Hello everybody! Sorry for the lateness, mea culpa. That happens when you write a chapter, read it, hate it, delete it and rewrite a new one, completely different under every single aspect of the previous one. And sorry for the harshness, but just now I am frustrated, disappointed and infuriated altogether, and writing is the last thing I want to do, thus I will be brief. First off: there is another introduction, yes; I must say, writing in first-person perspective is quite entertaining. I'm not going to add an introduction at the beginning of every chapter, of course, but I think I'll do it again, if you like it.
Second: thanks for the reviews, I do appreciate them :3
Enjoy!
I had never thought I would return to that place, that forbidden ground where a part of me died, was still dying, and would eventually die again. I was trapped, trapped in a vicious circle, a circle permeated by hazes of time, withered with it and imbued with new life, just to expire over and over again, eternally. Yet I decided to travel there anyway. The very reason? I did not know. I did not want to know. Probably, I was just missing them.
No one wanted, or dared, to follow me; the last thing I needed -or wanted, for that matter- was the sympathy or pity of anyone else. I was sick of that. I was sick of them all. Their vacuous, pathetic attempts to make me feel better were as revolting as their intrinsic hypocrisy, barely concealed behind hollow words of condolence and inadequate caricatures of smiles. Those fools were ridiculous parodies by themselves: parodies of friendship, love and support...parodies of people I really cared about. Every glance, every movement of theirs seemed distorted, forced, every grin a dribbling fissure of the sweetest venom.
Morbid flowers, and tender brambles: my so-dear acquaintances. There were still some flowers amongst the expanse of stinging nettles, yes….but it was only a matter of time, until even those colourful, frail blooms would wither and become dust to nurture the vile weeds. Still lost in my thoughts, I didn't dare to raise my eyes. To stare at the sky.
The sky. The sun. The Gods. The light, the dark, the same hatred. Everything bled together, twisted into dull streaks and deranged fragments of opalescent day-dreaming. Another rushed step, and the world changed before my eyes. I finally saw every single detail, every single particle, in all its vacuous immensity. The threadlike grass, the squirming worms, the air and the earth...me. None had a soul. None had...life. The Life of Gods, as the others called it. A beautiful, old-fashioned fairy tale, lacking of the brave hero and the beloved princess to rescue. Without light to be followed, and shadows to be chased away.
Souls as stars, stars as souls, eyes of Spirits and cages of Kings. What was their true meaning? What were they looking for? They danced and danced, overhead, elusive.
We naively swarmed on earth, wingless parasites dwelling inside its natural bosom, not even knowing the very reason behind that captivity. Hollow shells of mortal flesh, watched by their cold eyes, from their clouds, their ivory towers. They loved us, they punished us, they cast the first stones and then withdrew beyond the barricade of clouds. They gave us warmth, cold, gifts, curses, in a frenzied dance of irrationality, in a harmony of disorder, in a hierarchy of absurdities. Theirs and ours. It was we who created and moulded them, gave them life and drew them into existence from our countless, naive desires.
Finally, I raised my head. Just for one moment. Just for one second.
That afternoon was mild, effervescent and ventilated in an unusual way, accompanied by the ordinary zephyr of autumn. The sky was cerulean and rounded like a celestial, concentric sphere, peeking and gazing idly at the immobile earth beneath, completely covered by a golden mantle interlaced of fine grass, waving in the wind gusts like an immense yet nameless yellow flag. Feathery clouds, written down in rings and thrones on the azure screen, perched on their heavenly leaden seats, already heralding dreary eventides.
That season. My season. Their season.
With autumnal leaves came a sweet lullaby, a song forged by their words. When...when they were still alive. They were still singing for me. Even now. Even the following day, and the day after, and the day after that, endlessly, in a chain of time. Through time, I remembered; their love for autumn, their love for each other. I pursued them, enthralled by their affection, and shared my love as well for those fleeting, capricious months, crowned by gliding leaves and inspired melancholy. I let those buried memories unveil themselves and gush out of my mind, and immediately I felt a painful sensation tightening around my throat and suffocating me in my own shame. There were so many obvious things, so many useless words I wanted to share with them, only to hear their lively voices...just one more time. They seemed so distant now...far away, beyond the dance of memories.
My pace slackened slightly. Perhaps in a moment of weakness, I turned my head and looked back, as if I couldn't bear the feeling of being so close, almost intimate, to the place I chose for them. I glanced at my home, an indistinct speck on the feeble boundary between earth and sky...and turned my head again, somehow peevishly, and regained my rushed, unquiet pace from before. The twisted, intertwined tangle of golden grass blades bowed and fanned out quite easily as I passed through it, like a submissive subject would properly do in the presence of his King.
A King...
I would never forget the last words he murmured to me. His last words, pathetic in their sincerity, framed by his innocent blood when Death finally came, demon of the night, and accompanied his hopeless soul into its tenebrous realms. His look, altered, deformed by the inevitable dementia, and his mouth, whisperer of broken sentences...everything tasted bitter in my mouth. I would not forget anything about him, about them, no matter how painful the memories could be.
With a final, blind step forth, I stopped.
