ELF

Einsamkeit

Later that night

For several days, a skinny, raggedly-looking lion cub had been traveling toward Kopa and his human caretakers. She had been able to see the massive rock formation on the horizon for more than a day now, but being alone and unable to return to where she had come from, her progress forward was slow at best. As Markos and Hermann sat inside the cave that evening discussing marksmanship and eating stolen airplane food, the cub finally drew close enough to make out the two flags waving in the breeze over the cave entrance.

"Where did you learn to shoot, Hermann? You hit that rock dead center the other day, and it took me five rounds just to get somewhere close."

"My grandfather taught me. He was always into hunting…rifles, shotguns, that sort of thing. He taught almost everyone in my family to shoot, like it or not. Personally, I'm glad he did, although I doubt he ever thought I'd be looking to defend myself from a revenge-crazed lioness."

"I think I'll go for a quick walk outside…can you hang out here for five minutes? Kopa's still asleep, right?"

"Yeah, he's practically unconscious; I don't think a bomb going off would wake him up. Go ahead, just take a flashlight along and stay away from the cliff we found the other day; those things are always bad news."

Hermann lay down on the other mattress and stared up at the ceiling, listening to Markos's footsteps as they grew fainter and fainter. Then, just as quickly as he had left, Markos came running back inside and told Hermann to get the rifles back out. The German flag was no longer hanging up. "Are you sure it's not there?" Hermann asked.

"Yes, it's kind of hard not to notice when something that big is missing."

Hermann was about to step outside himself to investigate when several of the lionesses came running into the cave, telling him that someone unknown was on a direct course for their position. "So much for never needing these things again," Hermann said as he picked up a rifle and handed the other to Markos. "Come on then, let's get up above and see if we can't figure out who's on our doorstep."

The approaching cub had made finally her way to the cave entrance. Tired and hungry, she looked upward and saw, to her confusion, that there was nothing hanging above the entryway. "That's weird," she thought, "I definitely saw something there before. Maybe I'm just seeing things." And then,

"Achtung!"

She looked around, trying to see where this voice had come from, but could see almost nothing. "Am I hearing things now, too?" she thought. A pair of eyes was watching her every move through iron sights.

"Ziel!"

Had the cub known that this and the command before it were instructions to take aim, she would have surely turned and ran. But as she knew nothing of this other language, she simply remained where she was, still trying to figure out what was happening. She was about to find out, and very quickly at that.

"FEUER!…nein, warten! Ist ein Welpe, nicht schiessen!"

Markos heard Hermann's instructions to hold his shot, but he had already pulled the trigger back most of the way. In a desperate attempt to redirect the bullet, he swung the rifle barrel skyward as the gun went off. The cub saw a blinding flash of light and heard a massive noise explode out from behind a boulder. When she regained her vision, she moved out of the way just in time to avoid another vulture plummeting out of the sky. All the cub could do was cover up and hope this wasn't her last few seconds of life. She could hear yelling from the direction of the shot.

"Do you not know what the word "wait" means? And that's the second buzzard you've wasted this week!"

"Yes, but I also distinctly remember somebody yelling "FIRE"! Was that or was that not you?"

"From now on, I shoot, you spot. You've lost your shooting privileges for the time being!"

The lion cub had seen a firearm before, but not knowing any German, she had no idea what Markos and Hermann were even talking about. She slowly crept over to the boulder behind which the two men were still hiding and bickering, and peered around it to get a better look. Hermann was still chewing his friend out.

"I should have known better than to not take that shot myself…"

"The way I see it, if I hadn't moved that gun up at the last minute, we'd have a real mess on our hands. And I was following your directions!"

"If you'd been following them, you would have held fire, not…oh…"

"What now?"

"Seems we've got company."

Markos turned around and saw a pair of small yellow eyes, half-hidden on the other side of the rock. "So this is what you told me to shoot," he said, "a cub? She's no older than Kopa…who took down that flag in the first place?"

"Never mind who took it down, it doesn't matter. Ask her who she is and what she's doing here."

"You do it; I don't speak enough English."

Hermann walked out from his hiding place and knelt down in front of the cub. "I'm sorry about that," he said, "I promise we're not going to hurt you. We thought you were someone else."

