Wow! I think this is the shortest time it's ever taken me to put up a new chapter. From here on, the next few chapters will more or less stick to the canon events in The Lion King, although Jack and Ann's presence and reactions will of course alter the material to varying degrees. This chapter may seem somewhat frivolous, but if so, just remember that this scene and song are all about our bold-as-brass young Simba and everyone else is just along for the ride! Still, Ann and a bemused Jack do get to play a nice spectator/supporting role here. They'll come back into prominence in the exciting next chapter. As before, happy reading to everyone until then!

Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance. Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance? The Lobster Quadrille, from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland.

When the strange music, unlike anything she'd ever heard, came bouncing, swelling from Lord knew where, Ann's first sensation was an enveloping fear, a now deeply conditioned combination of expectation and recollection that made her stomach muscles clench and flooded her guts with heated acid. It seemed eerily, piercingly far too similar to what the loathsome cannibal savages had played on their great log drums at her sacrifice, an ear-ringing, reverberating, chillingly foreign refrain. With terrifying possibilities for her immediate demise thrashing inside her skull, Ann Eunice Darrow had been convinced it would be her death dirge.

"Oh God Jack…" she croaked in a quavering voice of terror. But even as she was saying it, her red spasm of fear cooled and started to dissipate. As she continued to listen to it, Ann swiftly disabused herself indeed of the idea that this growing musical piece heralded any danger. This music, it was an alien thing to her ears, yes, but it was exuberant, it was lighthearted, it was peppy, it jumped like a sparrow and flowed like poured milk.

For his part, Jack was whipping around in pure shocked bafflement, head twitching and green eyes wide as he looked at both the sky and grassland for the source of this music that so nonsensically came from both everywhere and nowhere. He looked like a rat frantically trying to get into the right position to face the hawk it knows is going to attack from above. Clearly misinterpreting what her statement had implied, he ululated, "Oh God is right Ann. What is this? Music doesn't just come the hell out of the blue!"

Already though, Ann was beyond that. There was a part of her that was every bit as truly flabbergasted and agog as Jack was at the fact that tribal-type music was coming out of the sky, you bet your bottom dollar.

Overall however, the dominant sensation that Ann Darrow felt was a familiar quivering of the nerves, an excitement that inflated her blood vessels and sent their crimson cargo rushing hot and hard with the speed of an arrow. It made her body hair stand up on end with a prickly feeling, sent endorphins cascading through her circulatory system like a starved snake in a ground squirrel colony, and filled coiled muscles with so much of the "dynamic tension" that he-man Charlie Atlas always advertised it felt like Ann's skin would rupture if something wasn't done.

At that point, the male cub, Simba, impudently and firmly thumped Zazu's feathered chest, decreeing, "So you have to do what I tell you."

"Not yet I don't," a disgusted Zazu barked. "And with an attitude like that, I'm afraid you're shaping up to be a pretty pathetic king indeed."

Totally undaunted, Simba confidently said from over his shoulder, "Hmph. Not the way I see it."

Then, the crazy music with no apparent source kicked into high gear, almost explosively as Simba crouched and stalked towards Zazu. The suddenness made Ann and Jack both jump backward, but they both recovered from being startled just as fast, entranced by the little shenanigan in front of them as Simba broke into song of all things.

"I'm gonna be a mighty king, so enemies beware!" Simba declared, backing Zazu up and causing the bird to get his rump stuck in the knothole of a fallen log.

Literally not missing a beat, Zazu shot back, "Well I've never seen a king of beasts, with quite so little hair," somehow plucking a hair from the cub's forehead with two primary feathers.

"Great, now we find out that the birds here can actually manipulate things with their wing feathers," Jack muttered in resigned amazement. "Is there anything about this place and these creatures that is NOT utterly abnormal for crying out loud?"

