A/N: Welcome to my take on the 'human in Lion King' trope story. I have read some brilliant stories of a similar classification, and so I thought (many years ago, at this point) that I would come up with my own, and five years later, and after several failed rewrites, I have now decided to restart publishing chapters, otherwise, you would get a few update emails at the end of the story, and the reading experience would be ruined. Anyway, I'm going to try and publish one chapter a week - even though I have struggled with consistency when it comes to publishing schedules. Anyway, enough of my rambling, let us get on with the story, which starts from the point of view of the main character.

"Alex..."

The voice of a frightened boy filled my mind as if it was a cavernous chamber, a void of darkness and undisturbed air.

"Please stop doing that... I'm begging you!" the voice was now frantic.


"Boys, your mother has died..." announced a regretful voice sullied by a slight quiver in it.


"Please... stay... with... me!" someone growled as they sounded like they were doing chest compressions.


"Please... look after my son," a weary voice whispered.


"This was supposed to be the first day of the rest of our lives... and she's gone," someone broke down in tears.


"I'm so sorry," a barely audible voice wept.


"Only you can do this..." a female voice declared.


"I forgive you," someone said resolutely.


Stolen from a slumber that was bookended with turmoil, my entire body was jolted as an electronic, droning sound of my alarm clock extracted me from my eight-hour sleep. As I glanced at the date, which was 11 November 2016, on my fully charged Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone, my resultant smile of excitement was contradicted by my weariness. I turned my head to face the ceiling, looking at the white, empty ceiling. Daylight only breached the curtain through the gaps at the top and bottom. The full force of the light was prevented from assaulting my eyes by the blue curtains. This allowed my eyes to adjust to the daylight that would flood my room when I could be bothered to open the curtains.

I then thought about the dream I had. Unlike most dreams, this one was not accompanied by imagery. And neither was it a memory. Well, it was, but it also included words that would be spoken in the future and not all of them by me. This unnerved me slightly, as I wondered what situation I would be in for me to say some of the lines that were spoken with what I recognised to be my own voice.

Anyway, I should tell you why I have a reason to be excited this morning.

It was on this day that I would be meeting with my girlfriend, whose name was Abigail du Plessis. She lived in the city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Our relationship had lasted for several years, having met at the University of Worcester, where we both participated in a Politics course from 2013 until the summer of this year. Abigail returned to her country of birth, on the condition that I would visit her before the year ended. Alas, it took longer than I had intended, but circumstances finally allowed me to arrange to stay with her over there for a month just before the end of the year, returning just in time for Christmas.

But before I say anymore, I suppose I should tell you about me, the unlikely protagonist of this most unlikely story. My name is Alexander Richard Maximilian, but I am referred to by most who know me as 'Alex' only. I was born in London on St George's Day in 1995. I live in Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet with my father, brother and pet cat. While I was brought up in a well-off family, that did not protect me from the cruelty that life can deliver.

In 2005, I was caught up in the 7th July bombings in London. This heralded the torture of P.T.S.D. and a self-inflicted attempt on my own life. And as soon as I thought I was regaining some control, and a sense of normality in my life, I was excited at the prospect of becoming an older brother, along with my twin brother Lewis, but one morning, after completing my routines and shift as a paperboy, everything changed. I shouldn't really delve any further into that right now - I'm supposed to be excited.

I was looking at a small, framed picture of our family, a professionally captured photograph of my family.

My father, Christian Robert Maximilian, was to the left of the formation. In the picture, he had dark brown hair, which I inherited, that was neatly combed to the left. He had the brown eyes of a kind, compassionate and loving gentleman, with a broad smile formed of thin lips that spread across his bright face beneath his nose, and through which no ill words were spoken. But if you were to meet him right now, you would see that his temple was peppered with grey and thinning hairs and his fringe was now allowed to hang over his forehead. His formerly firm, vivacious, cheerful face was now aged, bleached and distended and sunken by grief and depression.

His left arm reached over the shoulder of my mother, whose name was Laura. She had bright blue eyes, accented by smooth eyebrows that arched over her eyes. Her small nose and toothy grin completed an elegantly proportioned face that anyone else would call attractive, but that wasn't the only reason I liked to look at it.

