A/N:

I'm going to be pretty prompt this time. Apologies for: 1) taking a long time to respond to PMs/review requests/etc, 2) posting a ridiculously short chapter, and 3) uhh... I guess just the first two. School is in for me (as I believe I mentioned), and I've just been busy with other stuff. It may be a few more days before I come back on and get caught up - I pretty much just polished/edited this chapter to give it to you guys, and as it is I can't stay up much longer.

So yeah, it's short, but it's better than nothing for now. I think it's actually one of my better ones. Hoping you guys enjoy - since I didn't say anything last time, consider this the 1.5 year anniversary chapter. :p

Two more things:

1 - As I was writing this segment, I was listening to an album I'd never heard before (Meteora by Linkin Park), and as I was writing a passage I realized that what I was listening to fit *exactly* with my words - the mood/tone, the words/themes... everything. Kind of scary. o.o I've adopted it as the theme for one of our favorite characters. :p You'll figure out who. For the full effect, look up "Easier to Run" by the aforementioned band and listen to it as you read this chapter.

2- There is a poll on my profile. A few of you found it last chapter without my saying anything, but if you haven't checked it out yet then do click on my name and take a look. The question is "Should Trampled be illustrated?"

Granted, I'm still experimenting with digital art/fanart, but I think it would be good practice, and if enough of you want it... well, then you'll get it. So far one person has voted no (not sure why...? xD), but several more have voted yes, which leads me to believe the reaction is positive. If I get 10 or 15 people who want it, then I'll see what I can do. It may take a while, and will probably be done after the story is finished... but if you'd like to see images then do vote as such.

Reviews. :p

Danielle: You're first today! Have fun, dear. :D

pokeking95: Dang, it's been, like... two weeks since I sent you a message. o.o Apologies, as I said... Anyways, yes, a schism within the hyenas would have been interesting, but it would, as you astutely noticed, detract from their role and just make the plot too complicated. I mean, I could've, but I probably would have planned for such a big event and had a reason for both sides to exist/oppose each other and blah blah blah...

Yep, junior year started. Whoooopeee. lol Thanks for the nice words. :] We had to read An American Childhood by Annie Dillard - a decent book, even if I didn't like the work associated with it. Speaking of stories, how's yours coming along? ;o

IronicSnap: I know, you guys knew nothing of Nira. xD But I noticed that, because for some reason I intentionally avoided saying anything about Shenzi's mother. I didn't really have a reason for making Zamani her aunt at first, but then I figured that there was really no reason to mention the mother since that would detract from the aunt or something. Maybe. I don't remember the reasoning - it was forever ago. :? But now that Shenzi's gone, I figured that revealing Zamani's sister would maybe help augment your understanding of her mental state.

And yep, you got it! Scar crawled out of the tree to meet the hyenas (who totally love him now) to help assist in the destruction of his brother's kingdom. *high-five* No one else guessed that, so it stands to reason that you're the astutest of everyone. XD

Emerald dreamer96: I was really worried that the Ahadi/Uru scene was going off on too much of a tangent. Glad to hear you liked it. :p Interesting theory there, too. Yes, the family does kind of have a "breaking down" and it involves Scar/Mufasa and their mother/sibling. *not saying any more*

What do you have against Zamani? xD lol

BlackLouie: Thanks! I hope you keep reading. :)

mom: I honestly don't know. But like I said before, most fanfic writers are girls, and girls tend to like smexy things. So it's hard not to get an inkling (I didn't get intimate, though. Bleh.). Oh, fanfiction... -.-

Aweosmeness4eva: Thanks! :D Hope you like the chapter. Clarification: the cub she was pregnant with was a separate, third cub - Vitamu, Scar and Mufasa's unborn sister. Hope that clears it up, though if I ever confuse you feel free to ask questions. I'd be happy to answer. :]

TheBreekachu: Hey! :) Yeah, I guess it would have been nice if Scar had grown up with a sibling (other than Mufasa) who he was close with and didn't have to compete against. :p And yeah, this story seems to have a knack for making people sad... sorry for that, I guess. xD And yes, it was Usiku. You'll probably figure out what happened to her son next chapter. :D

PS Whatever happened to your story? :p Correct me if you updated and I didn't see it... but I am curious.

Night-Waker: Sure, go for it! And I kind of agree... I mean, it'd be pushing it to even make a passage with Nala at this point (I'm planning on giving her a main role in the next story, to appease the people - including myself - who wish she'd been in this one), but T&P would really just be... needless. I mean, Simba died in the first chapter, and he's the only reason they're in the movie. xD

Glad you liked the flashback! Interesting theories there. :p One of them is the right idea, but I won't say which one. Sorry. xD Keep reading and you'll find out.

vvvvv I'm ready. What about you? vvvvv

"N-No. It's not true."