Why did I choose that place? Its true reason was unknown even to me. In all probability, I chose that spot for the sensation of humility it inspired. There was only one solitary acacia amongst the infinite, grassy ocean of the waving savannah expanse; it was modestly high, with its gaunt, almost completely bare branches penetrating into the ethereal flesh of the sky, looking more like lean roots sunk deeply into a untouchable, blue ground. An acacia, the symbolic victory of life against death. In that place. Pretty ironic, wasn't it?
Globular, gamboge-yellow flowers, probably at the end of their brief, unaware lives, constellated the wooden branches and crowned the collapsing foliage. I breathed in deeply to inhale that spellbinding fragrance of resin and flowers and dried leaves one more time. Their scent was addicting, captivating, gained control of me and let me off, then seized me again, like an imaginary game between me and nature, which made me close my eyes and fall into a state of unwitting hibernation. But the awareness of death, depicted on an intangible painting inside my head, finally roused me from my daydreaming and made me notice the pallor, the pallor that permeated everything around me in a greyish scenario, the inconsistent pallor of its ephemerality.
Under the somehow comforting umbrage, riddled with solar ruptures and projected on the ground by the sunlight, stood two medium-sized, round, dark rocks, so bare and dull that actually I felt ashamed of my own miserable attempt of giving them an adequate memory. My thought went fuzzy, confused; I simply stepped forward, hesitantly and timorously, until I found myself standing few centimetres far from those memorials. A single snow-white lily, with its rootage deeply sunk into the earth, was placed in front of each rock, withering memories of immaculate souls, with their ivory purity hedged by those pallid petals. Amongst the fine grass, a few, tiny shrubs of hawthorn, adorned with their white, dying stars, constellated the field around the tree. On the cold, hard skin of the memorial on the right there was, to disfigure its smooth perfection, a single, clear inscription, indelible and immune to the natural dance of time.
Ruka, Kipepeo
"Oh, Dad..."
That voice climbed up my throat, through my jaws, through my melancholy smile, and dispersed into the air, with nobody but two silent stones as only listeners. It danced, danced and did not stop. It sounded altered, foreign, yet I knew it was my voice. Slightly shaking my head, without looking away from that stone, I raised a paw and touched it. I could feel it, concealed behind the simple coldness and raggedness of the rock. I could feel the past mourning of thousands of people, who loved him more than anything else. For a fleeting second, a grimace deformed my features, as the wrath, the grudge, the resentment nestled inside me, beyond my shield of delusion, my only barricade.
Pathetic fools. They had no idea...they did not know him...like I did.
There were no tears in my eyes. I had already shed enough woe during those years, and by then weeping was just a distant mirage. That thought crossed my mind as I passed my toes over that row of letters engraved on my father's memorial, slowly, meticulously, feeling its narrow, elegant groove under the sensitive digits. I did not know why, but suddenly, unconsciously, I tried to imagine what he would say about...about...well, everything. Everything that was happened. That was probably why I heard my father's voice resounding through my head, an echo lost in the timeless reminiscence.
"What are you staring at, Momma's boy? Greet her, come on!"
I turned my head and looked at the other stone. Yes, that would probably be what he would say to me, perhaps with even a laughter to complete the sentence. He loved to create new nicknames. Principally to annoy me, of course. I was his favourite victim, after all; that thought was still branded firmly into my mind, in a blend of amusement and sombreness. He was the opposite and the same of my mother. She always reproved him and then replied at his jokes with the same, cutting irony. My faint smile curled slightly into something more as I stared at her rock, simple and frugal like my father's, but lacking of any type of inscription. However, there was something else, a special tribute resting on it. A gift.
"Mom...sorry if I...haven't visited you for a while." I knew I looked like a perfect idiot, standing there and apologizing to none. As if they could still hear me. As if...they were still alive. "I...I don't k-know what to do. I d-don't know..." I gulped. "I can't...f-forgive him. I...won't..." My quivering words vanished in an instant when a butterfly, white and pure as snow just fallen, as the couple of lilies lying on the ground, popped out from the grass tangle and glided gently on my father's memorial, beating the immobile air with its diaphanous wings, ephemeral and frail like life itself.
It was dancing for me. It was dancing for everyone but me. It was dancing for none.
No...no, I was wrong. I finally realized it, as I felt, moment by moment, a burning sensation filling my eyes with drenched fire. Two warm tears flowed down my cheeks—I could feel them running through my pelt—and dripped on the ground where my parents, the sole lions I really loved, were resting peacefully. They were not living as grass blades, nor stars in the sky, nor anything else. They didn't deserve to suffer that torment...a second life. The only reward my parents deserved was peace.
I wept, I wept and smiled, like a small, wounded cub with his parents by his side, licking those incurable wounds in their usual, loving manner, in order to soothe his pain, and stared silently at those two mute stones, at that alabaster butterfly, at that necklace of mango seeds tied around the memorial of my mother.
...The necklace of an old friend, vermillion as a summer sunset.
Tears for the Tearless
Chapter II:
"Weather Enemy"
Part I:
"A Dance that Never Ends"
I can't believe it.