I liked to look at it because it reminded me of the times when I did not have to worry if I would wake up in the middle of the night or when the next moment when I contemplated ending my life would be. As a child, it brought warmth to my heart and peace and security to my mind. Whether it was in the morning or after school - when she was around, it felt as if nothing could go wrong, and if it did, there wasn't a situation that she didn't have an answer to. But that was no longer the case, not for the last eight years.

I missed her for every second of the long days without her. It was a pain that I now didn't know what it would be like to live without, as much as it weighed on my heart. The moment when she would have been void from my life for longer than she had been within it was fast approaching. I wiped a tear from my cheek as I continued packing for my visit to Johannesburg. I already had provisions arranged for me by my girlfriend, such as clothes and toiletries and even a phone, so it didn't take too much time from my usual morning routine.

"Morning, Alex," Lewis called from outside the door with a voice empty due to weariness and strained while he yawned, stretching his right arm and his left arm bent. He must have woken up a few minutes before me. His short blond hair was unkempt from his movement in bed. Like me, he had a face that was somewhere between the gauntness of a teenager emerging from the forest of puberty and the completed frame of an adult.

"Hey," I replied with a slight smile. Even as adults, seeing each other would automatically improve our mood.

Lewis leaned against the doorframe of my room. "What time's your flight?" he asked.

"Eight this evening," I responded, to which Lewis replied with a nod.

"It's funny," Lewis began. "We spent 18 years practically sitting next to each other, and for the last three years, you've been far away more often than by my side," he said referring to my education at the University of Worcester. Lewis studied at Oxford, which meant we could take a train to each other's temporary homes, but it wasn't the same. "It made me realise how much I take you for granted. I... when you tried to..." Lewis pursed his lips as he tried to restrain his sudden emotional episode.

I promptly rose to my feet and walked to my brother and put my hands on either side of his head.

"Don't you dare start crying because if you start crying, I'll start crying," I ordered my brother. We both chuckled as I wiped a tear from his cheek with my thumb.

"I'm... sorry!" he said quietly. "I'm sorry I haven't been the brother you needed, the brother who should have noticed what you were going through," he lamented.

I moved my hands away to firmly point under my brother's chin. "Don't you dare blame yourself, alright?"

Lewis looked down and nodded.

"We already had a shared burden, it wouldn't have been fair of me to lump my own on you," I added. I then went to open my curtains, and as my eyes adjusted to the brightness of the overcast sky, through the window, outside I watched a woman walking on the pavement opposite our house with a pram and a young girl in a blue school uniform just in front of her. At that moment, I thought of what could have been. If our mother was alive today, so would our younger sister, who was stillborn. She would have been 13 years old, in her third year at secondary school.

"I miss her. I miss them both," I sighed. Any chance of my excitement remaining uninterrupted was thrown out the metaphorical window.

"I do too," Lewis walked behind me. "Sorry, I've already ruined your morning," he chuckled. I turned to face him.

"No, don't be silly. There's not a moment where I don't think about Mum or anything that's happened to us, and yet here we stand," I said. "We will always find our way back to each other's side," I reassured him. This made his smile return.

"What's a month compared to a semester at uni?" Lewis asked rhetorically, but I knew he was reassuring himself that it won't be so bad.

I put my left hand on his shoulder. "I'm going to be okay, and you're going to be okay," I said in response before we hugged.

I caressed the back of his head as I felt my throat grow heavy. I swallowed before I ended the embrace. "Well, we better get some breakfast."


While we did have plenty of breakfast options at home, we decided to go out to the local coffee shop. I know, how very London of us! The coffee shop was called The Sanctuary and it was run by four LGBT people whom I was proud to call friends. I would have been more than happy to support such a business even if I wasn't bisexual.

"I'll pay," Lewis declared as we walked in and put our coats on the set of hooks on the wall by the door. "What would you like?"

"Oh, I'll just have a cereal bar, orange juice and a chocolate muffin," I said as I made my way to the empty table by the window.

"Got it," Lewis called across as he lined up behind someone who was in the process of ordering their breakfast.