Those were the first words which left the poor young lioness' mouth. Her head shook, her limbs quivered… it was like staring at an apparition. And the fact that many pairs of eyes were fixed on her shrunken form did little to ease her tension.

"I-I-It… no, it can't be. You're dead."

The lioness came closer, fixing a warm, solid paw on her shoulder. This wasn't a ghost, nor was it a figment of her imagination. This was a living, breathing lioness. Her mind and her senses assured it so, beyond the shadow of a doubt. But her heart was stubborn—her heart which had long since been torn asunder. Oh, she'd tried to pick up the pieces, tried to stitch the wounds all back together to form a working, beating, feeling apparatus. But it still hurt inside, with sharp pangs assailing her no matter how much she tried to escape the injuries of the horrid past, no matter how hard she tried to look forward to a hopeful future in light of her youth and in spite of the pain. Alas, a torrent of terrible feelings came up at even the thought of… what happened.

"No. You're dead. I lived and you're dea—"

She couldn't even finish her sentence, a sharp sting piercing her chest and squeezing out the well of tears dammed up behind her glossy green irises. She closed them promptly, hid them from the rest of the world… and instinctively pressed her wet eyes into her foreleg, where she could freely let the moisture loose without having to witness, in her shame, the shocked reactions of the cruel world outside. The one which had seemed sweet and nurturing in her youth… but alas, that was only a mask. No matter how much she tried to pretend, this was its true face—that revelation had come to her already; it had recurred ever since the accident. In fact, it still haunted her, still came back to show its passive ruthlessness from time to time. The true color of the earth was red with the blood which stained it. The sky was dark with misery. All that changed was the filter on the lens, the occasional lightening of the surroundings… which would plummet back into darkness just when her eyes had adjusted to it.

She hated these moments. Just when she thought she'd escaped it. … And that cursed paw never went away from her shoulder.

"Nyota…" the lioness whispered, her voice like a devious serpent whose fangs could inject agony into her heart. "…Nyota, it's me. Remember? Your best friend… Malaika…"

"No," she continued to plead, the irrationalities spewing forth on a consistent loop. A record scratched and marred beyond repair. "No, you're dead," she repeated again, "you're dead and this is a nightmare. You died. Please… please, stop."

The other lionesses looked on, expressions of sympathy and shock and confusion on their faces. Was their young huntress… from the deserts?

Alas, this Malaika they didn't trust, nor did they believe… but Nyota… with her, they could almost swallow it—surely she wouldn't lie about something which so obviously pricked a nerve, after all. Wasn't it right to think so? And what of the weeping? What did she have to cry about? What was wrong?

Whether they knew it or not, each of them was probing the internal bank of their memories, trying to recall what they knew of Nyota's sudden appearance, her acceptance into the pride, and anything concerning her past… but they all came up empty. Whatever had happened, she never talked about it. Mufasa had never asked, either: she had simply shown up, thirsty and starving and completely alone, at the earliest stages of adolescence. Judging her as a possible threat hadn't seemed necessary, and reviving her and keeping her alive seemed far more important than the whys as to her arrival.

She was a cub. They'd assumed she was innocent—the king wouldn't turn her away, and that was the end of the matter. Now, however, her background was resurfacing, and they found they knew nothing about her, where she'd come from, what had happened to her…

Naturally, they were curious.

"Nyota?" Mufasa queried, attracting the attention of the whole pride as he voiced the question they were all surely asking, "do you... know… this lioness?"

"Yeah," another interjected, "did you live in the desert? Did you live through the attack on the main pri—"

"No, of course not, Malai. All those lionesses died," a second interrupted sharply, the asperity and the cluelessness of her corrective tone stinging Nyota despite herself. That lioness had no idea. None of them knew any better. But it was still anguishing to be locked up for so long, not a soul knowing who you were, where you had come from, why you were truly there…

"No, I… Yes. I-I mean no, I don't understand…" she looked around, the pain in her green eyes more apparent than any they had ever seen from her. And then, suddenly, she broke. "Just stop! Leave me alone!" she pushed past several of the lionesses, her eyes wrenched shut as she bounded away. Where she was going, they didn't know… anywhere but there was preferable for her.

