Happy late Easter from me guys.
Sorry if you had to wait but here's the next chapter.
Not sure if the next chapter will be bigger but I have a small surprise add in it or the next one after.
Until then
Once fertile and ripe with food, the Pridelands became more like an arid wasteland under the harsh and undiplomatic rule of Scar. The clouds once white as wool and fluffy as absorbent cotton were now gray and fading. The sky that was once blue now turned a slate gray like the rest of the kingdom. The trees were bare and had no leaves and the grass crumbled at the slightest touch. Few of the animals that once inhabited the land remained.
Many herds moved away in search of a place of safety. Safety from the hyenas. These and the lionesses under Scar's rule remained and dispersed around the once magnificent and imposing Priderock. But there was little left of it. It looked more like a tombstone than a throne. That was how Sarabi and her lionesses saw it. They could flee, but Scars and the hyenas' orders for constant hunting prevented them from doing so. Once powerful and feared, they felt like servants. Servants of insatiable predators.
Nobody knows
The trouble I've seen
The lionesses fared badly, but Zazu fared much worse. The former king's majordomo was now more like the king's radio. Scar no longer needed him when the hyenas reported to him. And by the way, Scar would have eaten him long ago anyway if Zazu hadn't started singing in fear. Since then, he has been behind bars, singing songs to the king day in and day out while he feasted on the bones piled up in towers around the Priderock. You could call the place Elephant Graveyard 2.0 but Scar would never, ever allow that name.
Nobody knows
My sorrow
"Oh, Zazu, do lighten up." Annoyed and bored, Scar turned to the hornbill. The bone he was gnawing on looked more like a knife than a dagger. "Sing something with a little bounce in it." Bored, he threw the bone against the ribs in which Zazu was locked. As if he were pressing a button to listen to the next radio station. Zazu was more than annoyed by this humiliation. But there was nothing he could do about it. Unless he wanted to end up as dessert, of course. But what kind of subject would he be if he disobeyed his master?
It's a small world after all
However, this was not one of the songs Scar wanted to hear. "No, no! Anything but that!" his roar interrupted the song before it went into the next verse. Zazu kept his comment to himself. It was bad enough that Scar was using him as a jukebox, but this was the icing on the cake of shame.
I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts
Deedle dee dee
There they are a-standing in a row
Big ones, small ones, some as big as your head
Scar seemed to more than just like the song. His paws and head moved to the melody before his own voice sang along and drowned out Zazu. "I would never have had to do this with Mufasa." he sighed aloud to himself before he realized what a mistake he had made. "What? What did you say?" Scar snarled in his face at the mere mention of his deceased brother's name. Zazu moved back a little, swallowing nervously before he could give an answer. "Never, ever mention that name in my presence. I am the king!", 'Yes, sire, you are the king.' Zazu wiped the dirt from his feathers. He would never have mentioned the name without any reason.
"I… I only mentioned it to illustrate the differences in your royal managerial approaches." Scar's raised eyebrow said it all. He wasn't sure if the hornbill had told the whole truth. Judging by the nervous look on Zazu's face, it seemed more like a white lie. "Hey, boss." But the king could worry about that later. The hornbill had nowhere to go anyway. "Oh, what is it this time?" Scar rolled his tired, annoyed and old eyes. The green in his iris had faded like everything else around him. Even his fur no longer shone as elegantly as it once had.
He devoted himself to the voices. The voices that interrupted Scar's melodramatic conversation. "We got a bone to pick with you." grumbled Banzai, annoyed and hungry at the same time. Shenzi and Ed followed his every move. The former quickly decided to take the lead in the conversation before things got out of hand. "I'll handle this." she whispered before her yellow, partly faded eyes met Scar's. Not out of anger or anything. But because of something very specific "Scar, there's no food, no water." the lion frowned. "Yeah. It's dinner time and we ain't got no stinking entrées." Yes, Scar was aware of the shortage of food in the kingdom.
But did he care? Of course he didn't. As a male lion and currently the only male lion, his job is to lie around lazily. "It's the lionesses' job to do the hunting." The lionesses were too busy getting the food. Scar knew that and so did the hyenas. That's why Scar is surprised, or rather annoyed, why the three of them went to him at all. "Yeah, but they won't go hunt." Banzai mentioned, Shenzi nodded at him. The hunt had been suspended for days. Many lionesses refused to hunt only to get nothing from their prey.
This annoyed Scar just as much. His stomach growled constantly. Reminded him of the wasteland that was his kingdom. But instead of freaking out, Scar suggested another option. "Eat Zazu." he ordered. Much to the hornbill's displeasure. "Oh, you wouldn't want me." he pleaded "I'd be so tough and gamey and..." Scar's laughter interrupted his plea. "Oh, Zazu, don't be ridiculous. All you need is a little garlic." But where are you going to get garlic when almost nothing grows here anymore? The three hyenas asked themselves this question. They didn't find the joke funny at all. Not for a long time. The crux of the matter has been reached. "I tought things were bad under Mufasa.".
Shenzi and Ed didn't have to say anything. Banzai's statement answered their silence. "What did you say?" but Scar's ears heard his words anyway. "I said Muf..." smiling nervously, Shenzi nudged Banzai with her elbows to shut him up or prevent him from finishing his sentence. "I said qué pasa?", "Good. Now get out." growled Scar. The three hyenas trotted out of the cave. None of them wanted to try Scar's patience any further. None except Banzai, "But we're still hungry." "Out!" Scar roared before the three of them left.
