Spoiler: show
I think about her a lot still, you know. I miss the way her fur felt as it slipped through my paws, like the softest of sweet silks. She was the only one who understood me.
Ever since I was a young cub, as far back as I can remember at least; I thought a lot about, well just about everything really. Why did the lioness who claimed who had adopted me into her outlands want revenge so much? Why does anyone ever want to be a leader, just so their followers can live a happy life by fulfilling their only one single goal in life (allowing the leader of the pride to be your master, as it were). Do they not realise that they have their own lives to live? Both the outsiders and the Pride Landers, look up to their masters without question (Zira and King Simba respectively), only when I questioned Zira’s leadership did I learn why that is.
I now roam the lands alone, cast away from both prides. Even though the out landers were referred to as outsiders sometimes, there was only one true outsider at this time, and that seemed to be me. I remain banished from both of the main lands. Banished by Zira for questioning her, and by Simba for being born into her pride. I am in a state of comatose, twilight even. Neither truly alive, nor truly dead.
And quite frankly, I have always been pretty happy for this. The lives of others just complicated my own, ever though I had experienced true love before, the memories of that love continue to haunt me. I don’t know if I will ever meet her again, but I do know that I know what true love feels like, all other incarnations of love, Scar and Zira, Simba and Nala... It always seemed artificial to me. Zira saw this a weakness in me from the very beginning and began to look for a new “chosen one”, even when I tried to explain myself to her; she wasn’t exactly the forgiving type.
Now I hunt my own food and live my own life. But lately I have been thinking; surely there is more out there for introverted lions like me. I feel that life is slowly slipping by, and the memories that swirl in my head are preventing me from truly moving on. I often sat here in the savannahs watching the water flow through the river as I thought to myself about the future, but my two remaining friends (I thought of them as acquaintances) often reminded me that nothing would change unless I would learn to put the past behind me and go chase what it is I wanted.
I am a simple lion by most standards, I don’t feel jealously like most, but all I want is a simple life, one lived with someone just like her; a pride of my own and a life more exciting than the one I lived. I have learned that, no matter how much we may think otherwise, we do need to be in communication with other people in order to progress ourselves.
My next hunt was planned, it would be just outside the pridelands, where some of the most elegant lionesses you would ever see would pounce gracefully through the air, claws raised to attack their pray. Surely there must be others out there who think the same way I do; but I will never meet them unless I go looking for them in likely places.
Picking myself up, and moving away from the beautiful sounds of nature, into the scarce scenery of the Pride Lands hunting grounds was challenging in itself. Gone were the waterfalls, the river and the lush colourful surroundings, replaced with only two; the bright green blades of grass that brushed one another in the cool breeze and a bright blue sky. I found a whole new world by following my dreams, it seemed.
But no matter, I had the imagination and the ability to go out and chase my dreams, that is what has led me here and what has guided me my entire life. See some think that worshipping their “king” or whoever their chosen leader may be is what has allowed them to live, but I think differently, I feel that life is simply a series of decisions, what makes them happen is whether we believe heavily enough in what we are doing. And boy, did I believe in what I was doing.
Then, there she was. She sprang out of the golden sun, I watcher gliding over me, landing on her pray which was some distance away. Everything about the way she moved and that soft silky fur flowing in the wind reminded me of her, because it was her. She had left the Outlands at the same time I was cast out, losing two capable hunters had put a significant dent in Zira’s plans of vengeance and in my plans of living my own life.
I stepped back in disbelief, not knowing where I truly was, and falling backwards into a the same pit that had been the resting place of King Mufasa. Yet as I feel back, she rushed to the edge of the gorge, investigating the noise and who as there. I continue to fall, looking into her eyes as I do, for a brief second she seems to recognise me, throwing a smile at her I close my eyes and accept my fate. It may have been a shot life, but I know one thing; I lived it to the fullest and really that is all I could have asked for.