She shouldn't have been there,and yet she had to be.The rain surged down from the heavens much as it had the night when Scar had been murdered.Relentless,endless fragments of life reviving the dead earth.

The familiar giant rocky structure loomed over her,a true shadow of her past that had not yet healed and never would be until she took it upon herself to return this favor.A ghastly favor in most other's eyes.

But if she did not enact venegance,who would?

As heavy as the downpour was,her nocturnal vision enabled her to make out the long strip of path that lead to the back entrance.Slowly and surely,she slinked up the narrow route as the rain raged harsher now.The Pridelands were swarthed in sea of black,a deathly infernal.

Cool breath misted out of her muzzle in short spurts as she arrived at the rear mouth of the cave,fur plastered over her glassy brown eyes and muscles taut with anxiousness.After a long trek,she had made it.

The floor was carpeted by the bodies of many lionnesses,a few were her cousins that had remained.Proving blood wasn't thicker then water.

But,she allowed a wicked sneer to spread as her gaze lay to rest upon a cub lying next to his mother,it would soon be proven otherwise.She moved along the wall toward them,confident the rain was too noisy for anyone to hear her.The inside was warm,dry and safe from any harm.

Nobody stirred or gave a restless grumble,wrinkled their shut eyes from a bad dream or even breathed differently.They were all one in what they did.Practiced and perfected.Everyone about was relaxed.

"Kopa,"Nala whispered as she moved a paw toward her son;asleep.

As she peered down at the golden furred cub,it flicked an ear around in his sleep.He couldn't have been older then her youngest son.All of this couldn't be easier.With half-hooded lids,she eased herself down to the cub's level and gently clasped his soft body between her long jaws.

Resuming her place at the wall,the middle-aged lioness slipped away as easily as she had came.The cave widened as she exited the front door and stepped out into what had been reduced to a cool drizzle.

Her claws scraped the stone slightly as she ascended to the podium ever more anxiously.An aftermath of rainy aroma entoxicated all her senses at once,adrenline spiked and hate brimmed her souless being.

Over the very point of rock she stopped with the cub,her mouth full and the far off drop awaiting it's defenseless victim.He began to stir a bit,his small paws kicking around obliviously in the stark,odorous air.

The lioness's lower jaw opened,like the hinge of a door opening up to reveal something horrible and gruesome.His belly rolled down over her tounge and escaped completely from her mouth a sole breath of death.

x.x.x

Smirking with abnormal,twisted delight,Zira appeared over the lower rocks near the ground to see where he had landed.Sprouts of grass dotted the earth,hailing a clear resurrection in the growth of greenary.

She began searching the tufts of baby blades for a golden dot,hoping that it had been painless.Not so much on the cub's behalf,but so that his father would feel more shattered.So that Simba's pain increased.

As the clouds parted and new morning flowed over the Pridelands in a wrap of sacred light,no body appeared.The lionness searched and searched,there was no one.Nothing.It was as if the prince vanished.

With the sounds of the pride arousing,Zira raced out of the kingdom.

The End.

LP