His heart thumped furiously against his ribs, like a fierce beast trapped inside a cage; he could feel its pulsating beats increasing their rapidity as he let his grey eyes, wide-open in dismay, cast a horrified stare at that hollow, wizened groove cut into the wounded, sunlit ground. His thirsty throat twitched up and down a couple of times as it kept pleading him for vital liquid. But satisfying that need was not possible. He couldn't see the faintest trace of water inside the furrow, not even a single, crystalline drop...nothing.
Timidly, Uchafu turned his head and looked at his friend, in search of a hint of hope, or even indifference, working in his features. But Rashad seemed as worried and frightened as him; seeing his reddened expression and his eyes scanning the ground in desperate search of water was enough to prove that. Uchafu shook his head; what had he expected to find? The suffocating heat and the somehow heavy sunlight pressing on his back had probably gone to his head and befuddled him. A drop of sweat trickled from his brow down his face, following the pronounced texture of his lineaments, and fell on the ground, turning into a microscopic puddle destined to evaporate within a couple of minutes.
"U-Uchafu..." Rashad finally managed to take his eyes off the distressing scene before him and glanced at his speechless companion, looking like a completely different lion now with his usual radiance and carefreeness wiped away from his drawn face. "...How is this even possible?" His voice sounded strange, somehow terrified by the well-known, approaching consequences of that suspicious, unexpected disappearance. They were looking for water, craving for water, and that river was supposed to be their last resort. And now...where was it?
Some time passed before Uchafu finally decided to speak. His tone wavered now and then, as if he couldn't quite take control of it. "I...I don't know, but...one week ago..." The lion's voice died in his throat as he looked away from Rashad and simply stood, motionless, with his back arched forward and his eyes nailed to his paws beneath. A sigh rang out when Uchafu realized his claws, two incandescent white razors in the sunlight, were unsheathed.
"Are you...listen to me, Uchafu. Are you absolutely sure about that?"
Ignoring the overwhelming shock for a moment, Uchafu glared at Rashad with the corner of his eye and let out a low, throaty growl. He did not like Rashad's apparently neutral tone, nor the particular emphasis he put on "sure". At all. "What are you trying to say That I'm a...that I'm a liar?" He practically spat out the last word, his voice and thoughts blended in a mix of frustration and unintentional angst.
"Of course not," the other lion clarified with a careworn sigh. Here it was: Uchafu's daily tantrum. "But perhaps this is the wrong pla-"
"NO!" Uchafu snapped abruptly at Rashad, cutting his peaceful hypothesis off by slamming his paw on the ground with enough force to open a new fissure on the already cracked ground. The lion flinched in pain as he felt a few droplets of blood slowly seep out of the wound he just caused himself. Uchafu knew perfectly that Rashad was staring at him, probably with a pathetic face of pity, but he didn't mind very much. He had more important problems to deal with, actually; being the leader of a bunch of homeless outcasts, lost in a never-ending situation of extreme cold at winter and insufferable heat at summer, Uchafu was perpetually under great pressure, for hours, for days, for weeks. Moreover, two lionesses had died during the past few days, and only with great effort were their remaining living companions able to hold back their primordial urge to consume their now useless flesh. Disgusted by how low lions could sink sometimes, he simply growled again.
After a long silent moment passed, Uchafu looked away from his bloodstained toes and finally scraped together enough strength to rise to his feet, doing his best to remain (or, at least appear) placid. "I know perfectly well how to lead a pride, Rashad…don't even doubt me in that." He took a deep breath, and then proceeded with a softer tone. He absolutely had to calm down. "This is the right place, trust me. But..." The lion peeked again at the groove, hot and dry as before. Frustration boiled and raged in the recesses of his stomach, like a blustering ocean swallowed entirely by him. "...It seems like the water has just...vanished."
Unconsciously, Rashad's confused expression turned into a grimace when he heard the word "vanished". In one week? A whole river? How was that, as he already asked before, even possible?
I...no, I...I don't know. Nevertheless, he carefully concealed his skepticism behind a mask of impassiveness; he couldn't give Uchafu an excuse to get angry again. "So, what are we going to do now?" he asked simply, trying to sound nonchalant but failing miserably as he let some of his scorn escape into his rigid question.
As soon as he heard his friend's words, veiled by sarcasm, Uchafu suddenly regained the cold imperturbability characteristic of his nature as leader, and replied almost immediately. "We just have to find another place," he said. "Nothing we can't handle."
He turned round and set out for the remaining members of his pride, who were waiting patiently for the two lions' news. "We're leaving," Uchafu muttered without stopping. All Rashad did, a bit reluctantly at first, was nod subtly and follow Uchafu with lithe steps.
No one knows what's actually happening to you, Uchafu. he thought with a sudden sadness as he looked at the back of his friend. The intense sunlight lit Uchafu's red-tinted fur on his torso and mane, and made him look like a living, lost flame wandering amongst the scorching atmosphere of the Outlands.
I...I just want to know. We just want to know.
The flow of his thoughts stopped abruptly as he noticed the vague form of a lioness, her face a splash of indistinct colour in the sunshine, approaching him steadily. Only by her smell could Rashadi tell that it was Zena, his wife.
"Rshad, what's going on here?" the lioness asked, noticeably puzzled by the sight of his gloomy face. "Is something wrong?"
The brown lion looked gravely at her. What could he say? "Apparently, the river which Uchafu told us about has...vanished." Rashad couldn't help pronouncing the last word with an extremely doubtful tone. "Gather the others. We're leaving."
