one golden afternoo –
laughter thunder rolling in the distance heralding rain
Laughter dwarfed by the silence on the hill – but they don't care – the skies are summer-blue and the sun gives off a dry heat that deters all but the most determined to play and move. In this case, the cubs. There is a small one and a large one, light and dark, gold and brown, dirt and diamonds – playing on the grassy hill, the tall grass reaching the tips of their ears and beyond that. They are still in the kittenish stages of youth, showing the first signs of shedding baby fat – and then?
And then they collapse together, laughing helplessly, and the gold one grins at the brown one and he grins back and then there is a pause, and then –
"Hey, Scar," Mufasa stretches, turning over onto his stomach to look at his younger brother. Scar keeps staring at the sky, tracks the progress of a wispy cloud across the sky-blue canvas with his eyes. Suddenly, he jerks, a reflexive twitch back into reality, and cranes his neck to peer at Mufasa. "Hmm?" Scar mumbles, lethargic in the face of the heat.
"You know how I'll be king?" Light voice, lilting with the pre-adolescent tones that are reminiscent of sunlight and summer days.
"Mhmm," Even young, his voice is cracked and hoarse, deeper somehow, introspective for the cub.
"Well... I was just thinking, you know," A significant pause, trying to figure out how to say these words, because his little brother is moreso sensitive to the certain wording and phrasing of things than anyone else he knows.
"Yeah?" Curiosity dawns, and there is a slight thump as he turns over, stretching his legs straight into the air, and stares at his big brother.
"Well, um, even if Dad doesn't like you..." A shuffle, scuffing his forepaw in the dust, the words hinting at something deeper that the golden boy has noticed, scraping the surface in an attempt to understand – small and malnourished and slinking and hiding and shy – why Scar was disliked in most social circles.
"....Yeah?" There is a sharper tone to this, a sort of wariness and hurt, because even if it might be true, he doesn't like people noticing it, a sort of humiliation in that realization. Especially from his big brother.
"Well, I was thinking that, when I'm king and Dad can't order us around, we can rule together!" There's a kind of innocent jubilation, the triumph of childish logic over adult prejudice, good over evil.
"... Yeah, we could rule together! Like..." Trailing off in thought, the smaller of the two wracks his brain for a useful metaphor or comparison.
"Like nobody else! Don't you see? We can be the first two to ever do this – we'll be so famous, people will say that 'you two are a regular Mufasa and Scar' whenever two people do something really smart! Okay, so, I promise that when I become king, we'll rule. Together." Sweet and pure and earnest.
"... You promise?" Hesitation. Used to lies.
"I promise on the..." Pause.
"Elephant graveyard?" Suggestion. Their favorite place to play without the watchful eyes of lionesses.
"Sure, the elephant graveyard. But as long as you promise too!" The big brother is the more innocent of the two.
"Okay, I swear that on the elephant graveyard, I'll be king." The little brother knows better but he can't help hoping for that dream of he and Mufasa, side-by-side, the best rulers ever known.
"I swear on the elephant graveyard, when I become king, I'll make Scar be king too, and we'll take care of the Pridelands together. Like it should be." A promise nobody could keep in the end.
and then the world goes out with a whimper
AND THEN A SUPERNOVA --