A/N:

Yeah, I don't know. That's really all I can say here. I started typing this on a whim Saturday night and finished a few minutes ago. Didn't edit or anything, just kind of let it grow and flow and do its own thing. One of those deals where you start something and then decide to write a bit and have only a vague idea of where or if it'll go on. I decided not to set it as "Complete", just in case - if you ask me, the ending is begging to be continued. Or maybe that's my own mind asking to explore this some more... hmm... It could be a short story or something.

I decided to share because I thought some of you would enjoy it. :3 So just go on and read. It's not connected with anything else I've written so far, and has no TLK characters (yet), so just go in and take it as it is. Read through the short little chapter. Maybe you'll like it.

Rated T 'cause of violence, folks... duh. It's not that bad now, but if it goes on it'll be a mote worse. Nothing you haven't seen before if you've read... well, just about everything I've ever written, ever. *shrug*

Walking.

He was always walking, always moving somewhere. To where, from where, he didn't know, nor did he care much. It was just what he did. He supposed he should have been sick of it by now, but honestly, why should he care? Whether he lived here, whether he lived there, it was the same difference, the same old cursed routine day after day after dry, hot miserable day. Even if he fell over dead, what would it matter?

Maybe he could have stopped somewhere. Lived comfortably, alone, to spend up to the last of his days. They were numbered, no doubt, as he remembered the faint smell of rotting flesh beginning to trickle by his nose… what was it, two days ago? Perhaps.

Besides, how much longer could he live anyways? They were gone. Every last one of them… all gone, all dead, all six feet under the shifting sands of the dunes with their gory, worm-eaten corpses staring with empty eyes and hollow orbits upwards, towards where the sun would someday uncover their rotting remains once again.

That was the only thing he remembered. The last, haunting screech of his mother as he ran away, the darkness of the desert night enveloping him like a daze. A shadow. He became a part of it, blended into it… and when he naïvely returned the next morning, hoping for the best as his impetuous, sniveling cub self always did, there was nothing there but the horrible smell of death, of the sight of row upon row of brutally slaughtered victims. Old lions he had once presumably known lying, intestines hanging out, screams permanently frozen into their faces and their still, silent bodies. Mothers and cubs lying side by side, some with their heads gnawed off, some with their throats cut from ear to ear. All of them horribly disfigured, mutilated to the point where they could no longer be recognized or identified.

The attackers.

Who were they? Where had they gone?

Alas, after that first shocking moment, of seeing his dear mother on the ground, her jaws agape and blood frothing at the sides of her lips, his memory became very fuzzy indeed. He didn't remember what happened after that. There were only shadows, wisps of memories which his mind had already, with no conscious direction of his own, chosen to blot out. Only the bloodshed remained, as that was probably too vivid for him to ever forget completely.

The next thing he was aware of was that he, the only survivor of a declining pride, was awake, body already half-buried in the sand and his flesh being cooked under the heat of the scorching sun. Yet he was still alive. When so many others had perished, he had lived. How? He didn't know. Why? Also a mystery. After that was merely the wandering, the long hours of vagabond movement under the vast expanses of the desert he had grown up in.

Presumably.

At this point, nothing could be known for certain.

He'd been left for dead, and yet his defiance had ascertained that, indubitably, if there still happened to be life and breath in his meager body, he would take advantage of it. And so he left, wandering the plains, catching meals when he could, hiding by night and hoping that the ravenous, bloodthirsty rogues would not return to finish what they had started. But that could only last so long anyways. His body had been so taxed, so weakened by his endeavor. For he could imagine, as foggy as it was, that his stubborn self had refused to learn to hunt, had refused to learn what was, really, a huntresses' task.

Stupid, selfish cub. So many levels of foolishness. Not learning how to hunt—pah! How that would have helped him now, in this barren wasteland. The only real food was scattered amongst the sparse oases, and spirits knew those were practically impossible to find, at least in this locale.

He was older now. Wiser. And he'd always been clever. His lack of memories, his forgetfulness of many of his more advanced skills… it didn't matter that much. He could improvise. Move for a few more days, perhaps have a look at those nasty wounds…

At least night would cover them from his view, even if it didn't ease the pain any. But he hated the nighttime. In some ways it suited him, the solitude, the eerie quiet… but in some ways, it was haunting. The horrible howl of packs of wild dogs, the glimmer and sheen of cold, unfeeling stars which had chosen to turn their backs on him. They didn't pity him, nor his foolishness, nor his plight. It was sad, really, but he was truly all alone. With no knowledge of what a world this truly was other than what he had seen, what was burned into the back of his mind always and forever.

Alone, at night, with the cold and harsh wind beating into his scruffy, patchy coat. The coat which was once a rich, earthen brown but was now half rubbed out, which had chosen to become a pleasant home to about every species of tick that was even possible in this area. Whatever was left was simply too dirty, too twisted and knotted with clumps of blood. Black, dark, sticky clumps which had dried into thick crusts. His head, in particular, often itched with the layers of ooze and the sanguine rivulets dripping past his ears, past the small black tuft of mane that had already nearly withered away…

He must have looked like a mess.

Not that he cared, for this too came under the jurisdiction of the age old adage: 'if a wildfire starts in the savanna, and no one's around to see it, does it give off smoke?' Sure, he probably looked like a mess, but there was no sentient being anywhere around to take note of it, so why should he stop and give two condemned seconds of his worthless time?

