preface: an interesting point to note is that during the "Be Prepared" segment of the original movie, the whole hyena clan is made part of the song and dance, but when Scar reveals his intention to kill Mufasa, the scene is only between him and the trio. It's a fairly small conspiracy.
The Elephant Graveyard
It had been almost a year since Kuzinga joined the clan - Shenzi's clan. They were still living in the Elephant Graveyard back then. On the surface, joining this particular clan might have seemed an odd choice: their territory was barren an cramped, and they found themselves surrounded by desert, swamps, and two lion prides. The lions of the Great Swamps on the one side - isolated, inbred, and irrationally violent because of it - and the Pridelanders on the other border, a pride twice the normal size, more than a dozen adult lions in all.
But what made Shenzi's clan a poor prospect for most made it perfect for Kuzinga. He 'd been looking for a quiet place to lie low, and start a new life. Doing that would only be possible if he kept his being thrown out of another clan secret, which was a lot easier in a place surrounded by that many lions - fewwer passers-by who could recognize him. So as soon as he'd heard of this potential sanctuary, he made his way through the swamps, coming out alive only by the skin of his teeth. Trying to be on his best behavior, he then threw himself at the paws of the first other hyena he came across in the Elephant Graveyard, begging to be admitted into this unassuming clan.
As in most other hyena clans, the question of admitting new males was quite beneath the girls at the top, so they'd referred him to the ranking male, a horribly scarred but congenial old-timer called Kongwe. He was more than happy to welcome Kuzinga, seeing as how the clan's relative isolation meant they didn't get too many visitors to start with; they could use all the new blood they could get. And that had been that: a new clan, and a new, quiet life.
About one moon later, however, the weirdness started. An assembly of the clan was called, and this gathering was attended by a most peculiar guest: a lion by the name of Scar. In of itself an extremely strange occurrence; as far as Kuzinga knew, lions and hyenas everywhere regarded one another warily even in the best of times, and more often with outright hostility. Yet here they invited this shifty-looking lion to address the entire clan. The resident performance-enthusiast, a charming if slightly controlling lady called Leni, livened up the whole event with songs and choreographed marching. Strange thing to do, but to each his own.
The lion's pitch, from what Kuzinga could tell, was that the hyenas should support or accept him as king, and in exchange, he would allow them into his territory, the lush Pridelands. A pretty sweet deal, but one that didn't hold up under closer scrutiny. Kuzinga, being new to the area, did not know these things going into the speech, but it turned out that this Scar-character was not actually in charge of the Pridelands; his brother, an enormous lion called Mufasa, was the incumbent king, and Mufasa had an heir by the name of Simba. It wasn't Scar's territory, so he had no right to invite anyone in; by all accounts he could obviously never hope to fulfill his promise to the hyenas.
Yet the matriarch of the clan, Shenzi, knowing all that, still went ahead and accepted Scar's proposal, and the hyenas proclaimed him their king. Funny thing, that.
Then out of the blue, Mufasa died, as did his heir Simba, presumably. And so close on the heels of Scar's speech, what a strange coincidence! Next thing Kuzinga knew, the clan was let loose in the Pridelands, while the lions were still living there - also quite unheard of, not having separate territories.
A dangerous thing, living so close to lions.
At first, Kuzinga considered finding another clan again; he' been taught from childhood to fear lions, and the thought of living so close to them was pretty scary. On the other paw, heading out into the wilderness in search of a new clan was no less terrifying a prospect - if rogue lions didn't get him, other overly territorial hyenas might. In the end, he decided to stay, reasoning that lions would be a danger anywhere he went, and at least the Pridelands had plenty of food to make up for the risks.
Then he was suddenly called to meet the matriarch. It proved to be an exceedingly unpleasant encounter - Shenzi quickly deduced that Kuzinga was in fact a deserter from his previous clan, and held that over his head to leverage him into becoming her spy. Who did he have to spy on? The lions, of course. A few gratuitous threats sealed the deal.
It wasn't supposed to turn out like this! He'd joined the clan so he could live a life of quiet obscurity; a good meal every few days, maybe a girlfriend at some point, no conspiracies!
But what choice did he have? Head out into the desert? Back through the Great Swamps? That trip had nearly killed him several times over last time he made the crossing. Now that he had access to the Pridelands, he could also escape through the Riverlands... but the simple fact of the matter was that Kuzinga was tired of running. He desperately wanted a place he could call home...