They all stood for several moments, dumbfounded and confused. Hazizidi's—or, for the sake of her trickery, Malaika's—pale form shifted its weight forward, body instinctively pooling its energies and preparing itself like a flexible collection of fluid, a rainstorm intent on following the other young lioness. But Nyota wouldn't have it, for she couldn't deal with the rain. The rain which drowned out her happy, sunny days.

Alas, her intent wasn't to cloud and blot out her sunbeams. She genuinely wanted to comfort.

Besides, at this point, she had to…

"M-maybe," her harsh voice rasped and broke through the oppressive silence, "maybe I…" she gulped diffidently as the eyes of the suspicious lionesses were instantly drawn to her, little reflective magnets gleaming with derision and, even in their darkened and grudging forms, reflective light. How dare she upset their young huntress so? "Maybe I should follow her…?"

It was more of a question than a statement. Mufasa took it as an appeal to his authority, and thus pursed his lips in thought.

"Go."

That was all she needed: that sharp bit of consent was like a snag cutting through the invisible leash clutching her nape. She loped, loose, up the hill and after her 'friend'.

She wasn't, really, her friend, or even her acquaintance; in fact, she'd never seen Nyota before in her life. If it weren't for Usiku's complete confidence in her existence, plus the odd scrap of knowledge she had about her—apparently dug from some unknown crook of history via the leads of some shady informant—well, she didn't know what they would have done instead. The tar-hued lioness had her ways, and a plan for her newest member. And so she'd come to Mufasa's pride, this now brooding and distrustful but very close group, in apparent earnestness. When Nyota had pricked her ears and responded to her name, Hazi had been visibly relieved.

The lioness hadn't, however, expected her actions to provoke such emotion, and that in turn struck a real, genuine response up in her own heart. For despite her mission, and her loyalties, she wasn't malicious. She was just a stray, a lost rogue blown around the desert in time with its capricious winds. Cast that way by fate, she had ended up on Usiku's side of the line in regards to their battles.

In light of this, she felt truly sorry for the distraught lioness despite her position with the opposing side. The thoughts she articulated were false, as they had to be… but the emotion was bona fide.

Her footsteps crumpled the young, budding shoots of revived grass. Nyota looked over with gleaming, tear-stained eyes; her gem-green irises contrasted bitterly with the red fringes circling her orbits… a clashing array of colors which belied her weeping.

She appeared to calm slightly. Hazizidi, as her alleged long-lost friend, spoke.

"Nyota, it's me," she whispered, again trying to pry the young huntress out of her sadness. "Malaika."

The lioness didn't appear to hold any particular qualms with that statement anymore, after it'd been repeated so many times. Her sense of evasiveness could not outlast her natural curiosity, and to her momentary ally's mild relief, she mopped her wet face with a paw and sniffed delicately.

"… I know. I thought… thought you were dead." She averted her gaze, looking downcast. Her lips were pressed together tautly, ears drooping in apparent laxity like soft, withered flowers.

"I noticed." There was a twinge of impatience despite herself, an emotion Hazi quickly suppressed and then extinguished. She swallowed, hating to lie and hurt her more… but alas, she didn't know what exactly she'd been through. Just the vague details, thrown together into a story that was just enough for the plan to work, even if the entirety of Usiku's seemingly far-flung schemes were hung upon tenuous supports, snug inside a small loophole the ragged sister pride could only just straggle into. "It's just… been a long time since it... since when…"

Her throat tightened both in sadness and common sense. She knew not to continue farther than that.

"Not long enough, it seems," Nyota picked up her dangling thread with a surprising quickness… an uncharacteristically morose quickness which was devoid of humor. And then, the sort of question Hazi dreaded: "did you ever find your brother?"

"No."

That was the only safe answer. She continued, drawing off of what little she knew.

"He… he disappeared. What of yours? Did you find the one you were looking for?"

"The moon has yet to guide me to him," she responded, not missing a beat as her native, desert-oriented faith—something she shared both with the real Malaika and, distantly, with Hazi—shone through like the orb itself. She paused, letting a sigh escape her weary figure… "All it gave me was this. I'm blessed with my new pride—I really am, thank the spirits—but they don't understand… I suppose you're the only one who does. How did you even survive?"

Hazi groaned vaguely, as though in thought. She wasn't really Malaika, obviously. Thusly, she wasn't sure what the lioness by that name had been through; how or if she would have survived remained a well-kept secret. Being vague was her only option, and she shrugged her shoulders to help hide her in the midst of ambiguity.

"Err… The same way you did, I guess."

