-shaman they keep around, and that obnoxious blue hornbill, all that talk of "the Circle of Life"... It's been almost a year, and for the life of me I still can't make sense of it. Yet, knowing all that, we chose to stay anyway."
"Not like we had much choice," Zira replied, "They were the first pride that would take us in."
"Yeah... I don't think we would have survived long enough on our own to go and look for another pride after that."
That admission brought back bitter memories. Two young lionesses, their pride wiped out, set adrift in the wilderness during the worst drought in living memory. Famished, exhausted, and eventually even too weak to hunt. No-one had any use for them - not alive anyway. Tuli could still feel the sting of hunger, and the dread of being hunted. When the enormous lion with the dark, gray-streaked mane met them at the edge of the Pridelands, and bade them "enter", she had thought for a moment he was a divine messenger sent to guide them into the afterlife, or perhaps mirage conjured up by her dying mind. He was neither. Before them had stood Ahadi, great king of the Pridelands, inviting them into his pride.
"To tell you the truth, Zira, back then, I'd have joined a hyena-clan if it meant a belly full of meat. Hell, I'd have married one if need be."
"You wish. Like you'd find even a hyena desperate enough to settle for your ugly mug," Zira remarked without a hint of whimsy. Only after a few moments did cracks appear in her facade, and when Tuli started snickering, she couldn't hold it in anymore, and burst out laughing. Any time it looked like the worst of it had passed, the lionesses would look at each other, only to relapse in a new fit of giggles.
"Heavens!" Tuli exclaimed, still gasping for breath, "I can't remember the last time we had this much of a laugh..."
"Ditto," Zira sighed, "Damn, those scavengers' inane cackling must be contagious, somehow. Like their fleas weren't bad enough! That's what we get for letting them get too close."
They sat in silence for a while, catching their breath.
"I suppose you're right, though. On second thought, bad as this is... might as well leave well enough alone, for now."
... because having to go look for a new pride might well kill us this time around. Tuli had known Zira long enough to intuit she wouldn't admit to that kind of weakness, but that was the truth of it. There were worse things in life than a newbie king with inexplicable visions of grandeur, or his uncouth scavenger friends. As long as there was enough to eat, Tuli was willing to put up with just about anything, and not make the slightest fuss.
After their heart-to-heart, Zira too was willing to accept this new status quo. But having made her peace with the new state of affairs, she immediately moved on to fret about the issue in a wholly novel way. She wasn't one to ever be contented. Scar had invited the hyenas into the Pridelands, and Zira would try and learn to live with that - for now.
But she found it exceedingly hard to assent to what she didn't understand. Why, exactly, had Scar done what he did?
Why did he allow the hyenas into the Pridelands? They had been banished to the Elephant Graveyard since time immemorial, and in his time as king, Mufasa had seen to it that they stayed there. But now Scar came in, and completely reverse his brother's longstanding policy from day one... Heavens, the vultures probably hadn't even started on the late king Mufasa, and already there Scar was, with his newfound mangy minions in tow.
Scar's glowing eulogies and sorrowful paeans had no doubt mollified the native Pridelanders, agreeable dolts that they were - that's why none of them asked any questions. But Scar's honeyed words did nothing for Zira.
The hardships she suffered before joining the lions of the Pridelands, and the motley assortment of lying scum she had met back in the day, had taught Zira to be, always and above all else, suspicious. And much like his hyena friends, Scar's words simply didn't smell right.
Something was rotten in the Pridelands, and Zira was going to try and find out what it was.
Author's note: so there we go, the first chapter of my first story in quite a while. I'll probably have a number of smaller, interrelated plots, against the backdrop of Scar's reign spiraling out of control, and I'll try to give everyone involved a day in the limelight.