The power of inertia eventually triumphed over his fear of lions, and he managed to convince himself that they couldn't be all bad: their new king had selflessly invited the hyenas into his domain, after all; that alone indicated that at least one of them was good at heart. So Kuzinga did as he was told, and tried his best to ingratiate himself with the pride. That been pretty much all he'd been doing for the past few moons.
As was to be expected, the lions didn't want anything to do with him, or with any other hyena. He'd been reduced to keeping an eye on them from a distance. They chased him off more than a few times. Only fairly recently had he encountered someone that seemed to be keeping a more open mind, a lioness by the name of Tuli. She'd struck up a sort of friendship with a couple of hyena-youngsters - two of them from high ranking families, it should be noted.
At first, Kuzinga had been thrilled: here was his first real chance to get acquainted with a lioness! If he played it right, that should be enough for getting Shenzi off his back: just put on a show of befriending the lioness, find out all she has to say, report back to Shenzi, fluff things up just a teeny bit to make it sound like he had put in more work than he actually had, and call it quits! Nothing more to do with lions, no more spying - just back to living the good life in the Pridelands!
That had been the plan anyway. He'd met Tuli on a couple occasions, but never really got around to saying more than a few words. Today would be different, though.
Kuzinga met up with Mizuri and Nyeusi just outside the Elephant Graveyard, a bit before noon. It had been Mizuri's idea to give Tuli a tour of the place, as a way of returning the favor for her letting them visit Priderock earlier. The idea suited Kuzinga fine; he'd still been a relative newcomer when the hyenas moved to the Pridelands, and he hadn't been part of the clan long enough to really get to see all the ins and outs of the boneyard himself. And of course, he was happy for any excuse to spend some time with a lioness, so he could acquit himself of the task of spying on them all the sooner.
Mizuri and Nyeusi were young hyenas - it wouldn't do to call them cubs, but they were still about a year away from being full-grown - who, along with a third friend of theirs who couldn't attend called Hasira, had first befriended the lioness called Tuli. In their youthful brashness kids could do something like that, while adults would act more carefully, and achieve nothing.
Kuzinga figured there was more to it than that, though. Not just any young hyena could have made the leap of seeing a lioness as a potential friend; he suspected a lot of it was down to Mizuri. Initially, he didn't care much for the red-headed youngster. All he seemed to notice about her was just how loud she could get at times. But the more time he spent with her, the more he started to see why, out of an entire clan, it was this hyena that had managed to befriend a lioness. She possessed the rare ability to be both energetic and outgoing, without being viciously aggressive in the process. Among hyenas, that's not a given.
When Tuli showed up for the tour, she wasn't alone. To everyone's surprise, it turned out she brought along a friend of hers, an older lioness called Winda. Kuzinga and Nyeusi were a bit wary at first - Tuli had been the only friendly lion they'd ever met, after all, and there was no telling how this Winda might turn out. Mizuri, on the other hand, immediately threw caution to the wind and greeted the lioness no different than she would have a hyena, eager at the opportunity to add a second lioness to her friends-list. They would spend most of the tour engrossed in talk just between the two of them, both eager to learn more about the mysterious "other". The upshot of that was that Tuli was now more or less condemned to chat it up with Kuzinga throughout the afternoon, seeing as how Nyeusi was being her usual taciturn self.
The itinerary of the visit consisted of the great caves, the geysers, the hot-spring, the actual boneyard, but also the farthest edges of the hyena territory, where the Graveyard connected to the swamps and the desert. Those marginal but not entirely barren borderlands were actually bigger than the Graveyard itself, and where the clan used to get most of its food. As the group meandered from sight to sight, Kuzinga was able to tease out a great many details about the lion pride from Tuli: names, relations, how Scar didn't have a mate yet, that the former queen was still held in high regard, how most of the lionesses loathed having the hyenas around... Nothing earth-shattering, but it was something.
Absorbed in the task of learning all he could about the lion pride, Kuzinga didn't pay too much attention to the tour. Only one of the stops really peaked his interest.
"Wait - what are the hot-springs? I never heard of those."
"You really are a newbie! How can you not have heard of the hot-springs? They're great! I'll show you now - follow me, it's this way."
