The sun rises. The sun comes through the east windows of the palace, illuminating rooms and hallways.
Servants begin their day's work.
The sun hasn't reached the highest tower.
"Baba, wake up!" Simba stands on his father's side of the bed. "Baba? Baabaa. Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba, Baba —"
"Your son is awake," Sarabi murmurs with half her face still buried in the pillow.
"Before sunrise, he's your son." After all, he is the King of everything the light touches.
"Come on, Baba!"
A lion cub jumps to Mufasa's back and grabs the King's air between his teeth, tugging and making little growling sounds. He loses his grip, stumbles and falls and Sarabi's mirror threatens to fall too when the cub crashes against it. The only thing that falls is wooden bangles the Queen didn't bother putting back into their respective chest and just left on her boreu.
The lion cub leaps to Mufasa's back again, with enough might to knock the air out of the King.
The lion cub is replaced by Simba.
"You promised!"
"Okay. Okay. I'm up. I'm up."
"Yeah!"
Mufasa yawns like a lion, baring teeth far too sharp to be human.
Simba picks the clothes he dropped when he shifted, putting them back on. His father grabs a robe and ties it for some semblance of property over his sleeping clothes. Sarabi sits up too, stretching her arms and accepting the forehead kiss her husband gives her as good morning. Simba jumps to her embrace and, purring, their rub their heads together.
Sarabi nudges her son and he follows Mufasa out of the room.
The sun rises. The sun reaches the highest tower.
"Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom."
The savannah shines in the gold of morning. The horizon, where the sky kisses the grasslands, feels like a lifetime away. Flocks of birds cut through the landscape and very faintly the trumpet of the elephants can be heard. If one takes the time, they can even feel the drumroll of hooves stomping on the earth and to cut a distance for food or water.
Below them and beyond the castle walls, the citadel rises too. Someone plays a kora and a talking drum, making the early rising more pleasant than it is.
Simba sits on his father's shoulders to see over the edge of the tower wall.
"A king's time as ruler," Mufasa says, "rises and falls like the sun. One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here… and will rise with you as the new king."
Simba's hands search for his father's crown but Mufasa didn't put it on before leaving the royal chambers.
"And this will all be mine?"
"Everything."
"Everything the light touches."
Simba spots a herd in the distance, of antelopes or zebras. Lionesses do their rounds among the perimeter of the castle. The different bodies of water shine like mirrors in the sunlight, and the heat hasn't settled yet. The chill of the night remains in the breeze.
"What about that shadowy place?"
"That's beyond our borders. You must never go there, Simba."
A canyon up north, the sun stops where it starts.
"Is it another kingdom?"
"No."
"I thought a King can do whatever he wants."
Mufasa smiles. "Oh, there's more to being king than getting your way all the time."
Simba sound genuinely surprised, "There's more?"
Mufasa breathes a laugh. "Oh, Simba."
Two crowns glisten on top of the heads of the King and the Prince.
In the citadel, the music floods streets and plazas. Women walk around with baskets balanced on their heads. Kids use long sticks to guide their herds out to the grasslands. There are cheetahs walking next to impala, crocodiles carrying birds on their backs, even an elephant with her trunk on the shoulder of a young man (making it look like a grandson guiding his grandmother). All the colours from the clothes and the houses and the animals look particularly bright in the morning sun. A man selling jewellery chats with a painted dog. The cubs of jaguars chase after sandgrouse but without ill intent, they are just kids playing a game.
Two lionesses of the Jua Limegusa escort them, both golden pelted and they help open a path in the packed street for the King and Prince to walk through.
Vendors stop to bow their heads and offer some of their goods to the King. The man with the jewellery tells him Queen Sarabi would surely love this necklace of leather braided with spheres of aquamarine. Mufasa nods at the man, declines, and lets him go back to his bargain with the painted dog.
Simba tries to grab and touch everything he can reach, and even things he can't.
He accepts samples of baked goods a kind woman offers him. He grabs something sparkly from the stand of a kori bustard, and it's the lioness walking by his side that has to put it back (the kori bustard is not happy and they snap their beak even if Simba is the Prince). Simba almost wants to ask Mufasa if he would let him join the kids running on the roofs, chasing each other, but he knows these lessons with his father are few and far between. The King has responsibilities, after all.
Though he does pay close attention to the kids running on the roofs, because not all of them are birds or big cats or hooved, some of them are just kids. Simba had always just assumed everyone was a shapeshifter. All his palace friends are shifters. His parents, his uncle, his aunts, his cousins. They were all of Leo descent.
His father had never taken him out to the citadel. He'd only come with his mother to attend some business that had been too boring for him to care, so it is only now that he is paying attention. Mufasa has always told him a king's duty is to his people first, so he watches the people.
People that couldn't shapeshift.
"Baba." Simba pulls on the sleeve of his father's clothes. "Those kids aren't animals."
Mufasa looks where Simba is pointing, at the kids on the roofs. He smiles and rumbles a laugh. Simba is sure he heard the lionesses purr a laugh too.
The King doesn't answer to his son's unasked but obvious question until they leave the citadel and reach the grasslands proper. They cross the pens with the cattle, the herders giving bows as they urge their cows on. The music from the talking drum seems to follow them from the streets.
Standing on the open grasslands is harder to see the animals gathered around the savannah. There are just the grass and the breeze and the small trees scattered around to bring shade. Birds sing from the branches of one to the branches of another.
"Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance," says Mufasa to his son.
"I didn't know there was people who couldn't shapeshift."
"Think of it the same way as the animals we eat. It is against our law and the half of our human nature to eat another of our same species, you wouldn't eat a zebra you know can also be a man." Mufasa put his big, heavy hand on Simba's shoulder. "Just like there are zebras who aren't people, there are people who aren't zebras. As King, you need to understand that balance and respect all the creatures. From the crawling ant—" He crouched and gestured to the little black dots crawling through the blades of grass. "—to the leaping antelope."
"Antelope-antelope?"
Mufasa nods. "Antelope-antelope."
"But, Baba." Simba watches a herd of antelope pass them by with joy in the way they skip over the grass instead of running. They pay them no heed, they just go on their way. Unafraid. "Don't we eat antelope?"
Mufasa smiles. "Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass… and the antelope eat the grass. And so, we are all connected in the great Circle of Life."