No purpose. No reason. Simply walking around, waiting for the day when he would die with anticipation and apprehension which increased with every passing night. His suffering was augmented by the fact that he could not remember. Even in his dying days, he might have drawn comfort from the knowledge of whatever had happened, whatever transpired and how, above all, he had ended up here, surviving. But there was no answer. No memory bubbled to the surface except the rows of dead bodies, snuffed of life, and endless streams of blood and entrails littered like streams of gory confetti across the ground.

He couldn't even remember his name. That said, he found after several hours of talking and pondering to himself that he needed one, or at least some sort of temporary mnemonic to refer to himself as. For the time being, he chose Skauti. Scout. In some ways it was accurate, as that was what his vagabond self was, but for some reason it stuck out in his mind as a suitable name before he'd even thought of any others. It was his first choice, and after going through and using several alternatives—sufferer, imbecile, wretched, obnoxious-cub-who-didn't-know-any-better—he found he kept going back to it. And so it stuck.

By now, as far as he was concerned, it was his permanent name from the past, to the present, and for the future.

Scout. He could almost imagine it—him and his mother, or whoever she was, taking lessons in the sunny days before. Alas, his lithe and athletic body would have been suited for it, and he seemed to be a natural hunter…

A shame, then, that he'd flubbed up so badly. Perhaps he could have been some use somewhere.

The sand continued to blow in what should have been a pleasant breeze, though the small bits of sand blowing across his body were, frankly, quite irritating. Often he had to close and squint his eyes, which were already tired from the long hours of squinting, shielding themselves from the sun as they scanned the horizon for any sort of movement, any sort of water.

Often times he was under the impression that he'd passed certain places before, or had been walking in circles… though with the shifting and transient nature of the sand dunes, there were no earlier tracks of his preserved in the ground and hence no way to know for certain. Nor were there any sorts of landmarks to differentiate between different patches of dry, dusty ground. There were only the ups and downs of the dunes, and the blur of the horizon between stratified layers of dust and sand which covered any clear line of sight and rendered the atmosphere above the edge of the earth invisible.

Yet as he continued, he couldn't help but think—but feel—that this place was somehow, in some way, different. And as he continued on, this feeling grew profoundly. Surely, maybe, there must have been something different… perhaps another oasis? Or maybe something else entirely…

He stopped in his tracks, the wind beginning to push the seas of shifting sand by his pillar-like paws. The whoosh of the wind continued, but the soft sound of his footsteps had ceased. He couldn't see very well due to the omnipresent sand in the air, even though it was, as always, bright as a burning flame outside. Sight, however, was not what drew him to the conclusion that something was out of the ordinary… rather, it was sound. And as he turned his ears forward, allowing them to gather as much sound as possible—as well as a generous dosage of sand, which was to be expected—he could finally hear the faint tendrils of a low, far-off rumble. A noise which, while no doubt far away, was still divergent from the usual sounds of the desert. Sounds which he was still inherently used to, even if he didn't acutely remember his upbringing in the desiccated, oriental territories which stretched vastly under the sun. No, this was something different.

Sssssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh…

The sound continued, and as he climbed to the peak of the next dune in order to get as good a view as he could, this conclusion was only backed up by his sharp vision. For far off in the distance, at the very highest range of what his naked eye could see, there was a small patch of green.

Well, obviously not small—it looked small from his distance, though clearly it was very large indeed. Far bigger than any oasis he had ever seen, not to mention that, in place of the usual coconut palms and gnarled, measly brush, this place appeared as a verdant, vibrant green, lush and fertile… in addition to the fact that, unlike any other place he had ever recalled seeing in the past week, it didn't have a cloud of dust hanging over it.

"Southern Jungles," he muttered quietly, barely even aware that his own raspy voice had uttered a word. Alas, how he remembered that, he didn't know… but it was the first thought that came to mind. And somewhere he knew he was right: these were jungles and they were, judging by the position of the sun, which was now quite a ways past its zenith, towards the south. It wasn't like there were a whole lot of other more apt names to describe it.

He needed to get out of this desert. It was sapping his strength, killing him slowly with its hot, parched clime and inhospitable winds and weather. There was only so much sand he could take, and with no pride members or even memories to fall back on, nothing could really help his adolescent self in staying alive, in procuring food and shelter. He was a rogue, on his own… and indeed, for him, wounded and alone and still young, it would have been a better move to head to a wetter, more tropical habitat.

The old him wouldn't have thought of leaving the desert, his homeland. But all his ties to there had been severed, including his memories, his pride members, his sense of belonging... He was a desert lion no longer. Survival was first—the land of his origin, a far second. And so it was that Skauti, the little lost lion roaming through the vast and harsh expanses to the east, came first to leave his home and his identity, becoming, truly, a scout, a trailbreaker, and a vagabond. Where he was going, and what he could do, he didn't know. But he could prepare for what he hoped to find.

After all, home was where his head rested. Nothing more. And in the days to come, his head would rest in a great many places…

Skauti's an OC I've had for a while. One or two of you might recognize him. Most of you will not, so just take him as you will.

I'm frankly a bit nervous about going off in my own direction since I'm so used to using canons (mostly Scar). But I do want to explore a little more, make some of my own characters and experiment a bit with something different. Considering the fact that, if I were to ever publish my own work one day, I would not be able to use TLK characters, I find this reasonable.

I know that some fandoms (not so much this one, but others) have a high anti-OC sentiment, and trust me, I get that... there will be canons in here if I continue, since otherwise this wouldn't be fanfiction. And it takes place in the TLK universe, albeit in a time I haven't determined yet. So no worries. Besides, you know I wouldn't torture you with needless stick figure OCs, right?

... Right?

Ah well, you can answer that question, and tell me what you think, down there in the box. vvvvvvvvvv

Until next time, mis gentes. ;)

Twin