Despite a brief wince, Simba didn't even break his stride, Ann being too focused on him to answer Jack as the cub then dispersed a covey of colorful birds and plunged his head through a bunch of dead red leaves, boasting "I'm gonna be the mane event, like no king was before." Leaving the dark red leaves then in one fluid motion, Simba then climbed to the highest point of the log, adopting a haughty posture as he declared, "I'm brushing up on looking down, I'm working on my ROAR," the last word causing Zazu to be startled and fall backward into a mud puddle, making Jack smirk and Ann stifle a giggle with her hand.

"Thus far, a rather uninspiring thing," Zazu dismissively announced as he headed for what seemed like a handy towel only feet away.

But Ann saw what was coming a mile away, gleefully telling her partner, "Look at what he's going to do Jack!"

Seeing that the hornbill was going right for an elephant's ear, Jack said with dry humor and a thin smile, "Batter up!" Naturally, the incensed elephant gave the hornbill a piece of his mind, whacking the bird with his trunk and sending him skipping like a stone over the marsh as Jack amusingly announced, "Fore!" with a broad crooked grin before Ann joined him in going into stitches.

At that instant, the pleasant realization, the reason why the music and song was making her so ecstatic and wonderfully, deliciously tense broke upon Ann's mind like an ocean wave. What was going on was like her other greatest passion in life, besides Jack Driscoll. This was like…like…like…like vaudeville! And when the spirit, the atmosphere moved and called you, oh baby, you couldn't say no.

Like the two cubs, she followed afte Zazu eagerly and immediately, an anxious Jack shouting, "For Christ's sake, what are you doing Ann?"

"Participating in the little dance party!" she wildly responded while looking back at him over her left shoulder for the briefest of moments before continuing to run through a pink flock of greater and lesser flamingos, beaming from ear to ear as Simba jubilantly sang, "Oh I just can't wait to be king!"

As she reached a spot in a papyrus stand where Zazu had come to rest, looking rather bedraggled as the two cubs stood on either side of him, alternately making enthusiastic snaps and the exact kind of silly faces that Melissa Marquadt Darrow would never tolerate from her daughters behind the hornbill's back, Ann heard Jack resignedly sloshing up behind her.

"You know Miss Darrow," he panted, "it's going to be pretty difficult to protect you if you're given to running off at random."

"Shhh Jack," an enchanted Ann softly said. "Look what they're doing," she grinned as an increasingly more exasperated Zazu tried to plead his case.

Pointing at Simba, Zazu curtly told him, "You've rather a long way to go, young master, if you think…"

"No one saying do this," Simba ecstatically shot.

"Now when I said that, I-" Zazu tried to elaborate.

But he was cut off by Nala's melodic voice, adding "No one saying be there."

"What I meant was…" Zazu began to clarify.

"Sorry buddy, but they're way past wanting to listen to you," Jack muttered knowingly.

And indeed, Simba took up the baiting, boldly telling the bird, "No one saying stop that."

"Look what you don't realize …" Zazu volunteered in one final attempt to specify.

"No one saying see here!" both cubs jubilantly sang, hitting nice high notes as far as Ann was concerned.

A pair of cock ostriches then ran between the humans and cubs, blocking Ann's view as the cubs each leapt onto a feathered mount, rapidly disappearing as Zazu, his frustration now at the boiling point, shrieked, "Now see here!"

Simba boldly, cheerily fantasized, "Free to run around all day," from his ostrich perch.

"Well, that's definitely out," Zazu snidely muttered in response, returning to the air.

The cubs were receding swiftly, and there was no way Ann could ever keep up with an ostrich, despite her decent speed. She wanted now not to just vicariously participate by observing and laughing, but to literally leap into the surreal festival herself. It seemed though, that all a disappointed Ann would be able to do at this point was chase after the flightless birds in a futile attempt to keep up, then watch with a helpless, dashed longing as they went off to continue the spectacle Christ knew how far away and Simba declared, "Free to do it all my way!"n

But thankfully, someone noticed. The aristocratically loping form of a bull giraffe came into her peripheral vision from the right, and she turned with Jack to face him. "I already know from the waterhole who your names are, Jack and Ann," the giraffe hurriedly explained. "My name's Quigga, and it looks to me like you're equally interested in following Simba and Nala's progress. So um, uh, would you like a ride from me on my back until they stop?"

