[The Pride Lands, Tanzania, Africa; Forty Years Present]
At the senile Ukafiri's cave, the okapi was laying down on her rocking slab, still under the impression that, now as ever, her beloved Jeyluxhal was out hunting like he always was.
"Ahh, Jeyluxhal, my dear and beloved hyena, why does the Pride Lands not like hyenas? Even your kind have to eat something, surely" The okapi wondered to this day.
She continued to rock back and forth gently on her rocking slab she lied upon, watching over their 'children', which were nothing more than stuffed baby hyenas and okapis created by the Lion Guard, who visit her as so often as every two days, made from sticks, leaves, shed fur and skins that were sewn up together with thin tree branch bark.
In another den, built far away so that Jeyluxhal can get away from her, the deteriorated-for-the-worse hyena was leaning back on his rock-built throne, his upper half appearance kept in the darkness of the den while most of it was lit up by the sun on the bright blue sky outside. His lower half body appearance visible up to his arms. Pretending that 'this Ukafiri creature' doesn't exist, as he should think so.
His once tan fur with black spots, roughened up and ragged; his dark red mullet of his striped mantle, longer and silver, his fresh red scars and bitemarks all over his body from when he lived with Shenzi and her clan, all over his body to his black dipped socks and his dark coffee brown underbelly with a jiggly and squishy primordial pouch now more grievous looking with some parts having bloodied outlines with bony plates exposed out on the surface, he's made it rather plain that he's dead. In the darkness, though his face is obscured, he now carries with him a permanent scowl etched on his face.
All because of the Lion Guard, who continue to demand he returns to Ukafiri 'at once' and fulfill his vow and commit to 'his marriage' when it was Ukafiri who wanted to marry him, he didn't want to marry her, there's a difference after all.
He doesn't want to look at the okapi. Or acknowledge her existence either. Jeyluxhal spends his days making his dead appearance plain as the day, much less like a deathly ill, but not actually sick, and malnourished, though still eating to keep his strength up, tired old hyena. Even though he's not really old.
One day, the Lion Guard, made up of the golden furred and red maned Kion the lion, the blue furred and white maned Bunga the honey badger, the greened eyed and brown rosary soft yellow furred Fuli the cheetah, the purple blubbered and single blue pointed haired Beshte the hippo, and orange to yellow toned crest feathered and white to black and orange legged Ono the egret, all came to Jeyluxhal's den.
Beshte rammed the barricade blocking the entryway and the others walked inside. This was nothing new: Jeyluxhal would find a den to get further and further away from Ukafiri, to stay away from his 'wife' whom he wanted nothing to do with.
Kion led the others and turned his head around, looking at the emptiness of the den, before he began to talk.
"A new one?" Kion knew this wasn't anything new. "A typical ritual to go through for a hiding place, don't you think...?"
He turned to face the hyena, who was looking at them from the darkness of where he sat. His paws on the arm rests of the rock-built throne. His sharp, thickened, bear-like claws curving over the faces of the arm rests. His orange sclera and brown eyes faintly emitting in the dark. He growled lowly.
The one thing that annoyed the Zulu out of everybody was that Jeyluxhal didn't talk. Not once. He didn't like communicating with sign language either, because he believed they were making him out to be a complete retard, who was incapable of speaking. Instead, he used his facial expressions, however complex they were, to communicate. And Jeyluxhal's friends, from the jackal Kuplinka, to the bat Mwindaji who was his 'tongue' that spoke in first person for him as if the bat was the hyena himself, to the crocodile Zuberi who was the muscle of his friends, and the gracious Fuhari the genet that Kuplinka had a crush on, all the way to the hot tempered monitor lizard Luthando, who was the gangster of his friends, none of them were ever annoyed by his rejection of sign language.
"Yes" Kion replied. "It's us, me and my friends" He briefly half-turned to face his friends, who remained silent in the confrontation.
The hyena slightly drew his arm back in, the gliding of his claws scratching the face of the armrest of his rock-built throne coming before the deathly ill and malnourished old-looking deteriorated hyena snarled lowly, coming off as a question.
"Out there, in the Pride Lands, protecting and upholding the Circle of Life" He walked forward a bit but kept his distance.