As I made myself comfortable on the wooden chair, I scooped my phone out from my pocket and looked at Twitter, then the BBC News app. Both did nothing to lift my mood. My browsing was interrupted by the bell above the door being knocked as the door opened and a wave of gentle laughter entered the room. I looked up and saw two women around my age engaged in a conversation in a foreign language, which I guessed was Korean.

One of the women left the other to find one of the few tables that were not occupied by at least one person. She chose a table that was around ten feet from mine. I stopped myself from staring at her and briefly focused my attention on my phone before Lewis came back with a tray with the items that I requested on it, as well as the items that he would be eating.

"I found that I agree with you that Helen's muffins are the best way to start a morning," Lewis said, referring to the owner's bakery prowess, and sure enough, there were two chocolate muffins on the tray. While I ordered orange juice, he ordered a strawberry milkshake.

We tucked into our makeshift breakfast and talked about various things, from job searches to my upcoming visit to South Africa.

"So... have you found any jobs yet?" I asked my brother.

"Yeah, I'm torn between working for an MP or at the BBC," Lewis responded. I had to raise my eyebrows at that.

"Why would you want to work for an MP? You'd be on the receiving end of so much shit on social media," I laughed.

"Yeah, I guess, but apart from the BBC job, I can't think of a job that would enable me to do stuff that I would enjoy," Lewis replied.

Lewis loved animals - his favourite was the cheetah, followed closely by the lion. He wanted to be the next David Attenborough, going around the world and raising awareness of how our actions as a species affect other inhabitants of the Earth.

"Who knows, we might both end up living in Africa," I chuckled as I sipped my orange juice.

Lewis placed his hand in my free hand before saying quietly while looking in my eyes, "Don't go."

I frowned slightly before sighing.

"I can't not go. This has been a thing for half a year. I love her. And besides, it's not like I'm choosing her over you and staying there forever," I replied.

"Then you must promise me this," he demanded as he grasped both of my hands. "Come back," he said softly.

"What's brought this on?" I asked with a hint of worry seasoning my voice. Lewis looked down slightly before looking into my eyes.

"I had a dream," he admitted. "Well, I don't know what it was... I could only hear voices, some of them I couldn't recognise, but I did hear your voice," he added. This revelation deeply perturbed me. I could only frown and stare at the crumbs of the Coco Pops cereal bar that had spilt out onto the plate.

"Do you... remember what was said?" I asked hesitantly, afraid that he would recall the same nocturnal experience as mine.

"No... none of it was defined, but I could recognise the great suffering that was embedded in the voices," Lewis replied.

"Something's going to happen. Something that will keep us apart for far longer than ever before," he declared with his words crawling through the fear that possessed him.

"Then let it happen," I said. The look on Lewis' face told me that he was almost affronted. "Even when we go to be our own selves, we'll always end up by each other's sides," I repeated my words of reassurance from earlier.

"I don't think you realise how much it hurts in the moments where I think I'll never see you again," Lewis argued.

I exhaled. "Maybe that's why I have to go. You're not going to live your life if you keep worrying about mine," I replied. "I can look after myself, you know this," I added with a pinch of exasperation.

Lewis sighed. "You're right," he admitted before taking a sip of his milkshake.

It was at the moment that I put my glass of orange juice on the table after taking a sip that was especially tasteful after about a minute after the previous intake, my eyes met with those of the woman who was sitting at the table about ten feet away. Somehow, the moment of the awkwardness of looking at a stranger had passed, and I found that her brown eyes were pleasant to look at, having caught the natural light that flooded through the window into the cafe, making them appear as the remnants of a relatively dull supernova, not to mention how it was complemented with her epicanthus, but this wasn't what made me slightly open my mouth. It was the feeling that it would not be the last time I would see those eyes. Far from it, it would turn out.

This moment of connection and understanding between two random strangers was rudely interrupted by my brother, who informed me that he was heading off to meet with his girlfriend Samantha, who was a fellow graduate of Oxford. It was her ambition to be a human rights lawyer and was currently working at a barristers' chambers in Holborn. He reassured me that he would return in time to say goodbye.

"I'm counting on it," I chuckled. We said goodbye to the staff at The Sanctuary before leaving the establishment to go our separate ways, but not before my eyesight met with that of the woman.