"Can't you tell the difference between someone my size and another lion?" she shot back.

"Actually, in this light…no. We don't see very well in the dark. Again, my sincerest apologies, that's never happened before."

"Sure it hasn't. You talk funny… speak normally, will ya?"

"This is my speaking normally; I just have a strong accent. What's your name?"

"You first…and where are you from where they speak like that?"

Before Hermann could explain where Germany was and why he spoke the way he did, a group of lionesses came charging outside, having heard the gunshot and assuming that Markos had killed the supposed intruder. One walked over to Hermann and asked, "Did he get her? Is she dead?"

"No," Hermann replied, "thankfully, she's very much alive. Maybe a bit shaken up, but uninjured. We've made a bad mistake, one which we should take care to not repeat. This isn't our assassin…not even close to it."

"Who isn't even close?"

"Her, right over…wait a minute, where's she gone off to? Hermann looked around and saw Markos pointing at the other side of a bush, one which had been mercifully spared from his target practice not too long ago. He walked to where his friend was pointing and saw the cub, who had tried her best to hide as soon as the other lionesses had come out of the cave. "What are you doing under here?" he asked. "You're not in any danger; like I said, we thought you were someone else."

"Did that 'someone else' happen to have one torn-up ear? Because if that's the case, I'm not sure about that whole 'not being in any danger' thing."

"Actually…yes, she has a torn ear. That's who we were expecting, at least. You know her?"

"Are you completely blind? You don't see any similarities between her and me at all?" Hermann shook his head. "Yes, you could say I know her. She's the one you've been waiting for…the one you're trying to kill, right? I know her because she's my mother, or she was until a few days ago. She's nothing to me now; I left as soon as I found out what she did."

Hermann felt a chill run up his back. "You've got thirty seconds to explain why you're here," he said, rethinking his position on the cub's not posing any threat whatsoever.

"But, I…" the cub stammered.

"Twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…" Hermann felt a nudge on his shoulder.

"Don't worry, she's not any danger," a lioness told him. "She was Kopa's best friend before her mother was exiled. Still, I didn't expect her to come all this way." She turned her attention to the bush, behind which the cub was still half-hidden. "You can come out, Vitani," she said, "we all know who you are. How long did it take you to get here?"

"Four days or so," the cub replied. "When I heard my mother had killed Kopa, I escaped that night to come here. I just want to see him one last time to say goodbye, then I'll leave."

"It seems word doesn't travel quite as fast as I thought it would," Hermann said. He thought the whole story sounded rather fishy, and was half convinced that this 'Vitani' was acting as an informant for her mother. "Markos, come over here a minute. And only speak German."

"Only German…that won't be difficult! What is it?" Markos asked.

"This isn't just any old lion cub, it's Zira's daughter. Apparently, she and Kopa were good friends, and now she's here thinking he's dead. Something about paying her last respects and then leaving. But I'm not buying this…what if she goes straight back to her mother to tell her that Kopa's alive?"

"Mein Gott, Sterlitz, you really are cynical. I think you're over-reacting, but if you're that concerned, ask her about whatever you want to know. Don't rush judgment until you've heard the whole story…and if you could translate it into German for me, that would be much appreciated."

For the next thirty minutes, Hermann came up with question after question, not even pausing to consider the cub's answers before he asked another. He was trying to find an inconsistency of some kind, some sort of contradiction or tell that would tip him off to Vitani's "real" intentions here, but as he continued asking and asking, no such thing appeared.

"Enough with the questions already!" Vitani snapped after putting up with Hermann for what seemed like an eternity. "I just wanted to see Kopa once more and then leave. My best friend is dead, is that too much to ask? And you don't run this place anyway, so you can't keep me out even if you wanted to!"

"I'll have you know that your friend is quite alive," Hermann replied. "He was critically hurt and is in the middle of a long recovery, but he definitely is not dead." You idiot, he thought, you just gave away the keys to the bomb. When he looked back at Vitani and saw her expression, however, he quickly realized that Markos and the other lionesses really had been correct all along. "Ach…I'm sorry," he said after a long and awkward pause, entirely disgusted with himself for the second time that day. "I didn't mean to come across so…nasty…it's just that we've all been a bit wound up around here. No more questions, I promise." Vitani was still running Hermann's words on Kopa's survival through her mind, and took almost no notice of his apology.