Zena shook her head, letting out a disconsolate sigh. Frowning slightly, Rashad stopped following Uchafu and faced the lioness. "Rashad, I...I can't believe it," his mate said morosely. "This must be the fifth time this month. We can't just wander around these lands without a competent guide. Especially now, with Zira and Haiba among us."
"I know," Rashad answered, turning his gaze back to the rest of their pride. They looked even thinner than before, with their skin visibly drawn on the prominent bones due to the lack of nutritious food in that cursed land and their inevitably poor meals. Actually, Rashad doubted he looked any better than they did, seeing how his forelegs became increasingly thinner as hours and days fell into oblivion. Luckily for them, though, they weren't actually suffering from serious starvation or dehydration yet. But their final demise was only a matter of time, a death sentence separated from them by mere, fleeting moments: a couple more hellish days, perhaps even less, under that roasting sun, and they all would die without question.
Rashad sighed and shook his head, and tried to occupy his mind with other, more positive matters. "Speaking of which, the cubs are…"
"They're resting. Haiba is simply exhausted. And Zira...she almost passed out. Sauda is watching over them, but..." She looked back at two small shadows lying under the gaunt umbrage cast by a thin, bare tree located a few metres away from them. "I...I'm not sure if they can handle this pace much longer." Her voice trembled with badly concealed apprehension. "They're...they're only cubs, Rashad."
Sighing briefly, Rashad turned his head again and gazed tenderly at his wife. She looked extraordinarily tired: her sunken cheeks; her pelt, rippled in disarranged tufts; her moist, swollen eyes…every aspect of her expressed an overwhelming fatigue. Nevertheless, Rashad still thought she was beautiful, her luminous allure even more emphasized by the desperate situation they were living. Zena was his single last hope in that infinite, barren landscape…Zena, and their daughter, Haiba. His face rippled into a vague smile as he remembered the day when the lioness finally ceded defeat and agreed to his idea of a name for their cub. Come to think of it, he still didn't even know the reason behind Zena's distaste towards that name. He should ask her one of those days.
"Zena..." Rashad approached further and nuzzled her gently. "Don't worry, we'll find another place. We have just to hold out for a little while more." His honey-coloured eyes shimmered slightly as the sunlight skimmed over their smooth surface; seeing his wife in such an uncomfortable state hurt him more than anything else, like a horribly painful stake stabbing deep into his heart. "We can do it. I know we can."
The lioness glanced at him with eyes nearly completely drained of volition, trying to allow herself to be inspired by his impossible buoyancy. Uchafu had screwed up everything again, some of the others already died, and it was only a matter of time before they would meet the same fate. Still, he was able to smile, to keep living, without faltering for even a moment.
"A-All right...you're pretty convincing when you want to be, aren't you?" Zena laughed, cracking a grin and rubbing her nose back against his cheek. She then moved away towards the waiting group of lionesses, her smile trailing after her. Rashad stared at her for a brief moment, at first with an unusual blitheness working on his lineaments; then, like a beast in hibernation being slowly awakened by spring warmth, a nagging feeling of doubt crept into his mind as he started wondering if she, or even he, actually believed in his own words.
Damnit. Damnit. Damnit.
"...Damnit." Uchafu hissed angrily at no one in particular as he felt the oppressive heat radiated by the sun weighing on his taut back with all its burning cruelty. Too hot. It was too hot. Everything seemed blurred and fuzzy before his eyes, as the daystar bathed every single centimetre of landscape in a blinding, luminous inferno. But every minute that passed meant another piece of vital strength draining away; he couldn't allow himself to waste time or get lost in useless thoughts. But that memory, the memory of that river, was still branded into his mind.
"I can't be wrong...that river was there one week ago," he muttered through serrated teeth, still unable to believe what he and Rashad had seen just a few minutes ago.
In the middle of a personal trip during the brief break needed by the rest of the pride, Uchafu had found a gurgling, beautiful spring of unpolluted water crossing that tiny part of the Outlands, coming down from the distant chain of dark mountains until that spot, then abrupty turning west, towards where they had already been. And now...now, it had simply disappeared. As if it had never existed.
Managing to emerge from those thoughts for a brief moment, Uchafu raised his head and stopped suddenly; he looked at the group of his pride companions, in search of his mate, but he didn't recognize her in that crowd of those faces, all similar to one another. Though only two of them died, their number seemed incredibly exiguous, like ten times more than before.
I know...I know they're all blaming me for that. For everything. The malicious echo reverberated through his mind, tearing apart the past preoccupation they brought upon him. They were disparaging his efforts; he was aware of that, of all of them. Still...still, he had to keep them alive, in order to fulfill his duty as their leader. "Sauda!" He barked, leaving those pessimistic thoughts in a distant recess of his mind for good; the least thing he needed was one more problem to haunt him. "Come here!"
"U-Uchafu...? Wait...wait a second."
