"I gotta tell ya, Pumbaa," the meerkat said. "We're a couple of lucky guys. I mean, who finds a jungle in the middle of nowhere and gets to live in it rent-free?"
"We do," the warthog said—"the luckiest guys in the world!"
"Whaddaya think, Simba?" Timon said blissfully. "Is this great or what?"
The lion didn't reply. In that instant, he felt as if a tree had fallen on his throat, squeezing the wind out of his mouth and trapping stale breath in his chest. He kept lying there, stunned to the point of silence and smilelessness, and his mouth dangled open as if the words had been stolen from his lips.
He knew what he should say. The most obvious answer of all. He and his two best buds, feasting and lounging and splashing in the pond and lying on their backs as the sun tortured the sand in relentless shine, then bragging about their problem-free philosophy while the stars sailed around the world? He knew he was lucky. It was only a masterstroke of fate that brought him out here. It was sheer fortune that he fell into the briars and brambles so the hyenas wouldn't chase him, and Timon and Pumbaa rescued him before the vultures had their fill of him.
Simba didn't want to think about it—he tried not to think about it—but his thoughts always kept pushing their way in. He'd built a wall around his mind with his Hakuna bricks and Matata mortar, and now the wall in his mind was starting to crack, and all the thoughts held back by an act of sheer will began to stampede in.
He and Nala charging through the Elephant Graveyard with the hyenas snapping at their heels...Simba hurtling through the desert as he blinked back tears...Zazu getting tortured in the birdie boiler and soaring into the sky like a firework blazing to its doom...a titanic herd of wildebeest charging through the gorge...his father picking him up in his jaws, then getting knocked back into the gorge...
And the worst of all, the stuff of nightmares—the terror he thought he could flee, the haunting that never left: His father falling out of the sky and screaming in terror as Simba looked on.
I killed my father...He tried to save me, and I killed him...and what about my mother? What does she think?
"Hey, Simba! Isn't this great?"
A sob and a surge of panic were held back by nothing but sheer will, and now they were making their way to his mouth, but Timon's words yanked him back to the moment. The past faded out of his mind, and the stars slipped back into view.
The lion was still lying there, feeling the grass prickle his back, and a moment's peace washed over him. But the feelings from those echoes of the past lingered, and the sharp twinkling stars were going fuzzy and dull. Just like they did last night. And he screwed a smile onto his face and forced a merry note into his voice—just like he did last night. Just like he did every night.
"Yep," he said. "Great."