I was about two hundred metres from home. Until now, there was nothing unusual about the ambulatory commute - I would say hello to friends and prominent members of the community. Ever since our personal tragedies, the people of Finchley often went out of their way to provide for whatever needs arose, even though we wanted for nothing. Their generosity was inspiring and I wanted to do whatever it took to repay them for their kindness, from supporting local independent businesses where I could to something that I was just about to do. In the past few weeks, there appeared a homeless man who had never been there before. He would sit between the penultimate streets that fed into the main road. On the first day that I saw him sitting there, I said 'hello' to him but he did not seem to acknowledge me, or anyone else for that matter when the few who saw beyond the unkempt grey hair and beard tried to help him, thinking beyond the stereotypes of a homeless person, that they were drug addicts or criminals who would spend generously donated money in zero faith.

Today, I heard his voice for the first time.

"Take nothing for granted, Alexander," he said as I reached down to put a ten-pound note in his hat, causing me to stop in my tracks.

His voice was not gruff, but deep and defined. His accent was somewhere between Caribbean and South African. Through his dark brown eyes, past the wrinkles and freckles on his face, there was wisdom and kindness. But his face was judgmental.

"How do you know my name?" I asked.

"Your name is known in many universes, people will fight for it," the man replied.

At that moment, I could neither conceive nor entertain either of those notions - that my story was repeated in universes that exist alongside this one or that people fight in my name. There were peculiar and unique things about me that I'm not quite ready to reveal to you just yet, but I never thought of myself as special. Life dealt me some good cards and really bad cards and I like to think I've done the best I could do. Was I taking what I had for granted? Possibly, but I always told myself that to appreciate the good things in your life, you have to accept and navigate the bad things in it.

"Can I help you, mate?" I asked. "What's your name?"

"My name is not yet important, you cannot help me, but you will need all the help you can get in the years to come," the man replied in a deadpan manner. I couldn't help but chuckle in astonishment.

"Are you alright, mate? Have you taken something?"

The man chuckled. "Such naivety. When the future and past are confronted by each other, neither of them will recognise each other, yet both will learn from each other," he declared before, to my surprise, he quickly got up to his feet, collected his belongings, them being a sleeping bag, a rucksack and some sort of wooden walking stick that was taller than himself, and stood on the edge of the pavement.

"Our souls will meet again, Alexander, sooner than you may think," he said, facing the road, then following a double-decker bus that was quickly approaching us. The man began to confidently walk into the path of the bus.

"Mate, what are you... watch out for the bus!" I exclaimed to no avail. When I knew it was inevitable, I looked away just before I saw the man being hit by the bus. I didn't even know his name, yet I was the last person he talked to.

Hang on... there was no thud of the bus hitting a human body at speed, no screams of passengers or onlookers, no screech of the tires as the driver tried in vain to stop the bus from hitting the person that walked into the road.

I dared to look into the street, and I saw nothing but patches of cement of different ages and qualities. No puddle of blood, no shards of glass, not even a person. The bus was continuing down the street, its momentum seemingly unaffected until it decelerated for the next bus stop.

'What the fuck?' I asked myself rhetorically. For some reason, I believed this to not be the craziest thing I would see today.


Having recovered from whatever it was I thought I saw, I made my way back to my house. I decided that I needed a coffee to take my mind off of what I witnessed. Though I wasn't sure what concerned me more; what the mysterious man said, or how our interaction concluded. Was it my subconscious warning me of a dangerous future? Was my PTSD telling me to evade the future? Not that I listened to it much these days.

Having consumed my coffee, I went to finish packing. There was some stuff of mine at my girlfriend's apartment in Johannesburg, and I could always buy additional items either at the airport or in Johannesburg.

I then took a nap, hoping it would prepare me for adjusting to the new position on the planet.


'Mnar, mnar, mor alavar, ur rhin es der, aru guen vehr naer vri guen, emba rah voi darai, mor vawer, vahr-boin guil vaer dir vin, mnar.'


I woke up gently. For the first time in a while. The sound I heard that brought me out of my brief slumber was the sound of the lullaby that my mother would sing to me and my brother at night. I didn't know what language the words were in, or what they meant, but it brought an indescribable sense of reassurance, security and warmth to our hearts. It was like it lifted us into a velvet cacoon that could not be broken. It never failed to send us into a deep sleep that lasted up to a gentle waking up at sunrise, such was her rich and smooth voice. I used to say that she should try out for a talent show, but she was modest and played down her talent.

