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Zhagan's story by Puurfect (#77681)
Zhagan thrust his paws forward and arched his spine, trying to work out a kink in his back, and opened his jaws in a toothy yawn just as something gave a satisfying snap.
With his back all stretched out, he returned to what he had been doing; nothing.
It was certainly pleasant to do nothing on a day like this, a day when the sun finally broke through the thick clouds and made the snow below glitter like diamonds.
And Zhagan had found just the place to do it; right beneath the shade of a gnarled old pine tree, its tangled roots just brushing the edge of the spring at his paws.
Such places were rare in the lower Acacus Mountains. The vast sand dunes, and the great ruddy red crags of sandstone that loomed above them, withered most trees and dried up most springs.
But here, high up, where all stone was grey and snow blanketed the ground, things grew. The cool mountain springs fed the moss and the hardy trees and the occasional flower.
Zhagan knew.
His lean, lanky form, with its short, scruffy mane, made him look like an adolescent, but the dabs of tribal paint that adorned his pale blue hide, with its mottled rosette pattern, were obvious signs of his adulthood.
Signs that he was a wise king, who, to his pride, knew everything.
The pride...he could hear them right now. Laughing, talking, playing.
Just at the edge of his watchful gaze, lionesses gossiped among each other, and fussed over their cubs. The cubs themselves were having a wonderful time daring each other to scamper up the cold rocks, and sliding down the snowy slopes.
It was wonderful.
But things, he knew, hadn't always been like this.
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“Rebekah!” roared King Kaisinel. “Bring me Rebekah!”
He paced around the sandstone cliffs, peering at all the gaps that a cub could hide in, and, finding nothing, snarled and swiped his claws against the hard rock.
He was a huge hulk of sleek fur, grey as slate, with an huge, shaggy shock of white mane that spilled all over his chest. A lionesses’ dream.
But anger made him a nightmare, something sharp and cold.
Every lioness in the pride knew to hide from him when he was in one of his moods. At least, every lioness not covered with scars.
“Is he gonna kill us, mummy?”
Lexi started, her heart suddenly beating a wild tattoo in her chest.
She had been so busy staring at Kaisinel through a crack in the walls of her den that she had forgot about the cub lying right between her paws.
“Of course not, Zhagan. Where did you ever get that idea?”
Her confident tone didn't match the thoughts racing through her head.
But the den, she reminded herself, was safe. It was one she had found on her own; a secret hollow in the cliffs. Kaisinel didn't know it even existed.
He barely even knew that Zhagan existed - he’d only seen him once or twice. It was true he killed male cubs, but you can’t kill something you can’t see.
And Six was good with Kaisinel. She knew how his moods worked. She knew how long these random fits of rage lasted. She’d hide with Rebekah until he cooled down, and then she’d approach him, smiling, and he would calm down.
“But what does he want with Rebekah?” Zhagan replied, wrinkling his small muzzle.
The den was hot and cramped, and he just wanted to go outside and play.
Lexi sighed and shifted her shoulders, gently jostling him. “It's Rebekah’s time to go to the snake.”
“Which snake?”
“Oh, come on now,” Lexi smiled. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember all of this. Remember the story? The one I told you when you were little? About the little green snake child who played among the skulls?”
“But what does the snake do?”
Lexi gave an inner groan. How could you explain fertility to a cub? It could only lead to a long series of awkward questions that, truth be told, she wasn’t entirely prepared to answer.
She tried anyway. Hey, she had known what she was getting herself into when she adopted Zhagan and his siblings.
“He...he looks at a cub, and...he tells you if they can one day have little cubs of their own. And sometimes he also tells you if...if they’re really pretty.”
“But what does being pretty have to do with having cubs?”
Why had she allowed this conversation to continue? Lexi could feel herself blushing - it felt like the very roots of her pelt were burning up. Luckily, its fiery red color was perfect for hiding her embarrassment.
“I’m sure the snake will tell Rebekah she’s very pretty,” Lexi said, trying to distract Zhagan. She was NOT going to explain what sexual attractiveness was to a cub. “It did to Six.”
