I.
"Well," the bird requested rather rudely, "What do you have to say for yourself?"
Simba stalled, he was unable to speak, what was there to say?
"Simba, I presume?" Zazu said as if he were speaking to a cub.
"There's nothing to say." The lion told him stonily. "Come on, Ruendi, let's go."
He stalled now.
"Let's go!" Simba said more edgily.
Ruendi sighed lightly and complied by scampering back onto his head. Together, the two started away. Simba felt the bird's disapproving gaze on his back, and he felt the amount of his own patience beginning to thin quickly. What right did Zazu have to come and just outright demand something! The lion gave his mane a rough shake to stop the irritation.
"This is just like you, isn't it?" Zazu continued to patronize, "Always running away from the problem. I'll bet you didn't know how worried we were. But here you are, of course!"
Simba kept walking.
"Yes, here you are! Just fooling around and wasting your days away lollygagging."
The lion paused. He could almost feel the smugness emitting from the hornbill.
"I'll say this once. Stop."
"And I'll say-."
Simba doubled around and released an ear-splitting roar. This caused Ruendi to jump off of his head and stumble backwards, running away in fear. The lion panicked, realizing he had done the very thing he had tried not to do --- make Ruendi afraid of lions, for though many animals had befriended him in this habitat, they did their level best to give the lion plenty of space. When Simba turned back nervously to look at Zazu, the bird only looked at him in a perplexed stare. He ground his teeth at him, trying to ward him off. Zazu only breathed heavily, shook his colorful beak from side-to-side and took off into the jungles.
"I didn't want it to be this way!" Simba called after him.
"I'm sure you didn't…" The bird called back.
"Don't tell anyone!"
"I'm not looking to."
Then --- he was gone.
Simba ignored the stab of guilt in his chest, didn't bother to ponder over why Zazu was even here in the first place and took off looking for Ruendi. He was lost before he even started. The lion wandered around searching, aimless, for the next ten or fifteen minutes until finally he realized that he would not see Ruendi until Ruendi wanted to be seen. He was about to return to the middle part of the jungle when he heard a soft whimpering just underneath a tree. Curiously, Simba crouched down and moved over on his belly towards the sound. He peered under some straggly, rotten roots and came to glimpse quite a sight.
"Ruendi!"
The little monkey lion was stuck in a matting of tree sap.
"Simba, I'm…" That's when he remembered and backed away from him.
"Ruendi, I'm sorry." He reached his paw out to him. "Here, let me-."
"Nooo!" Ruendi whined loudly, squirming just out of Simba's reach. "No, go away!"
"I won't hurt you."
Ruendi only glared at him. "Why were you acting so mean? That's not the Simba I met!"
The lion conceded and placed his paw back down, "Ruendi," he said gently, "I would not ever set out to hurt you. You're my friend. My grub gobbling pal, remember?" he smiled.
"I remember."
"Then will you let me help you?" Simba continued to speak in a calm voice.
Ruendi nodded slowly. "But… back there… you're dangerous, aren't you?"
The lion sighed. "Yes. But… I'm still the same guy." He smiled; unintentionally toothy.
Surprisingly, the little monkey raised a small pink hand and held it to Simba. He made a face and then raised his paw up. The two palms touched, and when they did a spark of at least partial realization crossed Ruendi's face. Simba wrinkled his muzzle in expectation.
"You don't have fingers." Ruendi smiled.
Simba grinned sheepishly, and then made a quick incision to free the monkey lion. When he tried to move out, however, he found that he was stuck himself in the sap. "Ruendi…"
"Yeah?" The self-proclaimed feline primate cautiously circled around his head.
"I'm stuck." He said flatly.
Ruendi tilted his head and then expressionlessly climbed back onto Simba's head, turned his little fingers into scissors and snipped his way quickly through the lion's own matting of glue-thick glop. The monkey lion instructed Simba to wriggle very slowly out while he went to work at moving bits of leaves and such to counteract the drippings of more sap. The way Ruendi worked, Simba watched in fascination, was to use all four of his tiny, bristled hands (or hand-feet) to not only remove the sap but to make a sap-free way of sliding out.
"Very," Simba said excitedly as he slid his head all the way out, "Very Hakuna Matata!"
"What do you mean?"
"That's your style… oh sure, it might take you a while to do something musical. But hey, that's your talent right there!" The lion encouraged him. "The way you can just do all of those things with your four hands. Yeah, sure, monkeys can do it. But the way you do…"
"The way I do it is Hakuna Matata?" Ruendi questioned.
Simba smiled in amusement, wondering if the primate knew what implication meant.
"You've found your style." He said simply.
The monkey lion smiled back then, satisfied. But he found himself wandering down the path to where the cheetah had obviously fled. Simba followed close behind, suddenly a little anxious. He looked down at Ruendi, who looked after the long, lanky and defeated form of the cat slinking away. Something happened then, and he gave a little, quiet cry.
"Ruendi?"
"I think my mama and daddy, I can't remember, but I think they left me…"
"You said you didn't remember." Simba came to sit by him. "Why would they leave?"
"I don't know. We got moved, I think. My family got moved from the Forest of Rain."
"You just remember bits and pieces?" The lion urged.
Ruendi nodded with his head hung.
Simba frowned but suddenly got an idea. He lowered his down to where the bright orange fur of the primate's back was still pure orange just before it smoothed into its oil colored patterns and started picking around his fur. When the lion produced a red beetle, he gave his throat a deep, clearing rumble. Ruendi looked up at him, puzzled, but then gave a little warbled smile as Simba lowered his head for the monkey lion to search out his huge scalp.
On cue, they both coolly tossed the insects into their mouths and chewed the crunchiness.
"There, better?"
Ruendi sighed. "Not really."
He then ran up to Simba's big forepaw and buried himself in its width. The lion gave his big head a cock back, breathed in and out, and then lowered it down for Ruendi to climb back on. Once he did, they started back into the jungle's depths. However, Simba paused when he remembered his scene at the waterfall and turned around to look down at Ruendi.
The little monkey lion moaned softly, curled up in Simba's ball of mane.
It was then that Simba decided what he had to do.
…