But while it brought back pleasant memories, it was the first time I had thought of or heard that song in my memory for almost seven years.

Before I could dwell on why it entered my mind now, I heard my brother enter the house.

"I'm back," he called up the stairs. This prompted me to finally jump out of my bed.

"Is Dad going to be back in time to say goodbye?" he asked, now from the kitchen. Walking downstairs, the wooden steps creaking under my weight with each step, I answered,

"I think so." Our father was a teacher at a high school, a different one to the one we studied at, which sometimes worked in my favour, and other times, not so much. Sometimes, he would accompany students on school trips.

"How's Sam?" I asked, referring to my brother's girlfriend.

"She's well," he said with a smile. "Very well," he added as he turned to face me, but his expression quickly evaporated.

"Are you alright?" he asked with a cocked brow. "You look like you saw a ghost," he chuckled.

To be honest, I don't know what I saw earlier that morning. For all I knew, that would be exactly what I saw.

"Ah... just a rubbish nap, I guess," I pretended. "Anyway, you sounded like you were about to tell me something," I encouraged him to continue talking about his girlfriend.

"I'm going to have to tease you," his grin was restored. "We have something to tell the family when we are reunited," he declared. I nodded suspiciously.

"I see... no clues for your brother?" I chuckled. Lewis shook his head but his expression did not dissipate.

"Oh, well..." I sighed, putting my hands on my hips. "Fancy a game of FIFA?" I asked my brother, seeing that we hadn't played it together for a while and we still had several hours until I had to leave.


It was afternoon. We played a total of six ten-minute games, with me winning three, losing two and drawing one.

And our father returned from high school. The merry soundtrack of the last hour was cut short. He practically ignored us as he went straight to the kitchen, opened the cupboard, poured some gin into a glass.

"Anyone going to ask me why I'm pissed off?" he asked rhetorically and forcefully. Clearly, he had a bad day at work. Lewis and I could only look at each other helplessly, neither of us with an answer. He was impossible when he was like this.

"I'll be in my room," he said in a humph and stomped upstairs.

Ever since his wife died, he resorted to alcohol as a coping mechanism. It has since turned him into a more bitter, short-tempered, cynical person. It was like a half-death of the other parent. He wasn't always there for us when we needed him. He used to be confident, competent and diligent. But his purpose was taken from him, and in his eyes, we were reminders of what he had lost.

"I'll go and talk to him," I declared.

"It's no use, he won't respond," Lewis argued.

"I have to try... I won't see him for months," I replied as I climbed the stairs.

I looked down slightly upon reaching the door to our father's room, before looking to the door, on which there was affixed to it a nameplate that read his full name: Christian Edward Maximilian. Above it was the family's coat of arms, a golden lion rampant, grasping in its right paw, a naked oak tree with six branches that curved into a seventh central one.

I observed the image. It made me think of the stories of our family that our parents used to tell us about, of ancestors supposedly fighting supernatural powers, and even people in parallel universes fighting the same battles, whether they knew it or not. I used to put it down to our parents being intelligent and imaginative. But given my experience a couple of streets away, it made me think of the man's words.

"Your name is known in many universes, people will fight for it."

I knocked on the door. "Dad?" There was no answer.

"I think I know why you're like this at the moment," I said. "The time is approaching. The pattern is there," I referred to the trope in our parents' stories that, when the oldest son was of age, they were thrust into a great adventure that changed their lives, and the whole world, forever. I dismissed it as a superstition, a chide to get children to behave.

"Dad, I want you to know that..." I stopped myself from bursting into tears. "I forgive you," I said resolutely.

A few seconds after my declaration, I heard the dull footsteps approaching closer to the door, which then opened and I was faced with a man with tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes. He wrapped his arms around me.

"When you come back, I will be different. I won't be this drunkard, I'll be a proper father to you and Lewis," he spoke with limited coherence.

"Don't change because I'm coming back, change because I might not," I advised him. He looked at me and nodded knowingly.