“They’re both really pretty,” Zhagan agreed. He had always admired his sisters.
Six looked exactly what he’d have imagined a big sister to look, with her fawn-colored fur and grayish back, and little Rebekah was so cute, just a bundle of ruddy red and onyx smudges.
A roar from down below made them both look up.
“That must be Kaisinel,” Lexi whispered. “Six must have brought Rebekah to him.”
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They returned at nightfall, just when the cool night breezes started whistling through the hollows in the cliffs.
Kaisinel's contented growls bounced off the red rock, filling Lexi’s ears. Apparently the snake had said all the right things.
The moment he padded off to his private den, she left Zhagan curled up against the den wall - the little cub was fast asleep, ancestors bless him - and bounded down the rocks.
Six was waiting there to meet her, Rebekah curled up next to her.
“So? How did it go?”
Six opened her mouth, and then closed it. She screwed up her muzzle, and, ears flat against her head, looked at the ground.
Lexi’s blood ran cold.
She could feel that Six was about to tell her something very, very, bad, and she had had enough of very bad things. For a moment she wished that the starry sky above them would never lighten, that the sun would never come up, that the whole world would freeze and they could, just for once, have a peaceful moment.
Six sighed, and shook her head. “Rebekah’s a seven percent.”
Lexi knew what that meant.
Kaisinel had a rather unusual way of naming the cubs in his pride. He gave them names when they were born. Pretty, unique names. Names like Rebekah.
Then, after he took them to the snake, if it told him their fertility was low, he’d name them after their percent. It was a way of ostracizing them, shaming them forever. It turned them into stark, plain numbers. Numbers like Six.
And he usually killed these numbered lionesses.
She had been lucky with Six. He liked Six. He hadn’t killed her. But Kaisinel had a limited supply of kindness. Rebekah was stretching it, and it would break.
He was going to get rid of them. All of them. Lexi herself, Six, Rebekah, and Zhagan.
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“Get out my sight, you filthy infertile! And take those whelps of yours with you unless you want them to die!”
Kaisinel’s parting words rang in Lexi’s ears as she scampered up the sandstone cliffs, flanked by her adopted cubs.
The sun had barely risen, but he had already chased them off. The first rays of dawn were just warming the air, but here they were, bloodied, bruised, and battered.
There was nowhere for them to run. Kaisinel’s territory was surrounded by a vast desert, filled with nothing but sand and sandstorms. That was why his lionesses never tried to run away.
And so they climbed.
They scrambled up, ever upward, sinking their claws into the soft, crumbling rock, hoping it wouldn’t give out from under them. They climbed higher and higher, into the very heart of the Acacus Mountains.
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Snow was falling, gently blanketing the rocky ground, the mountain passes, the twisted pines, and obliterating the scattered footprints of a hasty meeting.
Zhagan snorted and shook his head as a stray flake landed on his blue nose, chilling it.
His poor nose had already been through enough - he could still feel where that lioness had smacked him.
As he slogged through the snow, he had to wonder if it had been worth bothering. Why did he still go on these nightly patrols? Why did he still bother looking for lone lionesses?
He always preferred to be optimistic, but the truth was unavoidable - he had no luck with the ladies.
Not even one had joined his pride- it was still just him, Lexi, and his sisters.
But they had a good reason to dislike him. What self-respecting lioness could possibly want a male who, even though he was an adult, still looked like a scruffy young adolescent?
A sudden noise made him jump.
It was probably nothing. It could have just been a tree branch snapping, or a hare running, or ice breaking. It could have been a hundred little things unworthy of anyone’s attention.
But he decided to investigate anyway, and bounded forward, stopping only when he almost smacked headfirst into the most beautiful lioness in the world.
Her fur was a hundred different shades of brown, layered and streaked on top of each other, and he could have sworn that she was a penta feline.
What was that little poem Lexi had told him when he was little?
'Penta feline so divine, penta feline please be mine.'
As he struggled to say something, anything, she spoke.
“I’ve never seen you around here.”
