Chapter 5

Banzai noticed the difference first. Sniffing at Scar for the thousandth time, he whispered something to Shenzi before clearing his throat and asked, "Uh, Scar? Did you uh...attack a human?"

Stiffening for only a moment, Scar continued to slide through the grass, "No."

"Oh..."

"But uh..." Shenzi's voice now, "You smell like one."

Shaking his mane in annoyance, Scar turned on them, "Do you three imbeciles want to eat or not?"

Cowering, the three nodded in unison, eyes pleading. Curling his lip at them, Scar returned his attention back to the herd of gazelle. Hunkering down, he watched one of the old ones intently. The three hyenas remained still and quiet behind him; even Ed, who could keep his mouth shut when he knew he was getting food. Scar had explained the plan to them, he only hoped they would pull it off. He was just as hungry as they were. Nodding his head to the right, he winced at the amount of noise the three made as they spread out around the side of the gazelle. The prey didn't seem to notice, but Scar's teeth were still on edge.

They waited a minute or two more, then Scar saw the old gazelle's knee shiver with strain. Bolting from the undergrowth, Scar closed the distance between him and the terrified creature. The hyenas came out of the grasses ahead of him, circling in around the old gazelle as the rest of the herd ran off at top speed to the other side of the plains. One of Scar's massive paws swept the front legs out from underneath his prey and the creature crashed down as he crunched its neck between his jaws. One violent jerk of Scar's head and dinner was served.

...

Opening her eyes, Molly faced the sky to find that the stars were just barely giving way to a lighter purple haze that signaled the minutes before the sun set the horizon on fire. Lifting herself up on her elbows, she looked in the direction of the sun and waited. Heat waves shimmered the air in front of it, and the horizon turned blood red. Then the sun peeked its bright yellow face over the edge of the world and Molly smiled. She'd lived to see another sunrise, the monkey doctor (despite his nasty concoction she'd had to drink at least once more) had done a good job of keeping her alive. Peering around for him, she found him curled up on a branch above her head. Stirring as the sunrays touched him, he blinked and yawned, showing huge canines.

"Morning," Molly called up to her latest lifesaver.

Jerking his head round as if he'd forgotten she was there, the baboon grinned from ear to ear and plopped down next to her. Grabbing both sides of her head, he dragged her face forward roughly and pulled down her cheeks a little to peer into her eyes. Tilting her head, he inspected her ears, promptly grabbing and eating a little beetle he found in her hair, and released her. Moving to her back, he lifted her shirt up and she felt his fingers gently prod at the wounds the lion had made in her back. Leaving her shirt lifted around her shoulders, he scampered up into what looked to be his main tree; with all the gourds and hollowed out turtle shells she could see dangling from it. The monkey returned with two of his gourds filled with liquid and a little bowl filled with a gooey green substance that he promptly began to apply to her wounds on her back. Pulling her shirt down, he offered one of the liquid filled gourds.

Recognizing the foul tasting one almost immediately, Molly gave the baboon a long suffering look and grumped, "Please no more."

Ignoring her puppy eyes and giving her a rather stern look of his own, he shoved the gourd towards her face.

"Fine," Molly tried to swallow the drink as fast as she could, getting it over with. She quickly took the second gourd, expecting a second dose of the same thing, and smiled gratefully when she found it was water again. The same clean water he'd given her while she'd been sick. "Where's the lion that brought me here?" she did her best imitation of a lion, which wasn't very good, then made a slashing motion over one eye.

Tilting his head, the baboon grinned and chattered at her, then pointed with his whole hand towards the sunrise. Shading her eyes, Molly tried to see the lion, but only saw a herd of gazelle spread out over the plains.

...

Scrubbing one of his paws against his face, Scar did his best to clean the blood from his fur. Somehow he didn't think the human girl would be as inclined to keep the company of a lion with bits of his latest kill still stuck in his teeth. The hyenas were still chewing on the carcass he'd left. Banzai had made some smart comment about preferring zebra, but a quick back-handed paw from Scar had helped the hyena's taste buds adjust. Ordering them to get back to the Elephant Graveyard as soon as they were done, Scar had left to clean up.

Rolling onto his back, Scar rubbed and rolled for a little while, flopping over to face the rising sun. Rafiki's voice entered his head, unbidden and speaking his own doubts, What are you going to do with a human Scar? She's nothing to you. She's prey. Mouth going dry, he stood and faced away from the sun. Shaking his mane, he threw back his head and roared in frustration.

...

Jumping at the roar, Molly wondered if it was her lion. The baboon was bringing her a turtle shell full of fruit and another gourd of water and hesitated when he heard the sound. Molly swore his facial expression was that of concern. Blinking away from the horizon, he handed her the water and fruit and returned to his tree, leaving her alone for the first time since she'd woken up. Confused, Molly sighed and dug into breakfast, knowing she had to regain the strength and nutrition that she'd lost while she was sick. The regular doses of the bad tasting medicine proved she wasn't completely better, but she was still impressed with the speed at which the monkey had her on the road to recovery. How he managed clean water with no fire to boil it was also beyond her.

"Lions that save damsels in distress and monkey witch doctors," she muttered to herself, "I must be dreaming."

But the pain and sickness she'd gone through had shown her this was most definitely not a dream or hallucination. The weirdest thing was that she really didn't feel any inclination to get back home in any hurry at all. Lifting her head to look out over the plains, she thought she spotted the dark shape of the lion coming towards her. Standing on wobbly legs and shielding her eyes, Molly tried to see if it was him. Once she was certain, she grinned and tried to make her way towards him as fast as her legs would let her.

"Hey you," she reached out a hand to him as he came within arms reach.

Sniffing at her hand once, he leaned his chin against her palm and looked up at her with his bright green eyes. The hot wind of the African plains blew against her hair and his mane, and she shook her head, bewildered by the moment.

"You and I are quite a pair, huh?"

...

Thank you again to all my readers and reviewers! I'm glad you're all enjoying the story so far, and I'm sorry this whole chapter had to be Scar and Molly separated and doing their own thing. I promise the next chapter won't be that way!