"We just didn't want you to lose yourself as well as alienate us," I explained as I wiped away his tears.

"I know, I'm sorry," Dad looked down.

"Dad..." I earned his attention. "I forgive you."


Lewis insisted that he accompany me to the airport. We took the Tube to the terminal. East Finchley to Euston on the Northern Line, making our way on foot to Euston Square tube station for the Hammersmith City line to Paddington, from which we would take the Heathrow Express service to the station at Heathrow.

"Lewis, I'm twenty-one years old and I have a university degree so I'm pretty sure I can look after myself," I sighed as our bodies shook and swayed on the rattling, rumbling train.

"I just.. want to make the most of the last few minutes we have together... until you come back, of course," Lewis chuckled. I looked at him with a smirk.

"Really? When I left for Worcester, you weren't like this," I commented.

"C'mon, Alex. I'm trying," he sighed.

I nodded reluctantly. I was being harsh. I put a hand on his shoulder.

"I love you, and there is nothing I take for granted less than you looking out for me, but you have to let me go. Attachment like this can actually harm the progress I've made," I said.

Lewis looked down to opposite pairs of feet on the patterned floor.

"Alright."

Our conversation ended shortly before the train's arrival at Archway tube station, and as the train was decelerating, my attention was earned by a group of female passengers who could have been not much older or younger than me and Lewis. I could not discern what they were saying over the rumbling and the squeaking, but it brought them amusement. And by a happy chance, when the woman sitting nearest to me but on the opposite side of the carriage turned her line of sight to how it was by default, it encompassed me looking at her, and instead of looking away out of awkwardness, when she looked at me, there was no reaction from either of us. I realised that I recognised her from the cafe. For me, it was as if there was a temporary, physical barrier that prevented me from looking forwards at my own reflection in the windows. And for her, I could see in her eyes a knowing that this would be far from the last time she would see my face. I would not protest against such a prospect. As an honest man, I would admit that her skin looked faultless and was pleasant to look at and that her facial proportions and features were quite cute, if that was an appropriate term, but as an honourable man, I forced myself to look forward for the rest of the time we shared the occupancy of the carriage.

After the journey, Lewis and I went our separate ways outside the entrance to the Tube station at Heathrow Airport.

"I sincerely hope you enjoy your time over there. Tell Abbie I said 'hello,'" Lewis said before we pulled each other into an embrace that lasted for a few moments.

I looked into his eyes. I saw the same look of the child afraid of losing his brother. The look I saw when I lost consciousness after I attempted to end my own life. Each time he would shout my name, even in innocent situations, I couldn't help but remember his shriek of horror and helplessness.

"I love you," I smiled.

"I love you too," he replied as a tear formed in his eye. I then walked towards the departure desk, glancing once behind me to see my brother waving at me, to which I replied by raising a hand in return.

I dragged my black and grey suitcase to the desk and placed it on the scales. It was safely within the weight limit. The young female till attendant who had slightly tanned and made-up skin with blonde hair and blue eyes asked for my passport and travel documents, and I duly handed them over the desk. She checked them over with an unconcerned expression before looking up at me and smiling.

"Here's your ticket," she reached over the desk to hand over my pass to board the plane and return my other documents.

"Enjoy your flight," she said, and I responded with a smile and a nod, before gratefully taking the items from her hands.

After successfully passing the security checks and purchasing food from the duty-free store, I strolled down the temporary corridor that connected the plane to the terminal, and after a long wait due to unfavourable weather conditions, the BA95 flight was cleared for take-off, I decided to rest my eyes not long after take-off.


My sleep was peaceful enough, save for a concerning vision that woke me up, in which I saw the face of a lion. I thought again about the stories told by my parents, about how the protagonist would befriend a pride of lions, and even though I attempted to fall asleep again, the task was made no easier by the fact that a whispering voice within my head said: "Your coming to us is as the coming of our victory and suffering."