As the Pridelands continued to become an arid wasteland, a loud belch was heard deep in the jungle far from that kingdom. A belch that neither Timon, Pumbaa nor Alicia let out. "Whoa! Nice one, Simba." It was Simba. He let his stomach do the talking, as they say. "Thanks." he thanked the meerkat. The four mismatched figures were lying in the middle of a meadow, in the green, watching the sky and its stars. It's always worth it after a good meal. "Man, I'm stuffed.", "Me, too." Alicia added. All four of them were fully sated. Insects were enough for the three males, but Alicia decided she would rather eat fruit. The bitten-off remains next to her confirmed it.
"I ate like a pig.", "Pumbaa, you are a pig." said Alicia. She couldn't help but smile and giggle. The warthog's reaction that he was a pig was more than clearly funny in her eyes. With the question answered, the four of them turned their attention to the sky. Together, they all breathed in and out. The day had been very exciting and exhausting. Ending it on a relaxed note seemed more than plausible. While Pumbaa smacked his lips, Simba combed his mane and Timon stretched out his arms, Alicia yawned. Not out of tiredness, but just because.
The day slowly came to an end. The stars in the sky lit up. Only a few clouds were visible in the sky. The perfect opportunity for a conversation "Timon?" or so it seemed. "Yeah?" Pumbaa seemed to be the only one of the troop interested in the sky. More or less what the glowing dots were. "Pumbaa, I don't wonder, I know." sighed Timon, more knowledgeable than ever 'Oh? What are they?' challenged Alicia, smirking. She knew Timon would say something that he said was right. "They're fireflies." Definitely Timon, fireflies. she rolled her eyes sarcastically.
"Fireflies that got stuck up in that big blueish-black thing." his statement was rock solid. Nothing the others claimed or said was true. At least in his eyes. Alicia knew that the glowing dots were not fireflies but distant planets and suns. Also called stars. "Nicely formulated Timon, but unfortunately not quite correct." The meerkat stared at the lioness in amazement. As if his ramblings were humbug. "I always thought they were balls of gas burning billions of miles away." Alicia confirmed Pumbaa's statement. The warthog was pleased to hear this. Simba nodded in agreement. But Timon wanted to recognize this as true. "Pumbaa, Alicia, with you two, everything's gas." 'Hey!' Alicia turned on her stomach to look Timon straight in the face.
She had a counter-argument up her sleeve, or rather paw, but before her delicate lips said the first words, the meerkat and warthog turned their attention to Simba. The question of what he meant by the glowing dots remained unanswered. It surprised him "Well, I don't know." was his answer. He didn't want to say any more about things he didn't know anyway. However, all three did not relax. They bombarded him with pleas, entreaties and "Oh give, give, give...". Simba scratched his mane nervously, unsure whether he should come out with what he knew.
"Come on, We told you ours. Please?" Where the meerkat is right, he is right. It would only be fair if Simba gave his own opinion on what kind of glowing dots there were in the sky. Only more nervous, the lion thought and gave in after the fifth or seventh request from Pumbaa. He breathed in and out quietly before he said, "Well..." the silence could be felt and heard. Everything was focused on Simba "Somebody once told me that the great kings of the past are up there watching over us." one of the few things Simba and Alicia kept to themselves that reminded them of their past before the tragic accident happened and they had to flee.
But his statement didn't sound entirely convincing: "You mean a bunch of royal dead guys are watching us?" Timon doubted it. Barely a second had passed when he finished his sentence before the tears began to flow. Tears of laughter "Who told you something like that?" giggled Timon while Pumbaa continued to laugh hysterically as if what Simba had just blurted out was a joke. "What mook made that up?", "Yeah. Pretty dumb, huh?" giggled Alicia with a nervous undertone. It was supposed to ease the situation, take the weight off their shoulders that they had been carrying since their escape from the Pridelands. But it had the opposite effect.
Remorse and feelings of guilt plagued both lions. No more laughter or jokes helped. Both needed distance to think about what was going through their heads. "Was it something I said?" whispered the meerkat worriedly to the warthog. Both predators got up from the meadow and approached the slope. Looking up at the sky, they sighed as the wind carried the flowers, dust, pollen and small pieces of fur.
The wind carried them across steppes to a remote, lonely baobab tree. They waved through the leaves until a hand reached for a bundle of petals, dust and fur remnants. The hand belonged to a mandrill, not just any mandrill. Rafiki, to be precise. "Hmm." he sniffed at the remains before climbing down the top of the tree to his little home in the middle of the treetop. An empty turtle shell served him as a means of identification. He recognized the smell. But the mandrill did not know whether his nose was deceiving him.
He slowly stirred the contents, grabbed a nearby fruit, cut it in two and thoughtfully ate one of the halves. It was on the tip of his tongue. The smell of the flowers. It seemed familiar to him, but where from? "Simba? Alicia?" As if bitten by a mosquito, he recognized the smell. He knew who it belonged to, or rather who it belonged to. Surprised, Rafiki looked at the drawing he had made many years ago. The blurred lines were still clearly "They... They're alive? They're alive!" Rafiki jubilantly grabbed his old walking stick, turned to the drawing and added a small change. His free hand reached into a small bowl of red powder.
They stuck to the palm of his hand before they were added to the washed-out drawing of Simba. He was no longer a lion cub but a full-grown lion, the red powder serving as his mane. But Rafiki was not finished yet. One drawing had to be reworked. That of Alicia. She was no longer a lion cub either, but had grown into a strong lioness. Therefore, her appearance needed to be changed. Rafiki's hand dipped into a second bowl. This time with black powder. He spread it in one place. The tip of her tail.
Both drawings were completed. Rafiki laughed with joy. The heir to the throne had been found, now he had to come back to take his place in the circle of life. As the rightful king. "It is time." With a smile on his face, Rafiki devoted himself not only to the drawing of the two supposedly deceased lions. They also spared the third drawing of a lion. A lion whose appearance will take place soon.