Filled up with a warm, filling rush of giddiness, Ann shouted automatically, gratefully, "Yes Quigga, we'd love to!"

Emerald eyes wide with shock, Jack whipped around in a quarter-turn to face her, saying in confused amazement, "We do?"

"Come on Jack, we've ridden an elephant together, so how is this really any different?" Ann questioned, as Quigga was already kneeling down like a camel.

Accepting his girl's mad desire, Jack just shook his head in resignation before getting onto Quigga's back, straddling the variegated shoulders as the playwright gently but firmly wrapped his arms around the base of the bull's neck, body at a forty-five degree angle. "If we fall and die because of this Ann, I'm going to kill you," he growled half-jokingly.

Eagerly, Ann followed suit, slinging herself over Jack's body and grabbing him around the armpits, excitedly telling Quigga, "Okay, now you can go."

"Hang on and grab hard," the giraffe coolly told them before lurching to his hooves.

Although she was now bizarrely familiar with the sensation, Ann still felt her heart seem to drop like a broken elevator, taking a great gasp of air and eyes widening as an absolutely startled Jack scrabbled and cried, "Whoa Jesus!" in response.

Quigga then began to run, a rocking, swinging, elegant run as Ann clamped her legs against the short, sleek bristly fur, advising Jack, "Think of it as like riding a horse Jack. Just get used to the rhythm." And indeed, she felt him soon calm underneath her, his breathing and muscles adjusting and responding in kind to the pendulum cycles of the giraffe bull's gigantic legs.

"You know Ann, once you become accustomed to it, this is actually weirdly quite fun," the playwright reflected with pleased gaiety.

Quigga was running parallel to Zazu now, the hornbill frantically trying to catch up to the two cubs. Reaching them, Ann watched with Jack as the bird sternly decreed to Simba, "I think it's time that you and I, arranged a heart to heart."

Unfortunately, not paying attention, Zazu flew smack dab into the rear end of a browsing black rhino, looking rather plastered on it as both humans and the giraffe all laughed explosively and Simba smugly proclaimed, "Kings don't need advice, from little hornbills for a start."

Detaching himself from the black rhino's hide, a now thoroughly fed up Zazu landed on a branch, dismissively crossing and flicking his wings apart as Jack said from underneath Ann, "Not a very wise place for Zazu to land and vent."

Almost spitting his words out with umbrage, an oblivious Zazu shouted, "If this is where the monarchy is headed, count me out! Out of service, out of Africa, I wouldn't hang about…aagh!" he squawked in surprise as his log went over the small waterfall Ann had passed by with Jack so recently, causing them again to sputter and chuckle in pure amusement.

Too focused and angry to pay heed, Zazu quickly popped up again in flight, heading for the cubs with a grim determination, expressing it with a disgusted, "This child is getting wildly out of wing."

Swiveling around, Quigga allowed her to see the cubs, now off their ostriches and skipping towards a herd of zebras, Simba leaping up with another exuberant "Oh I just can't wait to be king!"

"How in Christ's name do they know how to do this so perfectly?" a simultaneously baffled and awed Jack asked. "Was there some kind of dress rehearsal that we were completely unaware of beforehand?"

"Okay, I think they'll stay here from now on," the dignified bull told them. "I'll let you down now," he continued, slowly kneeling down again, folding his taut dappled legs underneath his body.

Ann animatedly rose first, sliding off the torso and feeling her reed-cloaked feet make a gentle impact with the ground before turning to help a distinctly relieved looking Jack off as well. "Thanks for the ride Quigga!" she graciously told him before turning and heading right on the cub's heels.