"He's…alive? Kopa's alive?" Her attempts to conceal the quivering that had crept into her voice were largely unsuccessful.

"Yes, he's alive. My name is Hermann, by the way—Hermann Wolfgang Sterlitz—and that's Markos standing over there. I think you already know everyone else." Hermann was trying his best to rebuild a bridge which had been all but dynamited by his impromptu interrogation.

"Where is he?"

"Where is who…Kopa? He's here. Asleep." Looking over at Markos, he added in German, "That reminds me, we're going to have to flip for who gets the other mattress and who sleeps on the stack of clothes."

Vitani couldn't believe what she was hearing. Only a few moments ago, she had been operating under the assumption that her best friend had perished; now she had found out not only that he was alive, but that he was only a stone's throw away from where she was standing. This night was ending much better than it had started; all the travel exhaustion, loneliness, errant gunfire, and the never-ending game of "twenty questions" now seemed rather superfluous. "Can I see him?" she asked, not quite knowing what to make of Hermann's news.

"I suppose so," Hermann replied. "Come with me. Everyone else…let's put the flag back up and turn in for the night." He picked up his rifle from where he had laid it down and led Vitani inside.

"What the heck are those flags for, anyway?" she asked as she walked through the entrance.

"Part of my early warning system," Hermann said, loving the chance to gloat a bit. "We've put up a bit of a security network since Kopa got attacked, and you tipped it off as soon as someone saw you coming. That's why there weren't any flags there before; we were watching you long before you ever got a glimpse of us. Kind of like a ship with signal flags…"

"Except a lot more primitive, and run by two gun-happy nut jobs with bad aim as opposed to a trained professional?"

"If you want to put it like that…but it worked, didn't it?"

"Yes, it worked fine, right up until the attempted whacking."

Hermann sighed in frustration and walked on, knowing that he probably wouldn't ever live this one down regardless of who had pulled the trigger.

As she walked behind Hermann, who had neglected to take a flashlight with him, Vitani couldn't help but wonder exactly who she was following and what he was doing here. "Wait," she called out, "Hermann Wolfga—…whatever the rest of your name is; I lost track after the eighteenth syllable—before you kill yourself running into another boulder, who are you?"

Hermann had now told the story of how he had arrived here to almost every member of the pride, and was less than enthused about having to tell it again, but he obliged nonetheless; it was the least he could do after everything that had happened that night. Vitani continued following behind as Hermann told her what had happened, from the encounter with Zira in the car to Markos's ill-fated shooting lessons. As she listened, Vitani began to have second thoughts about asking to see her friend. Would he even be recognizable, given the extent of his injuries? Would he want to see her in the first place, given her rather close relation to the lioness who had nearly killed him? Maybe it was better to just forget the whole thing and turn back…

Hermann could no longer hear footsteps; when he turned around, he could see that the silhouette behind him had stopped moving forward. "What's happened?" he asked.

"Is Kopa…never mind. Doesn't matter." Vitani didn't quite finish the sentence. She couldn't stand showing any kind of emotion around anyone; ever since she could remember, she had been told that those kinds of things were nothing but weakness.

"Is Kopa what"?

"Is he…hurt bad?" Now Hermann knew what had been troubling Vitani, despite her attempt to put up a stone-faced exterior; he had seen more than enough people all but collapse on the floor after seeing a friend or family member lying half-dead in a hospital ward post-trauma. It even bothered him in the worst cases, and here was someone who confronted the worst of the medical worst every day.

"Well, he's…yes, I'm afraid so, he's been badly injured, and it's only been a few days since he was attacked. But that doesn't mean he won't be glad to see you. I'm sure he'll be quite happy you've come, and that's the important thing. Come on, it's just a few steps more."

Hermann was trying to be sympathetic, but his response to Vitani's question hadn't done much good. Still, Vitani knew that her reservations about seeing her friend in such a pitiful state were little compared with the simple desire to see him again…alive. Slowly and quietly, expecting the worst, she walked up to where Hermann had laid out his mattress and sleeping bag. Kopa was still fast asleep and enjoying the most comfortable night of his life, completely motionless and soundless except for the slight rise and fall of his side. All Vitani could see was his head, along with part of one paw and some of his neck, the latter two being wrapped up in white bandaging with a faint dark stain underneath, but it was enough for her to tell that this was, in fact, Kopa. She fought off the urge to wake up her friend right then and there, and instead took a long look at what little of Kopa she could see. "Can he feel that?" Vitani asked Hermann, eyeing Kopa's bandaged neck.

