III. Cycles

His olfactory sensors had already told him what was coming, even from several miles away. A couple more miles, and he could tell, from the way her hands tightened on his steering wheel, that Addy knew, too.

It had been months since they left Seronera, and through all that time, their contact with human civilization had been minimal. Neither of them had had to worry about sources of fuel or water: Addy had brought a substantial amount of water and fuel, for herself in the form of food rations, and for Hound in the form of diesel. Whenever they ran low, she directed Hound to certain points - usually a rock formation or a cluster of trees - where the park rangers cached important supplies like water, food and vehicle fuel.

But they needed water right at that moment, and the location for the next cache was too far away to be able to supply their immediate needs.

What Addy had not told him - or rather, what she had not known - was that the water source they were going to was also surrounded by an elephant graveyard.

"I never thought they existed," Addy said, her voice sounding soft and almost strangled as Hound negotiated a winding path between weathered elephant bones. "I thought they were just legend, but..."

Hound, however, remained quiet, his CPU lost in memory. It reminded him of those scrap yards on Cybertron, where the shattered remains of those destroyed during the war were dumped before they eventually found their way to the smelters deep underneath Cybertron's surface. Scrap yards were a clear marker of a Decepticon-held area or city, because the Decepticons could never be bothered with properly seeing to the remains of those they had killed, unless the victim had something important that they could use.

Addy made a choking sound then, and it was only then that Hound's optics spotted the large elephant carcass lying not too far away from where they were, half-obscured by vultures. "Primus..."

"We have to move somewhere downwind from them," Addy said, her gaze fixed on the carcass. "It won't be long until the lions and hyenas find their way here."

"All right." Hound maneuvered amongst the bones, checking wind direction with his sensors to make sure that they were downwind from the carcass. He was certain that the ripe smell coming off of it must not have been very pleasant for Addy, so he made sure that he chose a direction where the stench would not reach her. Once they were in a good-enough spot, he let Addy unload the water containers and the little filter she used to make sure that the water was clean, and then transformed.

As it turned out, she was right about the lions and hyenas: not long after they had found a good-enough spot near the spring they had been gunning for, the distinct yip-yapping of the latter drifted to his audios, only to be subsequently drowned out by the roar of a lion pride closing in.

Up until this point, Hound had never seen the great predators of the Serengeti during a feeding. He had seen them hunt, certainly - he had watched the cooperative work that lionesses did in order to bring down a wildebeest or a buffalo; he had seen a cheetah streak swiftly over the grass to tumble a gazelle down to the ground. But he had never seen them feeding.

It was a gruesome sight. He watched as the lions' heads disappeared into the open belly of the elephant carcass, only to come up with huge hunks of flesh and their muzzles covered in blood. He could not stand to watch it, and he looked away almost immediately. The image it raised in his mind - a vicious Decepticon crunching its way through the internal systems of another Transformer, even as energon and lubricant leaked and dripped from various severed cables - made him feel rather nauseous.

Of course, he knew better than to imagine such a fate for one of his fellow Autobots, since no Transformer, Autobot, Neutral, or Decepticon, ever had to "feed" in the same way that organics did, but still...

"Does it disturb you?"

Hound's optics snapped to where Addy was standing, her eyes watching the feeding lions with a steadiness that surprised him. "Doesn't it disturb you?" he asked. Shouldn't she have been troubled by the sight? After all, they were feeding on an elephant. A dead one, certainly, but an elephant nonetheless.

"If it had been hunted down by poachers, maybe, but I think it would be safe to say that the elephant died of natural causes." She straightened, and headed for the water. "What the lions are doing, what the hyenas and vultures and eventually the insects will do to that carcass, is all a part of a necessary cycle."

He listened as she told him about what she and other humans called the cycle of life, how living things are born, and when they die, return to the earth to nourish the next generation. It was an important and necessary part of life, not just on the Serengeti, but everywhere else - even amongst humans.

"But don't humans also believe in the soul?" Hound queried during a moment of silence. The lions had loped off at last, hyenas taking their place. "It's rather like our spark, but the human concept for it is very...complicated."

She laughed, and nodded. "Mostly because we tend to have different ideas about what happens to it after death." She seemed to sober up before continuing: "Some believe that, once we die, our souls are judged depending on whether or not we have led good lives, and then we are eternally blessed or eternally punished. Others believe that our souls come back, reborn over and over again, until we learn the lessons we must learn and can move on to a higher plane. And then there are those who believe that death is the end of it all, and that's that: nothing more beyond or after it."

They were quiet, the only sound that of Addy scooping water into a portable filter she brought everywhere with her. At length, Hound asked: "What do you believe in?"

Her answer took so long in coming that Hound suddenly wished he hadn't asked. He should have known better, should have remembered that talking about such things was a very sensitive topic amongst humans, and it was not something that one could just ask outright.

But she replied: "I believe that one day my body will turn into this." She lifted her hand, and Hound saw that she was holding some dust in it. He continued to watch her as she opened her hand, and let the wind carry the dust away. "But I also believe that I will become the acacia, the butterfly, the falcon, and the cheetah. I believe that, when I die, the dust that my body becomes will mingle with the earth, and from there, I can live a hundred million different lives, a part of every living thing that exists. When those beings die, they return to the earth, and they shall become part of another hundred million lives. And so the cycle continues, as it has since life came into being on this planet, and so it will continue, for as long as this planet exists."

He could see it: her spark scattering on the wind and then becoming a part of everything that lived and breathed, living again as a part of these beings, knowing a great and vast immortality for as long as this planet, and all the life on it, continued to exist.

It made his own spark dim suddenly, to think of her death. He watched her as she watched the vultures settle on the carcass again, and he realized that he did not like imagining her dead. How could he see her that way, when she stood nearby, vibrant and alive despite the death all around her?

He shook his head to clear his processors, trying to switch to his logic circuits. It was silly to be concerned over the possibility of her death. She was already close to halfway through the average human lifespan. Her active lifestyle and her optimistic outlook might give her a longer lease on life, but she would die in less than a vorn, if he had converted the Cybertronian time measurement correctly to reflect Terran years.

Then why did his spark dim even further at the thought?

"Hound."

He all but jerked when she said his name. "What?"

"We're done here. Let's go someplace else and make camp. It's starting to get late."

He nodded, and transformed back into his alt-mode. As soon as he did so, Addy loaded the water containers, and got behind the wheel. He started his engine up without her asking to, but he let her do the driving, because it allowed him to simply think without having to worry about the speed he was running at or the direction he was going.

After what just happened, there was much to think about.