The lion's eyes falling on the Rafiki-styled painted petroglyphic depiction of the young Jeyluxhal, then known by his real name, with his biological parents, his father Tabari and his mother Najira, lying on the right side of where the hyena was sitting, before he then asked a question.
"And what of you? Why have you been locking yourself away from the eyes of the Pridelanders, all this time..."
Kion turned to face the hyena with a hardened, orange-brown eyed and stern gaze, before he dropped the bombshell.
"Tajiuva?"
In response to Kion using his real name, the hyena quickly leaned forward and into the sunlight, revealing the extent of his deterioration. He angrily snarled lowly, but viciously. His facial expression bearing his ever-so-sharp teeth with black lips, his upper half body appearance was revealed: his eyes regressed and sunken into roughened, red colored eye rings, face wrinkled with downward-facing wrinkles on the outer sides of his lips and upwards on the outer sides of his eyes, with the sides of his snout bridge having wrinkles on the outer sides of his lips. His facial expression was damn well clear:
'Don't you dare call me that name: Et sunt Jeyluxhal!'
Kion remained unmoved by the ferocity of the viciously gaunt visage of the hyena. He only pointed a finger of his paw at him.
"You're going back to her" He demanded, formally in tone but strictly in authority, as if he, a lion, were his father.
But the hyena only stood up and gripped his paws, his nails digging deeply into his palms, blood streaming down his arms from the puncture wounds. With his next facial expression only changing with narrowed eyes, he would rather die than go back to Ukafiri:
'Death, first'
And so, a fight broke out, but it was Jeyluxhal who had the upper hand as he held Kion in a headlock, with the hyena's leg around the lion's waist, while the hyena was forcing the leader of the Lion Guard down to the ground from behind, with a pointed knee planted to his lower back.
Kion relented, but refused to let go of his intentions and goals of getting Jeyluxhal to cooperate and end this pitiful little rebellion he's played out to no end.
"This ends today" The lion pointed another finger of his paw at the hyena, who sliced open a cut when he swiped his claws at him, drawing back his arm before he walked to the exit of his den.
The Lion Guard's members left afterwards and followed their leader, while the hyena went back to his rock-built throne. He softly sat down, heaving and breathing, starving, but not sick or malnourished either way.
They were gone, defeated, for now, but determined to return and make Jeyluxhal comply and end this pitifulness once and for all. However, he was resolute in his decision. He was final in his word. He knew their persistence would continue, but he was prepared to face them. No matter the cost.
Days turned to weeks, and the Lion Guard returned, more determined than ever. No reasoning, threats or force would make him yield. Once full of love, his heart had been shattered, replaced with a cold, black-blooded organ.
Ukafiri, ever the senile and mentally deteriorated okapi, continued her peaceful existence. Spending her days tending to her 'children', singing her lullabies of dissonance, telling stories of her beloved 'Jeyluxhal' as the prince she saw him and loved him as. The Lion Guard, burdened by their pang of guilt for continuous feeding into the deranged illusions of a family she wanted, were compelled by their duty to continue their pursuit.
One day, the den was empty, and a note, written in the stained blood from the puncture wound of his paws, was left behind, read:
"You do not command me. You do not weave the threads of destiny. You do not own me. You do not deserve to rule over me. I am gone. Seek me not. The hyena you put a collar on has severed his strings. You pushed me to the brink of a lost love I don't want anymore, and a life you've ruined. Now, I am beyond your reach"
Jeyluxhal's decline, witnessed only by the Lion Guard, could only force them to question their actions; having realized they pushed him too far for the hyena to give a damn, their own, the Royal Family's, and the Pridelanders' well-intentioned efforts, all have irreparably damaged someone they claim as their own. In the name of the Circle of Life.
Once the note was found and read, they've failed. They drove away the very creature they told themselves they would protect, when it was a oath they never made in the first place. And only made it because they needed a reason to continue their, the Pride Lands Royal Family, the Pridelander residents of the Pride Lands, all three of their unjust action against a hyena who refused the marriage.
Jeyluxhal is not going to change just to make them, or Simba and his family, happy. It's his turn to think about himself, his turn to choose him over Ukafiri, his time to be himself, not a forsaken husband who doesn't love this non-existing creature called 'Ukafiri'.