The members of the group followed Mizuri's lead, and after worming their way through a succession of narrow passages, they arrived at a small caldera surrounded on all sides by high rock-faces. Like with the rest of the Graveyard, the surrounding rocks shrouded the place in permanent twilight. The faint but unmistakable scent of sulphur was everywhere.
"You do have to get get over the smell, but it's totally worth it!"
They entered the quasi-enclosed space through a crack in the rocks, where a small stream flowed out from the caldera. The water of the stream felt strangely hot, like a puddle that's been warmed by the sun - only, there was no sunlight here. Once they made it through the crack, there were rocky plateaus on either side, and a dark pool right in front. Steamy wisps rose up from the water's surface. They clambered up the elevated rocks on the right. Tuli, Winda and Kuzinga all peered over the edge, regarding the water curiously.
"So, what? It's like a watering hole... but the water is hot?"
"Pretty much."
"That all, huh? I don't see what the big deal is..." Kuzinga mumbled, seated on the edge of the plateau looking down. Then again, what was he expecting? It was called the hot-spring, figures it'd be like a spring, but hot.
"Oh, you will..." With a wink and a nod, Mizuri signaled Nyeusi, and without warning the both of them suddenly rushed Kuzinga, pushing him over the edge. He plunged into the water with a yelp, leaving the other two hyenas on their backs with laughter. When he came back up again, paddling furiously, he was spitting and coughing.
"Don't drink the water - it tastes pretty nasty," Nyeusi remarked dryly once the laughter had worn off.
"Yeah, thanks, I hadn't noticed," Kuzinga coughed angrily, still spitting up foul-tasting water.
"Hey Kuz', apart from the taste, how's the water?" Tuli asked, smiling.
"It's... huh... pretty neat, actually!" The water felt scalding hot at first, warmer than any he'd known before, but once over the initial shock it actually felt really nice to just float around lazily, taking in the heat.
"Good enough for me." With that, Tuli took a few steps back, and then took a running leap into the water. Winda followed suit, leaving Kuzinga scrambling not to end up under either lioness. Mizuri and Nyeusi were quick to join too. Four splashes in quick succession echoed amid the sound of sloshing water.
As he looked around, Kuzinga considered just how curious the scene must have looked. Of his companions, he could see only see their heads sticking out of the water, steam rising all around them. Lion and hyena, lounging in the hot-springs together, like it was the most normal thing in the world. The lionesses looked especially contented, no doubt pleasantly surprised by the feel of the water, just like Kuzinga was. His gaze then lingered on Mizuri, who was grinning broadly at the sight of Tuli and Winda, probably happy that her tour of the Elephant Graveyard was being so well received.
Kuzinga was struck by the sight of the young hyena. Her otherwise fluffy, rusty-colored manes now clung to her head and neck, draped sideways around her large ears and forward over her brow and onto her muzzle. Then Mizuri suddenly turned her head and caught Kuzinga staring. The look in her dark eyes was inscrutable, but her grin unmistakably mischievous. Kuzinga quickly looked away, but as soon as he did Mizuri started splashing water at him, not relenting until he looked at her again, smiling sheepishly.
Then Nyeusi unexpectedly turned up behind him and pushed his head underwater, much to Mizuri's amusement.
Ignoring the hyenas while they were having their fun, Winda let out a long, satisfied moan."Aah...Heavens! Hot-springs, where have you been all my life?"
"It's good, isn't it?" Tuli purred. The two lionesses settled in a shallow part of the pool, turning over on their backs.
"Yeaaah... I almost can't feel my aching paws anymore, if you'll believe it..."
Mizuri broke away from the scuffle with Kuzinga and joined the lionesses. "You know, this place is supposed to do wonders for your joints, or so I'm told. That's what makes it such a great place for the elderly!"
That comment earned Mizuri a glum look and annoyed grunt from Winda, causing the hyena to hastily add that she didn't mean to imply she thought the lioness was old or anything, inadvertently stating explicitly what she had supposedly been unwilling to imply.
"Don't sweat it," Winda grumbled once Mizuri had fallen silent in utter embarrassment. The lioness yawned, shifting in place a bit, eyes closed - a picture of total bliss. "I'm not exactly the youngest, not by any stretch... Seven cubs, and one grandkid even. Believe me, that takes some years."