"Yes, he can feel it," Hermann replied, "but he gets a shot twice a day to take the edge off and help him sleep…in fact, he's been quite content for the past few hours. I managed to stitch the worst spots back together with regular monofilament," he said, switching into medical speak, "and used a combination of…"

"Wait, wait, wait…he gets shot twice a day? What kind of quack are you?"

"No, he gets a shot…not what you're thinking of. No guns involved, especially not anything with Markos pulling the trigger. You'll probably see how it works tomorrow. And keep your voice down, you don't want to wake him up."

"Tomorrow?" Vitani was not expecting an invitation to stay more than a few minutes, never mind the whole night. "Are you saying I can stay?"

"It's not up to me, but for this night at least, yes, and I suspect you'll be allowed to stay here for as long as you want. Seems everyone around these parts knows who you are, and plus, it'll be good for Kopa to have someone around besides his immediate family. I'll have to take it up with the others, but I'm sure they'll let you stay. If you've come all this way to see Kopa and have got nowhere else to go, I can't imagine they'd tell you to leave."

"Huh…I guess you're all right," Vitani said, "for someone who can't make a w sound. Where are you from anyway, the Bad Accent Pride?"

"No, I'm actually from Stuttgart, and it's called a German accent. Would it kill anyone around here to know where Germany is?" Hermann replied with mock disgust. "Anyway, there's room for one more on that mattress, I suppose you can camp out there next to your friend."

"OK, I think I can fit next to…hmm…what's that he's sleeping inside?

"That's the sleeping bag I brought with me from Germany…keeps me warm at night. Lack of fur and all that."

Humans, Vitani thought. How pathetic. And yet, four days of walking with little water and no food were making Kopa's sleeping arrangements look quite inviting. She found it undeniably amusing that the likes of Hermann couldn't even go to sleep without needing something extra to simply survive, but she also couldn't deny that for this night at least, taking Hermann up on his offer would be a welcome change from sleeping on cold, windswept rocks and barren patches of ground. "It looks…pretty comfortable," she finally said.

"Yes, it is." Hermann had a good idea of what was coming next. "Let me guess…you want in with him?"

"Yeah, I'd like that…and it's 'want', not 'vant'." She wasn't trying to sound snooty, but Hermann's Germanized pronunciation was comic material far too good to pass up, and Hermann could tell that it was meant in jest.

"Whatever," he replied, taking extra care to replace the w at the beginningwith a long, drawn-out v. "Go ahead, get in."

Vitani, who thought this night couldn't be ending any better, painstakingly stepped onto the mattress and into the sleeping bag that Hermann had carefully unzipped. It really was as comfortable as she thought it would be, and was already warm from Kopa's having been inside it for several hours. She looked quizzically at the soccer shirt her sleeping friend was wearing for a second before settling in next to him. This sure beats that rock my so-called mother used to make me sleep on, Vitani thought as Hermann re-zipped everything and picked up his cane from the floor. I guess this guy's not so bad after all.

Right, I'm going to find Markos," Hermann said. "We'll make sure everything is back to normal and then go to bed ourselves. Guten Nacht."

"You're in Africa," Vitani whispered with a smile as Hermann walked back outside. "Learn the language." She was beginning to like Hermann just a bit, even though he was partially responsible for almost putting a bullet between her eyes.

For once, the darkness didn't seem stark or threatening, but rather it had taken on a sort of soft, natural quality, the way it was supposed to be all along. Vitani rolled over onto her other side and gently touched Kopa's one uncovered paw with her own. She whispered his name as softly as she could, after which Kopa groggily opened his eyes and looked at her.

"V…vi…tani?" It was all he could get out before falling back asleep.

Vitani smiled, truly happy for the first time in her life, letting the faint, rhythmic sound of Kopa's breathing in and out slowly fade the outside world to black. It's not a dream, she thought, tucking her head under her friend's chin and shutting her eyes. You're alive.