From anyone else, her words could have sounded harsh or blunt. But the rich, chocolaty tone of her voice, her curious silver eyes, and her amused little smile made them personal, intimate.
But he wanted more than her curiosity or amusal.
“I,” he declared, puffing up his practically non-existent mane and curling his tail, “am King Zhagan. My pride is, well, youngish and growing. We live on the higher slopes of this mountain - that’s probably why you haven’t seen me around.”
“Really? I am Princess Emir, and I live just below this clearing, in one of the old prides.”
She cocked her head and looked at him, as if she wasn’t used to seeing scruffy blue lions proclaiming themselves king.
“You know, princess - and I expect this is really forward of me - but I would have expected you to have cubs by now.”
“I do-well, did.”
“Then-”
Emir tensed her shoulders. “It was a male.”
“O-oh. Sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” she sighed, looking down her snow-covered paws. “That’s simply how prides work. Good cubs live, bad cubs...do not.”
Zhagan drew himself up. “Well, that’s not how things work in MY pride. I’m not a cub-killer.”
Emir looked back up at him. “I never said you were. I only said that was how most prides work. But apparently your pride isn’t like most prides.”
“Ah-well-thanks,” Zhagan stuttered, trying not to blush.
“In fact,” Emir continued, suddenly flashing him a toothy grin, “why don’t we take shelter from this snow under that pine tree, while you tell me all the other ways your pride is different from all the others?”
And Zhagan did. They talked for hours under the pine that night, and the next, and for many others.
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“Are you absolutely sure you know the way?” Emir whispered.
“Of course!” Zhagan snorted. “Relax, just because there’s some extra snow on the ground doesn’t mean I don’t know my way around the slopes anymore.”
Emir gave him an exasperated look. What Zhagan had described as “a little snow” was the result of one of the worst snowstorms ever seen in the Acacus Mountains.
Snow lay thick and heavy on the ground, smothering the trees, coating the cliffs, and in some places reaching all the way up to their hindquarters.
It turned the landscape into an eerie white nothingness - and the fact that it was the middle of the night, with neither moon nor stars showing - didn’t exactly help the atmosphere.
All in all, Emir thought, this wasn’t going very well. But then, it was just like Zhagan to choose the worst night of the year for his plan.
She squinted at a large white lump in the distance - probably a boulder.
“Zhagan, I believe I’ve seen that thing before.”
“You know, you really should have told me you had deja vu before I decide to do the whole ‘steal you away and make you my queen’ thing.”
“Zhagan!” she snarled. “This is most definitely not a laughing matter. I am almost certain we’re lost.”
“Look, I know the way.”
She gave up, and, shaking her head, continued struggling through the snow.
After what seemed like an eternity, Zhagan abruptly stopped dead in his tracks.
“Emir?”
“Hmm?”
“I’ve seen that rock before.”
She could have smacked him.
Instead, they took shelter in a small cave, and spent the rest of the night curled up around each other.
And when the day dawned, and the angry roars of Emir’s father boomed from the lower clearing, they bounded off together, in the direction of Zhagan’s territory, where his family was anxiously awaiting their arrival.
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Zhagan suddenly snapped out of his memories, as someone nibbled on his ear.
“Emir!”
She gave him a smirk and lay down beside him. “I’ve exhausted all topics of conversation with the other lionesses, and I just wanted to make sure you were still alive and breathing - you haven’t moved for about an hour.”
“I’m not so old that I’m just going to drop dead on the spot!”
“You have got to admit that you’ve got more grey in your mane.”
“So have you,” he grinned, playfully nudging her.
“Hmmph!” she said, tossing her head up in mock aggravation. “I suppose this is where you tell me that you’re dethroning my ancient self, and appointing a younger queen.”
“Ah, I won’t do that. I like having you around.”
The two lapsed into a comfortable silence, and watched the pride members chatter and frolic around them.
“Zhagan?”
“Eh?”
“What were you even thinking about?”
“Just the old days.”
“Old days?”
“Oh, you know. Before the pride was so big, when Lexi was still around.”
Emir ran her tongue over her jaws, and gave a yawn. “But that was all so long ago! How can you even remember it?”
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