"Ann, stay back a bit!" a fearful Jack shouted from right behind her. "Don't you understand that you're becoming way too friendly with lions, for Christ's sake?"

Smiling, a jogging Ann looked back at him and proclaimed, "They're just harmless cubs Jack! Beside, don't you just want to join in the fun too?" she coaxed.

"Well, alright," the playwright acquiesced. "But only this once, and don't go telling their parents or people we know about it," he jokingly warned with a thin smile of hesitant enthusiasm. "And besides, I've decided that I don't really like this Zazu fella either. Reminds me far too much of my Uncle Benjamin, for whom fun was like a curse word," he added with one of those wonderful crooked grins as he fell into step beside her.

At this point, Simba and Nala were spryly trotting up an avenue of Grant's zebras, all standing at attention like palace guards a few dozen yards before them. When Zazu walked down, the striped ponies all turned and raised their tails like poles. Clearly thinking he was going to be soiled, Zazu hilariously frantically covered himself with and cowered under a wing.

Quickly realizing that this wasn't going to happen though, Zazu took flight, leaving the zebra corridor open for an enchanted Ann and Jack. On his own volition, Jack slipped his long, pleasingly muscular right arm under Ann's left shoulder, both crooks linking as the zebras reversed their positions, backed up, and thrillingly bowed as Ann jogged together with Jack through this crazy promenade, both of them gazing at each other as they laughed softly together.

Shifting her cornflower stare on Zazu, Ann saw him looking for the cubs as he flew over a herd of elephants, pounding the ground with their columnar legs and swinging their trunks in expressions of the same excitement she was feeling.

Popping out from the herd's leading edge, Simba then leapt up a giraffe and climbed to the top of its head. Standing there as Zazu flew under him, he decreed, "Everybody look left."

At that moment, a side-splitting thing began to happen, a small herd of animals rushing sideways to the left towards Zazu. Mischievously, unhesitatingly, Ann joined the fray, doing her familiar hold-an-imaginary-cane-and-dance-sideways-routine in the company of a wildebeest, a Cape buffalo, an elephant, a giraffe, a leopardess, and a hippo, among other animals as a worried Jack stayed only a few steps away. Zazu made a highly amusing squawk that trumpeted his surprise while the herd trampled him, also giving the red-billed hornbill an unscheduled dust bath.

Then Simba sang, "Everybody look right," Ann Darrow instantly using her dazzling, practiced agility to swerve in a flash and go in the opposite direction with all the animals, running roughshod over Zazu again. The herd broke up then, giving her a perfect view of Simba effortlessly leaping up a ladder of accommodating giraffe's heads, stating "Everywhere you look I'm…"sliding down one's neck to adopt a perfect theatrical pose before finishing, "Standing in the spotlight!"

Excellently done Simba! Ann thought in the pure admiration that one professional stage performer always feels towards a wholehearted, flawless demonstration by another. I bet Jack is absolutely floored by this too-oh God, where is Jack?, she thought wildly, seeing that her beloved partner wasn't anywhere near her. Panic began to blossom in Ann's breast as Zazu spat in impressive time, "Not yet!" before the hindquarters of a zebra and giraffe closed on him like huge doors.

Ann was in absolutely no mood for amusement now though. Had Jack tripped or fallen and been trampled to death by the herd while she was obliviously doing her giddy soft-shoeing along with them? Wildly, she cast about. To her deep relief, she saw Jack quite close by, only separated from Simba by a hippo and unhurt.

As she watched, beginning to move towards the playwright, Simba conspiratorially whispered something in the hippo's ear. The hippo then beckoned a curious Jack to lean to the left, the beast then revealing his great ivory tusks as he whispered what Simba had told him into Jack's ear. Although Ann had no clue what had just passed in words between them, Jack suddenly stood up, amusement tightening his tanned Roman features as he slowly gave a devilish grin, then passed the message on to a receiving giraffe, who then passed it on to a blue monkey.

Filled with curiosity, Ann began to trot towards Jack when a lovely lilac-breasted roller flew like a flash in front of her. With a cinnamon back, dark purple shoulders, a lilac throat and chest streaked with white, a turquoise belly, tail, rump, and wing patch, and a crown and nape of spearmint green, the bird was a small riot of colors. Hovering in front of her, this living artwork animatedly requested of Ann, "Spread out your arms and fingers!"

Totally confused by such an order, she felt her forehead wrinkle in puzzlement as the pastel-colored roller repeated, more urgently, "Look, you'll love it. Please spread out your arms and fingers!"

Even though she still couldn't even guess what the bird's intention was, there was something so earnest and sincere and expectant and delighted in his voice that Ann mentally thought, "Well okay. What the hell," and stretched her arms to their full length, fanning out her fingers at the same time.

Instantly, a whole aviary of colorful birds was literally on her. There were other lilac-breasted rollers, malachite kingfishers, and blue-eared starlings.

Little green bee-eaters came flocking, with Kelly green bodies, thin black dominos, a black necklace, and thin tail streamers. Little bee-eaters with similarly green upperparts joined them in buff-colored underparts, sky-blue "eyebrows" above their black masks, and bright yellow throats above a black necklace, then a rufous one. There was a group of swallow-tailed bee-eaters, pale green with rumps and forked tails colored like polished turquoise and yellow throats above thin blue necklaces. Perhaps the most gorgeous were the northern carmine bee-eaters, streamlined rosy carmine birds with green-blue crowns and throats, bearing pale blue vents and rumps.

That still wasn't all. Glossy purple violet wood-hoopoes with bright red legs and crimson sickles for bills. Bright metallic, swirled green emerald cuckoos with lemon yellow lower breasts and bellies. D'Arnaud's barbets, stocky little birds with pale yellow underparts, white-spotted black upperparts, and black-flecked heads that seemed dipped in gold dust. Sunbirds came like flying jewels with thin scmitar beaks for imbibing nectar, each one a rainbow of iridescent color-collared, scarlet-chested, variable, mariqua, beautiful. Superb and golden-breasted starlings, exotically far more lovely than any European one came with a whole painter's palette of weaverbirds-lesser masked, blue-cheeked cordon bleus, purple grenadiers, southern red bishops.

To Ann's shocked delight, this profusion of flamboyant feathers gently came to rest on her fingers, arms, shoulders, and blond crown. Some even clutched the upper edges and straps of her slip with their feet. Those winged beauties that couldn't find a place simply settled on the ground at her reed-shod ones. It reminded her so enchantingly, thrillingly, of how as part of his "Jungle Man" vaudeville act, one of Ann's former friends, Ernie Maple, would give a whistle, and a whole flock of gorgeous parrots, budgies, and doves would come flying from all directions to land on his body.

"All right," the first lilac-breasted roller gabbled breathlessly. "When you hear the word 'wing', throw your arms up into the air, OK?"

Ann just nodded.

The chorus of wild animals was becoming more enthusiastically animated with the song now, going "Let every creature go for broke and sing, let's hear it in the herd and on the wing!"

NOW! Ann thought, gracefully flinging her supple arms into the air-and in a spectacular, prize-worthy display of color and motion, the rainbow of birds on her and at her feet exploded into the African sky, singing as they did so! As Ann felt her face spilt open in an absolutely enchanted, ivory-toothed grin, Jack was at her right, crying in amazed pride, "Good Lord Ann, that display was just stunning!"

But before Ann could thank Jack for his words of praise, something even more stunning than that caught their attention as the song came to its climax.

As the chorus yelled, "It's gonna be King Simba's finest fling!" some animal giving an excited, high-pitched, "OH YYEEEEAAAAHHHHHH!" in response, the final verse began. To the stage actresses' and the playwright's dumbfounded amazement, out of a ring of elephants doing "Egyptian-style" moves with their trunks, came a ring of hippos, which then stood like boulders on the backs of the larger animals. More came, blossoming out of the center like the blue lotus bloom in Ann's hair to form their own distinct layers.

Giraffes, long variegated gaslight-pole necks parting and falling away from each other like asparagus stalks when the rubber band is taken off. Giant anteaters, flicking their sticky tongues like reddish ribbons-I thought they lived in South America, Ann thought incredulously. Sable antelope bulls, their huge horns parting like scimitars in an Arab men's dance to reveal, so high Ann now had to crane her thin neck and bring her gaping mouth level with the ground, a cock ostrich, spreading his white wings like fans to reveal Simba and Nala, a pink halo of flamingos flying above.

Astounded beyond belief at this spectacle, all a dumfounded Ann could say was, "If I brought something like this to Chicago and laid it at Manny's feet, he'd probably make me his adoptive daughter on the spot. Then he'd likely have a heart attack from all the excitement," she pragmatically added.

"Everyone would be bowing down at my feet if I showed Mr. Weston and my other theater pals this sort of spectacle on Broadway. Jesus, unbelievable," Jack gasped distractedly in pure wonder.

All the while, every single animal continued to just belt out, "Oh I just can't wait to be king!"

Then the inevitable happened, the tower of animals beginning to sway drunkenly and unpredictably against the setting sun under their combined weight as Ann backpedaled and Jack's hand closed around her right wrist, turning her as he dryly, cheerily said, "Looks like the two-person audience is suddenly too close!" Maybe it was a trick of the light, but for a second Ann thought she saw on the other side, from the corner of her eye, a warthog streak in to pluck a weasel-like creature from the same predicament.

As she picked up her pace, Ann saw from a long shadow that the animal tower was falling, breaking up behind them, still too close. Suddenly, a sable antelope bull came flying down and hit the ground on his knees, landing precisely nine centimeters from Jack's toes with a whump. As dust puffed up, Ann and her lover both exclaimed "Whoa!" as they both vaulted backwards like a pair of vervet monkeys.

Getting back to his feet, the massive sable bull shook himself, contritely told them, "Sorry about that humans," and then cantered off, horns seeming to catch on the salmon and peach washed sky like it was fabric.

As more animals passed them on the ground, she felt Jack's broad hand stroke her shoulder blade, enquiring softly, "Ann, are you alright?"

Calmed by his touch, she nodded. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just caused me to jump a bit, that's all," laughing at how her body had literally done just that."

"You weren't the only one," Jack pointed out as he gave a knowing grin, emerald eyes twinkling. "And if only we'd had a picture when all those birds flushed off you! If I didn't know any better, I'd have believed my sweetheart to be Papagino's new wife from The Magic Flute with all those rainbows of feathers around you," bending down to proudly kiss her on the cheek, then in the ticklish hollow between her neck and shoulder as Ann's satisfied heart filled with the warmth that permeated her blood from the touch of his smooth lips.

As she blushed and giggled at once, Ann hopefully thought, New wife…Somehow, as crazy as it seems, I wouldn't and for this moment in time, don't mind that idea.

Cruelly, a grim part of her sprung up to say, growling like a lion, Remember what happens when you think too intimately and prop your hopes up too high Ann, especially since you're wandering out HERE.

Reluctantly, she silently pushed her warmly optimistic thoughts away, and then swept the new, uneasy ones out too by questioning thoughtfully, "I wonder what happened to Zazu and the cubs though Jack?" as she scanned the space of grass around them.

"Beats m-" Jack began to say, dismissively shrugging, -but Ann then received an answer as to the hornbill's current whereabouts.

A black rhino cow was sitting dumbly about a hundred and fifty yards away, Zazu's pompous voice coming from under her rump in a muffled, "I beg your pardon, madam, but…GET OFF! Simba? Nala?" he hopefully questioned.

The comical scene and speech utterly slaid Ann, slapping her hands against her thighs as Jack joined her with his purring chuckles and Zazu said, "Nala? Simba? So help me, you'd best not be standing there laughing at me if you know what's good for you!"

His wide crooked grin draining away, Jack took pity on the hornbill, saying, "I think he's taken more than his fair share of abuse this afternoon, don't you?" Without waiting for Ann to give the obvious response, he strode towards the rhino on his long legs, telling Ann offhandedly, "Stay back for your safety. I'm just going to circle around in front of her and make her aware of the problem, although I think everything will be fine."

Since she didn't sense any aggression about the rhino, and remembered her from the waterhole anyway, Ann just acceptingly nodded. As Jack slowly, yet confidently circled around to the black rhino's front, getting her attention with a "Hey there!" and neutrally informing her that she was sitting on someone, Ann's attention was diverted then by the tracks of both cubs, showing that they'd been scampering due south.

Oh Christ have mercy, she thought in horror, gasping as an exotic, yet deeply instinctive wave of maternal concern crashed through her. They had to be heading for the place she and Jack had first been sent to.

To her left, the rhino was saying to Jack as she got to her ace-of-clubs feet, "Thanks for telling me buddy. Terribly sorry," she apologized to Zazu, turning.

"Yes, well, it's not your fault madam," the bird hurriedly replied, brushing himself off and shaking his feathers back into place. "Those dratted cubs were-Oh no, where are the cubs!"

"They went that way!" Ann shouted frantically, pointing south towards the ashy area.

A panic and fear for them equal to Ann's own striking Zazu's features as the rhino plodded off, he shouted, "In the name of King Mufasa, no! Not the Elephant Graveyard!" Immediately, he leapt up into the air, took flight, and tore south like the hounds of hell were after his charges. And they would be soon, a concerned Ann knew. Zazu wouldn't be enough, and she had to do something!

As he rejoined her, Ann was only distantly aware of Jack sardonically muttering, "You're welcome."

The muscle I need!

Her heart going like a mad thing, soaked in altruistic fear for the cubs, she turned like a flash and told Jack, "Jack, I think you might have to perform one more act of bravery before the day is out. This time though, we'll be doing it together."

Completely at a loss, Jack's forehead narrowed and he said, "Bravery? For cripes sake Ann, what are you even talking about? There's no one and nothing here to fight," he pronounced, gesturing with his arm at the dusk-shrouded savannah. "In fact, we should be getting back to the waterhole and shelter before something shows up that will require us to fight. Come on, I saw a nice hollow under a slab of rock there that shouldn't take us too long to expand," beckoning upstream with his right hand.

He just didn't get it. "No Jack, I meant there might be hyenas! And they'll be after the cubs soon in there. The Elephant Graveyard," she implored, pointing at the shadowed, misty place only a quarter mile away, one where sinister forces and creatures had to be closing in, even as she spoke, on two new innocent, oblivious offerings.

Yeah, I know, Ann's sudden worry for the cubs might seem a bit unconvincing, but just put yourself emotionally into her own reed shoes. Besides, it's a linchpin for the story's plot. If anyone else can think of a better way to motivate Darrow and Driscoll to go back into the graveyard, by all means tell me. Speaking of which, I have to give a preview.

As Jack reached the firelit scene, coming to the edge with Ann close behind as he panted, the hyenas were rolling about below in fits of sick laughter at what they'd done to Zazu. Before the playwright could act, a new, defiant voice was heard, getting the attention of human and hyena alike. Standing on a ribcage was Simba with Nala, boldly chiding, "Hey, why don't you pick on someone your own size?" Pretending to mull it over, the tousled female said, "Like...YOU?" Horrified, Simba could only say, "Oops," as the female lunged with a snap at him. Even then, Jack felt his legs coil, then throw his body into the air, saying with a cool fury, "Actually, I totally agree with him," as he felt himself crash onto the coarse, reeking back of the talking male, tackling him to the rock.