The lion turned round, surprised as he heard Sauda's voice coming from behind him. Isn't she with the rest of the pride?, he though, struck by bewilderment. Uchafu frowned and stared attentively at the tree...no, at the umbrage cast on the ground, burnt from all its previous life, by that tree. Sauda was bending down over two smaller, prone figures, sheltered from the blinding incandescent blades of diffused light by the mellow, thin silhouette of the plant. What the..."What are you doing?" he asked in a tone much more polite than that of his thoughts (which he wisely kept to himself), being sincerely curious despite his raising annoyance, as he approached her under the shady freshness.
Sauda glanced absent-mindedly at him (or glared? With those unflappable eyes of hers, gray as the grayest dawn, he couldn't tell at all) and then immediately turned her gaze back to the two minute forms at her feet, completely immobile excepts for their bellies, moving at the same time of calm, serene breathes of slumber.
"Ssh, they're sleeping."
Peeking at those, Uchafu raised an eyebrow and finally recognized the two sole cubs belonging to his pride. The lion was pretty surprised he didn't identify them by smelling their scents yet, but apparently his olfaction had already given up helping him since that heat hit him with all its unreal strength. On the left, there was Haiba, Rashad's daughter; with her eyes shut she looked exactly like a younger version of Zena, but with their lids open it was possible to see that she had, not ash-coloured eyes like her mother's, but instead a pair of deep amber ones, like two lustrous drops of resin. And, on the left, letting out soft breaths of approaching awakening...
Zira. His daughter.
He sincerely didn't know what was the very origin of his...fright, if it could be called that. As his eyes ran over her relaxed body, along the tender, infantile folds of her skin, along her immutable face, Uchafu felt a hard, dry lump pressing against his chest. Just like the many other times his gaze had encountered her already during those six, almost seven months. Uchafu shook his head; he couldn't allow himself to waste time brooding over that senseless, counterproductive fear of his. It was the heat. Yes. Only the heat.
"...Sauda," he murmured. He could barely even hear his own voice, so low and heat-ravaged. "We must go. Now."
Finally, the lioness decided to take her eyes off the two sleeping cubs and glanced at him in great surprise. "What?" Sauda gasped, her eyes dilating visibly as she stared at him, motionless, before her head suddenly sprang to attention as if a different thought crossed her mind. She beckoned back in the direction of the groove, from where Uchafu and Rashad had just come. "W-What about the river?"
Uchafu sighed and sat down. "We...well, ehm, it's...there's nothing up there." He motioned at the spot where he and Rashad had stared for endless minutes at that dry groove without saying a single word, in astonishment. "No river, no water...nothing." Uchafu's voice fell into a bitter growl in the last, rancorous sentence, as if it was all Sauda's fault. The lion did not know why—she had not done anything wrong, after all—but he couldn't help it.
"W-What?" Sauda stammered, unable to believe his words, so absurdly heavy in their simplicity, as her mind worked furiously to digest what she just heard. Twitching his drooping tail anxiously, Uchafu stared at her, and silently begged her to hurry up and agree to finally leave that place. But his mute hopes were for naught. The lioness did indeed hurry up, yes, but only to open her mouth and speak again.
"But, dear, look...look at us. If we...we...we can't-"
"Who said that?" Uchafu snapped abruptly at her, sick of her complaints. Her face slowly turned into a mocking mask with which he managed to conceal every haunting fear, every nightmare that plagued his mind. "You, Sauda? You don't have any right to say 'who can' and 'who can't'. Only I have that right." While he finally gave her his back, as if their conversation was already over, his eyes narrowed into two colourless fissures. "No more ifs, no more buts. Just do as I say."
Motionless, Sauda stared at him, with vacuous eyes decorating her petrified face...then she stopped him by murmuring a single question that echoed through the air like waves on the perfect smoothness of the surface of a lake. "W-What about Zira? She's…"
"Youare her mother, aren't you?" Uchafu sighed wearily as he turned around, purposefully slowly, to face his mate again. He was already fed up with their conversation; the silent, challenging march awaiting them under the scorching radiations of the sun didn't seem so bad now. "You're supposed to deal with that." The lion swung about again. "So do it."
"And...and you?" Sauda stepped towards him, raising suddenly her voice as well. Some lionesses turned their heads to focus their attention on them, but then averted their collective gaze as soon as they remembered they had to get ready for their awaiting trip. Uchafu shut his eyes closed as a soft sigh slipped through his lips.
"Yes?" The lion peeked back at her, out of the corner of his eye. That female could get so damn annoying sometimes. "What are you talking about?"
"You. You are her father," Sauda said before hesitated slightly, as if she was trying to think of the right words to say to him. Whatever they were, though, they would surely be part of some heart-wrenching, tear-jerking supplication, just to make him feel guilty somehow. As usual, Uchafu might say. A shame it never worked, especially when he was in such an unpleasant mood; everything simply slipped over him as nervousness spread through his mind, like a gentle, unseen gush of wind. "She...she said your name in her sleep, you know." The lioness added later, in response of his obvious uncaring attitude.
The reddish-maned lion raised an eyebrow, but didn't even think of turning around to face her directly. Uchafu kept showing only his back to Sauda, unsure if he should brood over her words, or simply let his clear superiority preside over the lioness and force her to stop complaining. He could do that, after all. "...So what?" he asked as he finally decided to deal with her, face to face, maintaining an apparently nonchalant tone. "She was probably just dreaming. Or hallucinating. I wouldn't be surprised if this heat has warped her mind."