Nyota was too beaten up inside to foster any suspicion—or even much attention—toward her. For a long moment she was silent, the crease of her lips forming a straight, even line. She lay dormant in thought. No noise escaped her oddly pensive figure for several terse moments, and when she did speak, it was in a sad tone that didn't seem to fit her normally sunny outlook.

"If you can call it surviving." Her face was pinched with traces of melancholy, like a shriveled fruit. But as Hazi continued to watch, Nyota's mouth suddenly puckered and twisted, as though she'd tasted something acrid, and the timbre of her speech became thoughtful. "Were there any other survivors besides us? Did you ever… find… my—"

"No. I never saw them."

Again, the only safe answer, for it was better that she say no and be wrong than say yes and duly welcome a barrage of questions. They both would have liked to think that the remainders lay out there somewhere, but if they did exist, they had obviously kept themselves well-hidden from Nyota's scrupulous gaze.

"We both lost so much, so many... But I'm glad I found you. I thought they were gone—all of them."

"Yeah," she conceded in agreement, looking at her paws with shifty, nervous eyes. That was all she could do: the rest of her mind drew a blank, which manifested itself as a soft silence. Yet anything to puncture it would have been preferable, and so it was that she voiced one question. Something which had haunted her all along, but unlike the truth of the tragedy, could be expressed under a veil of sympathy.

Hazi cleared her throat.

"Does the whole thing… does it… still bother you?"

Instantly she withdrew, almost regretting the answer to her obvious query. But Nyota's face was pallid and her gaze lay in a trance of emotionless stolidity. The lioness' eyes were unusually cold, her perennial happiness extinguished as she looked out at the horizon harshly.

"… Every. Day."

There was a pause before her interlocutor spoke the words which only came natural to a fellow being: "I feel for you."

Nyota sighed, a long and weary sound which highlighted her sorrow. The sorrow she so hoped to escape, but had entrenched itself in her so deeply she wasn't sure if she could ever escape its tendrils.

It was unfortunate. She tried her best. But sometimes—more often than not, in fact—that simply wasn't good enough. Nothing lasted forever.

Peace, least of all.

So do I.

Deep in the expanses of the empty, barren desert, where the wind and the sand were everlasting and timeless in their antiquity and persistence, a young lioness cub lay in the shifting dunes at night. The stars shone on the gossamer surface of the dusty earth, washing the buckled floor of the desert in a soft-edged light. It would have been a beautiful sight—if indeed the cub could have seen it.

She was buried under several feet of the substance.

As it was, she had been a cub many moons ago, too… but death is finality, and its ends are permanent and everlasting. It stops the whirling hourglasses in a way that life never could. In a way, death was the ultimate justice, the ultimate end, the finish line which permanently defined the form of its victims' bodies. There was no more aging, no more sense of time passing.

Mortality was the ultimate immortality. Ironically enough, she would remain a cub forever, though she was long since devoid of the innocence of such a state. Being dead, of course, had its drawbacks. But she'd been good, and like all good cubs, she was nestled between the rest of her dead family members amongst the stars. The moon shone and looked down upon her grave, where her corporeal self lay separate from her spirit in a constant state of rest, even despite the still pools of black crusted blood and the slit which lay between the smooth curves of her ears, the sharp protrusions of her mandible…

There was no pain for her anymore. She was whole and complete in her soul.

Yet this body—the real Malaika, long since lost to the world—would have rolled in her grave: one small, last reflection of her spirit above. For it was already clear that the ethereal part of her was not pleased.

Far below, in the cruel world she had once known, an imposter named Hazi was sullying her name. And down under the dunes, hundreds of feet away, a lone and buried body twitched itself in shame. There was almost nothing she could do, even though she desired nothing less than screaming out the truth to the conscious, breathing, living world. But only so much lay within her power.

All she could do was give her friend a blessing, and promise to watch over her. For somewhere in her shining, clairvoyant eyes lay the knowledge of the future disasters to unfold very soon.

"May the spirits guide you and your pride, Nyota. Mwezikuwa na wewe—danger lies right around the corner."

May the moon be with you - danger lies right around the corner.

Thanks this chapter go to Google Translate. :p

Name of filler lioness:

Malai (not to be confused with Malaika xD) - creamy

Now we know a little but more about Nyota. Any ideas on what role she will play in this story? Expect to find out in a few chapters, but until then your guesses are appreciated - not just for my amusement, but also as a form of personal feedback which will tell me how well I'm masking/revealing information. Sometimes I do base things on what you say to me.

So don't be shy! No tengan miedo que cometan errores. :p It's not a big deal.

Until next chapter, have a happy Friday! :)

Twin