I was sitting on the right column facing the front of the plane, on the seat further away from the window. After I scanned my surroundings to reacquaint myself with my relatively cramped environment, my eyes fell on a boy who stood a few yards from me down the aisle. He looked to be barely over ten years of age. His brown hair grew in a neat spiral from his crown, forming a natural parting on the left side of his head. His face still had the roundness of youth but hints of what he might become were there. And then it occurred to me that instead of a quick scan of a stranger's features and turning away in slight embarrassment, we were now staring at each other. I could even see in his eyes that he had known much misery, suffering and tragedy in his short life and that this adventure was a mere respite. He was alone, isolated. I knew those eyes. They had been mine not long ago.

Without warning, I was almost launched from my seat as my attention shifted to the seats in front of me, shivering as I would after emerging from an icy body of water. My body shook more violently than could be ignored and the signal for an announcement from the captain was played. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are about to experience some major turbulence, please remain calm and strap yourselves in," the male voice said in as reassuring a tone as he could muster. I did as I was instructed, and so did everyone else.

Unanticipated, a resplendent flash of lightning deprived me of my sense of sight momentarily, and for the moments following, I could see the plane as if I was peering through an invisible plane window following a blink. It also replaced the sound of panicked passengers with a droning, ringing sound that brought agonising discomfort, but such was my body's petrification, I could only respond to the grief caused by the sound by gritting my teeth and clenching my eyes.

Mercifully, the noise faded away like a receding flood. But what unnerved and disconcerted me the most was an intense light that hovered outside the plane, like a celestial avian. I didn't notice that nobody else regarded the light. Through the windows, it formed spotlights like dappled moonlight. I was caught in its light, and it bathed me in what made dust look like diamonds that floated in the air. It radiated my frightened body, it enveloped my soul with courage and security. For a brief moment, I had forgotten what it was to be afraid and remembered what it was like to be held in my mother's arms.

I'm not sure if it was the realisation that my mother remained dead, unable to carry me from this situation, but my body seemed to increase in mass, as grief wrapped around my chest and penetrated my mind as a sudden depression weighed down on my shoulders like a pair of hands pulling from behind me. I could only fall into the chair, having been perched on the edge of it when I was bathed in the light. Suddenly, a shadow crept into my line of sight, and mental darkness bloomed in my mind like a poisonous flower of some sort of deep-rooted weed. And almost as swiftly as the darkness developing, a mass of untainted blackness caught my sight before it crashed into the engine and seemed to seep into the wing.

About a minute after the announcement, the carpet of white cloud seemed to rise. The sky was growing into the colour of a Pacific blue, with the sun cresting the white floor of the blue room. A seriously concerning event then happened. The engine grew an endless tail of black smoke, and as the smoke thickened, a great flash and bang deprived me of hearing and seeing the panic that now ensued.

When my sense of sight returned to my eyes like a tide receding from a bay, the first thing I laid my eyes on was the child, who was now crying tears of fear and confusion and was being comforted by his mother. The ringing in my ear was replaced with the equally torturing and voluminous screaming of terrified passengers.

I remained surprisingly calm. I didn't even think about the unknown afterwards. It would be nice if this was but a dream of all of my fears and suspicions of planes coming true, but I wouldn't be disappointed if that wasn't the case. It didn't feel like a conclusion, like an ending. Not because things were left unfairly untied, but because I knew that this was the moment when I would be taken away from my old life, with no way to return and embark on a life-changing adventure, as was told to me in our bedtime stories.

The signal for an announcement sounded again. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost two of our primary engines and are about to undergo emergency procedures. We will make an emergency landing..." the captain said but was cut off, just like the power. The frantic humming sound of the engine stopped, and the light left the LED bulbs, leaving the natural light to flood into the plane through the windows.

My racing heartbeat and shocked breathing replaced the sound of utter panic. I looked again at the child, whose tears were now shared with the mother. Maybe this really is the end of my duration in this existence.

'So... this is where it all ends and where it all begins,' I sighed in contemplation as I sighed in a sense of finality. I would probably never see Lewis or my father ever again. He was right, and for this, I was tremendously regretful. My lips trembled, but there was nothing to be done. I was in a cylindrical death trap, falling from a great height at an equally great speed. This was the end of my world.

I felt utterly sorry for the child. He probably had no concept of what was about to happen to him, and perhaps the only thing that actually scared him was everyone screaming in sheer panic. All that was ahead of him, all of what he could have been, would be taken from him cruelly. It was not fair, but life was not fair. It is a competition with evolving participants, some of which had more power than others, and every decision they made matters, yet every one of them is fallible and capable of both corruption and consideration, revenge and redemption.