"Wha...no, Uchafu, she was perfectly sane." Her steely stare wavered immediately; his voice sounded so natural, so calm...so sick. There was something distorted there, something wrong intertwined around the actual sense of those words, but unravelling it and its thorny frame proved an impossible task for her. "I...I think she just misses you." A part of her mind was yelling at her to forget about it; a tiny voice inside her head told her she was venturing into dangerous territory. And Sauda knew that; she knew that contradicting Uchafu was anything but a good idea. But she was sick of this same old situation, of the useless hopes he kept nurturing inside their minds, of his uncaring behaviour towards their daughter. As long as Uchafu hurt her somehow, she could easily forgive him. But, if he hurt Zira...
A grimace deformed his features, his gray eyes narrowed, a scowl formed slight dimples on his frown. A weak, constrained laugh escaped from his thirsty throat. Every single movement of his body epitomized his disbelief and impatience. They were only wasting precious time. "Missing me? Zira?"
"Ha, you're surprised?" Sauda stated tartly, as she began to approach him with a slow, measured pace. Despite her devotion towards her mate, the lioness couldn't bear that uncaring voice, those annoyed eyes, those slipshod sighs of his any longer. It was as if he was actually doing his best to vex her as much as possible. "You've been avoiding and ignoring her since the day we started this epic journey towards this mythic spring you sung the praises of for days." Sauda wore a false brooding expression as she kept coming nearer. "No, wait...I'm pretty sure you've been ignoring her since she was even born!"
"I'm not…"
"Shut up," Sauda immediately interrupted with a barely repressed growl. "It's me, me, who kept taking care of Zira all this time. It's me who watches over her twenty hours a day. It's me who feeds her, cleans her, would do anything for her." The lioness' eyes shimmered menacingly as she placed herself a few centimetres far from him. "But she's your daughter too, Uchafu. Rack your brain and tell me the last time you actually acted like a proper father." Her tail twitched and her claws unsheathed slightly, as soon as the restless lion before stared, open-mouthed and speechless.
"I bet you can't even do it," she sneered a moment later. "The only thing you're good at is leading us to places you've probably only dreamed about." Uchafu noticed with surprise how low her voice got as her accusing words passed through the row made of her clenched teeth. They sounded derisive, disappointed...as if he had done something wrong.
Stricken by dreadful awe, Uchafu held his breath and gave her a puzzled, dithered glare back, as if he was being torn apart by a devouring sense of indecision between two vital choices. The achromatic circles situated in the center of his face lost every single trace of th impassiveness they had previously held, and his ashy stare kept darting away from her every now and then, as if somehow he couldn't bear the sight of the lioness. Sauda had never acted like this, never; she always agreed with him in every matter he dealt with, every problem…everything. She had always behaved obediently and yieldingly, like any good mate should, and followed every order he gave her without hesitation. But now? Now it seemed like a completely different lion, a foreigner who had stolen her features and her voice, had replaced her.
Seeing Uchafu's silent internal conflict raging visibly over his face, a sudden, luminous thought struck Sauda from deep within the recesses of her mind, slicing right through her resentment in an instant. Did she...did she convince him? Did she change him? Was he finally the young, kind, loving Uchafu that she remembered from better days once again? She hoped so, for his sake, for her sake, and above all for Zira's sake. But as she dared to hope for the impossible, the crystalline idol she erected in her naive mind fell down and shattered into uncountable, meaningless pieces as Uchafu looked again at her, his pallid eyes hardened again by iron will as a terrible flame of authority, of power, flickered into his orbs, in a dance of wanted and willing malice.
"Are you finished, Sauda?" he intoned with an air of disinterest, as if their conversation had never happened. Sauda found that tone, tranquil and monolithic, even more threatening that the mocking one he had used before. The lioness knew all too well that his passivity was merely an act, the calm before the proverbial storm. She rapidly stepped back as her mate rose to his paws and started approaching at her, slowly and inexorably.
"I'm by her...no, by your side every hour of the day, trying my best to take everyone out of this goddamn place," he growled. His voice was raising dangerously again, exactly as she had expected, and this time even more harshly and vehemently. It was just a matter of time before he would explode. Bearing that in mind, Sauda stepped back again, surreptitiously glancing back over her shoulder for just a moment, towards the sleeping figure of Zira.
"U-Uchafu, I…"
The sides of his mouth curled into a fierce snarl. A savage face. The face of a predator. "And now, you dare…to blame me?" he screamed, his voice finally erupting into a harsh and ruthless bark which made her—and the other members of the pride as well—jolt in surprise. As his advance towards her quickened, his grimace grew more resentful, more irate.
More hurt by the truth.
Stricken by panic, Sauda made one more trembling step backwards, feeling like she was walking directly into a gorge. She knew none of her companions could help her, or come to her defense. She was also aware of the foolishness of hoping to be able to escape, to run away from him, abandon him and his frustration and never look back. For there was her sister...Rashad...the others...and, above everyone and everything else, Zira. She couldn't leave her...to him. And neither could she do so herself...because even as he seethed and cursed at her, she still loved him. Even during his bursts of rage. Even then, with his eyes seeing nothing but loathed illusions.
This is useless.
Without taking even notice of it, her legs abruptly gave up and stopped. Sauda raised her head, not fiercely, nor proudly, but somehow holding an appearance of gravity, solemnity, the same solemnity of a female consciously going against her mate. If Sauda could not get through to Uchafu by any other means, she could still stand up and face him. Anything but run away. On the other hand, Uchafu didn't seem to notice his mate's sudden second thoughts as he kept steadily approaching her. Only when she spoke again, after what seemed like aeons of silent breaths held back by spectating cowards, the enraged lion truly stopped, a few centimetres far from his mate.
During those days, those months, Uchafu had kept himself isolated from everyone else and from her, sometimes even mistreating her—but never touching her even with a claw—and, in the best of cases, completely ignoring her and their child. She did not know the very reason behind that awful behaviour of his, yet she loved him. Sauda still recalled, over and over again, the special moments they had before that situation, those situations. When that foreign rogue lion with the red-tinted fur popped out from nowhere and ploughed abruptly into the Outlanders' lives...then he was completely different. He used to be calm, carefree, but also somehow sad, nostalgic, as if he had lost a vital part of himself during his journey. Whenever someone tried to ask him about his home, his origins, he simply cast a weak, masked smile and turn his back...as always.
Sauda knew he loved her. She did not hope, in fact: she was sure. Uchafu told her so, after all.
"...Hit me."
The lioness could not tell clearly if those words she let slip through the tight fissure of her mouth were figments of subtle courage, or pure and simple idiocy. Why was she mocking him? What was the reason for the ingratiating words being clearly written on her inner eye, her mind's internal display, as if they were the perfect words chosen in the perfect moment? Everything, done perfectly. That...that was crazy. She was crazy. He could hurt her, beat her quite easily, in front of all the others. But from the recesses of her mind an intangible, faint voice kept calling her, and besought her to love Uchafu, to believe in him and in his possible change of heart.
The voice. The voice flickered, vibrated, danced. It danced, danced inside and outside her, enraptured her and filled her with something more. Something...different.
"Wha…" Clueless, Uchafu stared at her unyielding figure; at her eyes permeated by an unseen, boundless will; at her face, drawn and undernourished; at her utter impassibility. She looked completely transformed into a different being, radiating a force that she had never shown before then; Uchafu couldn't help gazing at her in sincere surprise. "What did you say?"
"You heard me," she stated slowly, her eyes heavy with nonchalance and her voice sounding just as extraordinarily calm, as if the two lions were merely talking about their last meal. "Hit me...if you can."
Uchafu barely held back a forced laugh. What was she driving at? "Do you really think I couldn't do it if I wanted to?" he asked simply, lifting a paw up in the air. As he did this, the lion scanned Sauda's face attentively, in search of any presence of regret, or fear, or anything else; despite his awful personality, Uchafu did hope, unconsciously, to find out something that could help him, give him an excuse for being so incensed, for hating her. But he found nothing; nothing, except for the same strength he had never seen pulsating in her. A creeping sensation of dubiety began to crawl across his insides as he stood still, wavering between the fragile pillars of his confidence.
"Uchafu! Wait!"
Surprised, the lion stopped abruptly and stood motionless, with his large paw immobile and raised up. Before his mate, like a living shield, stood the panting figure of a lion covered by brownish fur, with an unmistakable, slightly maculated mane encompassing his large head. Rashad? Was it him? Of course it was. Only he was brave enough—or stupid enough—to interrupt Uchafu. Not far from him was Zena, who was staring worriedly at them as she joined the crowd of speechless spectators.
"Rashad?" Uchafu fumed noisily at his friend after a fleeting moment of bafflement. The last thing he needed was another obstacle. "Get out of my way."
Rashad inhaled deeply as he managed to catch his breath. Apparently, he had tried to run as fast as he could to reach Sauda and protect her from Uchafu's fury, knowing too well that the lioness truly would rather let him beat herthan fight back against him. She loved him too much to even react to his chauvinistic arrogance. "Listen, Uchafu...you're right, okay? We...we are leaving, aren't we?" His amber eyes stared directly into Uchafu's, casting a falsely agreeable look. "We...we're just all stressed out right now. We need a place where-"
"I'm trying! I'm trying to do it!" Uchafu roared, his fury fully displayed in all its monstruosity as his pallid eyes focused on Rashad, who hurried to calm him down.
"We know that, Uchafu, Rashad countered. "We know what you've been going through since you became our leader." He beckoned at Sauda behind him. "Just...just don't take it out on Sauda." Rashad then glanced for a fleeting moment at Zena several metres behind them, noticing the dread in her eyes...the dread of her sister being beaten.
Uchafu narrowed his eyes as he returned Rashad's sympathetic gaze with one of suspicion. Then he looked at Sauda again, over Rashad's broad shoulder; the lioness' head was lowered down, as if a burden was weighing up on her and she was both physically and mentally bearing its terrible pressure. Heavy eyelids concealed her eyes, like fleshy curtains for two round, grey windows, and made her look like she was passing through a great suffering. Uchafu scowled at her, at that weakness her whole being personified; that was pathetic, completely pathetic, seeing how she treated him just a few minutes ago…but still, he couldn't help but feel somehow guilty.
"Fine."
Sauda's head lifted up immediately to look at Uchafu as she heard his bloodthirsty tone turning into a soft, curt mutter; when he moved forward and went past them without even deigning to cast her a glance, her eyes carefully followed his rushed movements as the hot, blinding light of the sun spread all over her face.
What is he doing?, she mused with curiosity and a hint of apprehension. Rashad gazed at his friend as well, but the brownish lion, on the contrary, was more tranquil. He already knew what Uchafu was about to do.
As soon as he stepped into the insubstantial shadow of the tree, and thus stopped feeling the torrid sultriness of the sun hammering on his back, Uchafu let out a sigh of relief. Was he really that desperate? Were all of them that desperate? He was their leader, the embodiment of their hope, and he knew perfectly well how to discern good from evil. Nevertheless, it looked like he was doing it all wrong, with his prayers and promises of a better life for everyone simply evaporating under that summer sun and its hallucinatory heat...exactly like the river.
One more step inside the vibrant freshness, and he was there. Uchafu stared at the sleeping forms of Zira and Haiba with an indecipherable look, wondering how they managed to sleep right through the adults' reciprocal diatribe. Then, sensing the gaze of Sauda fixed on him, the lion bent down and quickly approached his motionless daughter.
Uchafu opened his huge jaws, revealing a row of lethal, sharp teeth, and surrounded his daughter's thin body in a warm, humid grip, taking care to not harm her in any way. Then Zira, with an abrupt twitch, awoke suddenly and her gaze, still clouded by her previous slumber, fixed on her father; Uchafu could easily tell she was extremely confused (and slightly unnerved too) by his unexpected vicinity. He pulled back and closed his mouth again. The puzzled scowl imprinted just above those glazed eyes of hers did nothing but intensify Uchafu's angst; whether he broadened his prospects or not, the lion kept feeling uncomfortable and awkward at the cub's presence. His constant struggling with the weights of two polar concepts—the duties of parenthood on the one paw, and his inner conflict on the other—had haunted him ever since he discovered Sauda was pregnant...since the fear had showed itself, in all its hideous, unknown blackness.
Zira's timid voice took Uchafu away from his tormented daydreaming. "D-Dad...?"
Uchafu looked intensely at her, but said nothing. With a fluid movement he carefully enclosed Zira's body by using his jaws as a impromptu vise; at first, Uchafu was about to pick her up, but then he stopped and managed to mutter something through her soft pelt.
"Ssh…sleep."
The cub glanced at him with a confused face, wondering if she was still dreaming, if this was all just a strange fantasy about her and her father and that odd tree towering above them. But the dubiousness soon was replaced by more pressing drowsiness, mainly due to the grogginess and exhaustion which had knocked her out—and, judging by the pallid haze depicted messily before her eyes, was still knocking her out—at dawn.
"Y-Yeh...okay," she mumbled. Slowly she nodded, smiling unwittingly, as the warmth radiated by his mouth's fleshy inner walls enveloped her and gave the little cub a sense of security she had never felt from her father before then.
A few metres far, Sauda almost gasped in surprise as she saw her mate picking up Zira from the scorched ground and carrying her away, with his mouth holding up the sleeping cub. On the other hand, Rashad simply smiled: there was still a hope for that stuck-up dunderhead, after all. The brownish lion turned round to look at Sauda with a reprimanding spark in his eyes.
"Hey, what were you thinking back there? He could've…" He stretched out a paw towards her, to comfort her somehow, but the lioness, letting out a frustrated snarl, gave her back to him and moved away.
"Leave me alone." Frozen words floated through clenched teeth, in suffocating air. A perplexed scowl appeared on his face as Rashad stared at Sauda's more and more distant form. Then he noticed out of the corner of his eye that Zena, who was still watching the scene from behind, tried to reach her sister, visibly worried and concerned about her.
"Sis'!" She called out loudly as Sauda continued to stalk away. "Sis, where are you…" But Sauda had already spoken her mind; she made her way through the stifling heat, towards the distant, lone figure of Uchafu, still standing at a proper distance from him. She knew. She knew that by the end of that day she would apologize to him for her outburst. And he would eventually raise an eyebrow, nod nonchalantly, and say, "It's okay," then both of them would fall silent, unable to finally bring their "conversation capability" to a new level.
Sauda knew. She was condemned, chastised by her own love. A puppet created only for entertaining, and amusing, and dancing a dance of mere illusion, and power, and love. The most sincere love, worth everything and nothing. She was already apologizing to him, in her mind; it would take little time to give those thoughts a verbal, physical shape. With tears came a bleary vision, which blent everything, the ground, the sky, her mate, into a watery grave, a grave for her memories of that day. A dance of blurred forms, light and dark, heavy and clear. And her sister's voice kept resounding into her, through her...outside her. The voice.
It danced.
This is all for now...I'm already writing the next chapter (almost finished), but I won't be able to write/read anything during the next weeks. Occupied. Just to point it out. Ehr, yeah. So, moving on, feel free to leave a review and tell me if you appreciated what was done here; I'm actually planning to change my mind (and thus the story flow/structure/whatever you like) following your advices/flames. Preferably advices, though XP
See ya in the next chapter, then!