"Wow, seven cubs, that's amazing!" Mizuri's unadulterated fawning caught the notice of the other two hyenas, and now they too paddled over to where the lionesses were. "You must be a very famous lioness then. I don't think there's anyone in our clan who's ever had as many. Most hyenas have maybe two or three..."
"Don't make too much of it. Only two of them survived," the lioness added flatly, causing the others to either gasp in disbelief or to look away uncomfortably.
Except for Kuzinga - he was squinting pensively. Then he remarked: "You know, I suppose we hyenas just count them differently."
A frowning Mizuri immediately hit him over the head, and rightly called him an idiot. It's wasn't so much that he was wrong - hyenas did have a complicated set of rules on what it means when a mother says she's had a cub - just that he chose the wrong time to be right, so close on the heels of the lioness' sad pronouncement. Not the best time to wax philosophically. It was the otherwise silent Nyeusi who eventually said the only possibly appropriate thing there was to say:"Sorry for your loss, Winda."
"It's all right. That's how these things go."
The carefree atmosphere of earlier eventually returned, and the party spent a fair bit of the afternoon just playing around in the hot-springs, Winda mostly just floating sedately while the others splashed, dunked and otherwise harried one another. Kuzinga was the first to get out of the pool, yearning to cool down a bit. It wasn't long before Tuli followed the hyena out. While the others were still fooling around in the water, she quietly addressed him.
"Say, Kuz', just between you and me - what are your thoughts on Mizuri?"
"Wha...?" the hyena replied, taken aback and sounding flustered, "I don't know! She seems... nice, I guess. Why would you even ask me that?"
"Oh, no reason..." Tuli smiled coyly.
"No, really, why?"
"Like you don't know!" But Kuzinga only stared back at the lioness dumbfoundedly. "Really, you don't know? Mizuri likes you, silly! Can't you tell?"
"Oh! Well... ah... that's... eh... okay."
"That all? What's the matter, you don't like her back? Why not? She's one of the nicest folks I ever met."
"No, it's not..." Kuzinga struggled to come up with the right response. What an odd thing for a lioness to get involved in! "I mean, I'm honored, obviously."
Tuli frowned, unsatisfied with his peculiar choice of words. "Honored" - if ever there were an more dispassionate way to talk about receiving someone's affection... But she misunderstood: for a male hyena, having no say in the matter himself, being honored is the only proper way to greet a lady's fondness. Before the lioness had a chance to further ponder the issue, Kuzinga continued.
"But, you know, she's still very young, so I bet it's just a passing fancy, 's all. That's how youngsters are."
"Too young, huh? I wouldn't know - she's about your height, so I figured... You that much older than her, then?"
"Two years, give or take... Gotta keep in mind, us hyena-guys tend to be a tad shorter than the damsels. Not like it is with you lions, obviously."
"Right..." Tuli drawled, a bit embarrassed, "Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything. I guess I just don't know too much about you. Kinda weird - it feels like we've been talking all afternoon, after all."
Suddenly Kuzinga got a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. That's right - she didn't know anything about him. And that wasn't an accident. If Kuzinga had been trying to become friends with Tuli, they would have known these kinds of things about one another by now. But that wasn't what he was doing - no, he was just spying on her, needling her for information. Among all the fun and banter that afternoon, he'd forgotten all about that.
Now that Kuzinga fully remembered why he'd become acquainted with Tuli and Mizuri in the first place, he felt terrible. If the afternoon had proven one thing, it's that the both of them were perfectly lovely ladies, among the nicest animals he'd met since he joined the clan, who genuinely seemed to like him back... and all the while, he'd been an impostor, befriending Mizuri only so he could get in touch with Tuli... and he'd only been interested in Tuli so he could learn about her pride.
They didn't deserve that! These were good, well meaning folks, and they didn't deserve to have someone like Kuzinga deceiving them like that. And for what - because Shenzi asked him to, made some threats?
Nice going, Kuz', you're a real piece of work...
"Hey Kuz', everything all right? You have the look of someone who just sat in a thornbush."
Tuli's joking remark pulled Kuzinga out of his remorseful rumination. He looked up at the lioness, and saw she had a concerned look about her. Concerned about him, about his well being - him, the jackass who'd been sent to spy on her.
Enough of this.
"I'm sorry, I... I just remembered something important... I have to go!"
Without another word, Kuzinga ran off.
ps: reviews obviously appreciated, also if you only point out things you don't like. That way, I know what works and what doesn't.