The light that flooded the plane like rays of sun bursting through clouds was blocked by the same clouds as our altitude dived like a falcon hunting its prey. The oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, but there was no use for them. I was going to die. I did not wish to die knowing fear, but I would die with regret. I would show nothing of my emotions, not that anyone would notice, for the only ones who knew this was happening were going to die, and in the morning, all that remained of my family, as well as my girlfriend, would wake up to the news of a tragic plane crash in Africa, knowing that I was on that very plane.

In a flash of light, the power returned, but I saw the ground come closer by the second until I felt a distortion in my stomach as the pilots halted the descent at the last second, but the last second was one hundred and fifty-four too late for any chance of survival. I closed my eyes as I braced for the deadly impact. I felt my body ejected forwards, my face making hard and sudden contact with the seat in front of me. I heard the shattering of glass, and I noticed that the screaming had come to an immediate halt, I felt a great force strike my head, and I lost consciousness.


A strange groaning noise woke a lion cub with golden fur and amber eyes with red irises, the lids of which opened gently and any weariness was dismissed and replaced with curiosity. The noise sounded as if the source of it was in pain, and falling against the air.

The cub stretched and walked out of the cave in which he and his pride slept. In particular, he slept on a raised platform at the far end of the cave with a large, golden-pelted lion with a rich red mane that extended to his stomach. His head was resting on the shoulder of a mighty lioness, who had a sandy pelt.

The sky was slowly being enlightened by the sun, and this allowed the cub to see a strange-looking object that had a long, slim body and broad wings, almost like a crane. It seemed to grow an endless black tail. It moved ever closer to the ground at a tremendous speed, and it looked as if the scene would end in a collision.

As the cub glared in confusion at the falling object, he looked on with a sense of sadness, regret, and helplessness represented in his expression. As he spectated the gradual descent of what looked like a great bird with a long wingspan and feathers that seemed to reflect the sunlight shining on it, the great object swerved away from the ground, but it disappeared beneath the ground, and a loud noise and great rumble of the floor woke up the other lions that slept in a tall rock formation.

"Stars above, what was that noise?" asked a lioness with a tan pelt and amber eyes with crimson irises, whose head darted up and instinctually scanned for her cub. "Simba, what was that?" the lioness asked with fright grasping her voice.

"Was that an earthquake?" a female cub with fur the colour of cream, and eyes the colour of the ocean asked.

The lions, including the one with the thick, red mane, also possessing a frame of strength and a stride of authority rushed to where the cub was sitting on his haunches.

"Simba? Did you see what happened?" the large lion asked the cub at the edge of the promontory.

"Yeah, it was like a big... giant... bird-like thing and it fell from the sky," Simba attempted to describe the object. He was still shocked and surprised by the experience, having seen nothing like it before in his short life. Smoke seemed to pour from what the object was, rising as if there were a volcano in place of the crash site.

"Should we go and investigate?" Simba asked, being the curious cub he was renowned for.

The lion sighed. "When the sun rises above the mountains, we'll go to where the...thing is," he promised. He turned back into the cave at the bottom of the towering natural monument, intending to fall back to sleep. He was now too tired to think about the implications of the incident or how to respond to it if it turned into some sort of crisis.

Simba looked towards the plume of thick, grey smoke. Somewhere, in his heart, he knew an interesting discovery would be made and it would change his life forever.

A/N: That's the first chapter of the first act of the first half of the first story... out of four two-parters! Anyway, has Alex even survived and will he meet with the lions in the next chapter? The more reviews I get, the sooner you will find out ;). Hashtag blackmail, sorta? If you want to follow this story (whether as a returning audience member or a new customer), be sure to favourite and/or follow the story. Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next chapter.

P.S. Here is the translation of the song in Alex's dream.

Rise, rise, my son.

There is hope yet.

Your heart is a pure heart.

To give up is to forsake your part.

To believe that you will succumb is not a good bet.

Rise.

And it is to be sung to the tune of Asea Aranion, which can be found in 'The Last Debate' part of the Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack.