The season had been hot.  The banks of the river were cracked and dry and the few animals left in it were buried in the rich mud in the middle.  This time of year, the few weeks before the rainy season, things were always dry and somewhat unpleasant.  Even though the rain was soon, there was still enough time to die for want of water if the reserves and what little was left on the plains wasn’t managed effectively.  Their sparring had even wavered lately as neither one was willing to waste their blood or energy in this time.  

She waited for him underneath an almost bare fruit tree at the edges of her tribe’s territory.  They had been meeting there instead of the river since it had run dry because its branches were heavy with juicy red fruit and it shaded them easily with thick leaves.  Now, as the season ran dry the good fruits were all eaten and the rest were shriveled and dead.  The leaves were mostly fallen as well, laying on the ground making a kind of cover between the scorching earth and her bare chest and stomach.  

She felt him in her whiskers before she heard him.  He’d taught her how to use them, and in turn she’d helped him learn how to soften his steps, to walk quietly and stay in the shadows like lionesses did.  She was happy to help since he shared his kills with her, partly because he couldn’t quite eat them completely by himself, but also because it was mostly with her help he was able to get fatter, healthier kills.  She preferred the fresh, bloody meat to the roots and stews and dried meats and fruits that her people had made staple anyway.  

His footfalls felt heavier than usual, signalling that he had a kill and its weight was pushing him down.  She lifted her head and rose up onto her elbows, smiling as she saw the fat, fit bull slung across his shoulders.  There was barely any blood, a signal for a successful ambush, and she could almost hear its broken bones cracking against each other inside it’s limp neck.  She smiled and licked her lips, wiggling her toes and snaking her tail behind her as she started to stretch her body out.  “Looks like you had a very good hunt…”  She pushed herself up slowly, onto her palms to stretch out her back like felines do, pushing her shoulders back and her breasts forward.  “How close did you get before it felt you?”  

“Close enough.”  He gave a light chuckle and dropped the beast and knelt before it with his back to her.  In the past weeks or months he had become much more secure with her.  As many times as they’d sparred, wrestled, hunted together, sunned and napped, the trust between them was almost implicit.  

As he started to gut the thing she moved around to his side, crawling up to his knee, her hips and shoulders rocking high back and forth in that sultry way that big cats do.  She put a hand on his thigh and peeked over it, watching him split the beast open.  “He’s big and strong.  Not too old either…  You should be proud of yourself.”  She squeezed his thigh and laid her head down onto it, jumping a little as its stomach fell open and spilled across the ground, the blood and other viscera  pouring across his foot and the leg he was sitting on.  “What will you eat first?  His liver will give you his courage.  His heart will give you his strength.”  

“Do you really believe this?”  He asked, scooping up the thing’s liver in his paw.  “If he had any courage to begin with, he wouldn’t fill his belly with grass instead of meat.  If he had any courage he would stand and fight me rather than run.”  He crushed the organ in his claw, making bits of meat and blood squirt from between his fingers.  “There is no magic.  There are no gods, or spirits, or devils.  And even if there were, I give them no heed.  I don’t need or want their help, and if they stand in my way I will destroy them, same as any other.”  He opened his clenched hand and looked down at the mangled mass of flesh.  “There is only meat.”

She watched his hand intently, taking in what he had to say. He put in words what she had felt in her belly for so long.  She didn’t look up, but she could feel his gaze bearing down on the top of her head.  Smiling slightly, she leaned forward, crawling over his leg to his bloodied hand.  She took his wrist in her hand and pulled his hand to her maw, licking over the mass of raw flesh before taking it in her maw and swallowing it down.  “You are right…”  She said, licking across his palm, cleaning him with her rough tongue.  “But it is still good meat.”  She began obsequiously cleaning his paw, licking along his fingers with her body laying across his thigh.   

He let out a quiet purr and shifted his weight, falling down from his kneel onto his rump, knocking her a little sideways.  “Sit still, you overgrown kitten.”  She laughed and gave him a playful shove to his ribs before flopping chest-down on his lap and taking his paw again, continuing her cleaning.  “You’ve always got to be so dramatic…”  

He looked down at her muscled, rippling back, her firm arms and strong shoulders.  His eyes travelled back down from her graceful neck, to her full, tight rump and her long, strong legs.  His free hand moved to her back, resting on her shoulder and slowly moving down, stroking along the center of her back from her neck to her tailbase.  She purred as she took his fingers into her maw one at a time, getting them good and completely clean.  

She pulled free of his thumb and gave it a peck on the claw before lounging in his lap, pressing her chest down as her arms sprawled out in front of her.  “You won’t see me again after tonight.”  She said abruptly, as if she’d only now thought of it.  In truth she’d been trying to figure out how to tell him for the longest time, nearly since they met.  She had been afraid to how he would react, not knowing whether he would consider her not worth any more trouble and abandon her or if he would…  she honestly didn’t know what, besides losing his companionship, that she was afraid of.   

In the beginning it was something simple.  They were similar at face.  They were both like beasts, wild and free and strong enough to live the life they wanted.  And they [i]did[/i] want the same life.  To be free, to be wild, to have children and take a place of their own.  The more she got to know him the more she knew that this was the one who was meant to have her, who would respect her for what she was and want her for it.  The man who valued everything she was, and cared little for the things that she wasn’t.  

“Why not?  You finally decide to go home and do your ‘womens’’ work’?”  He said with obvious derision.  He’d never attempted to hide his distaste for their tribe’s ways, after all.  “Or did your father find some fat male to marry you to for a few cows?”   His claws raked over her back a little more roughly as he attempted to hide his displeasure.  She was incredible.  She was strong, clever, ruthless in hunting and fighting.  When he was with her he didn’t feel in competition for everything, like every meal and every drink of water and every step he took he’d have to fight her for.  She was the only person he’d ever felt safe sleeping next to.  

“Yes.” She answered, rolling onto her back.  His hand on her back ended up in the center of her chest when she turned, and she held it there, his palm against the valley between her breasts.  He scritched there naturally and looked into her eyes, both of them stern and loury.  “My hus-” She stopped mid word to retch slightly and turned away from his gaze.  “My father’s pick arrives… well he is probably already at the village.  We will be married here, and he once he’s given my father his cattle, he’ll take me to his tent and consummate….”  

He growled and moved his paw up, stroking her throat and under her chin.  “And you’ll let him?”  

“No, but he has brought his friends with him to help hold me down.  I don’t know how many I can kill before I grow tired.”  She looked up at him with a toothy, violent smirk.  “But I’m disappointed.”  

He looked down at her with a raised eyebrow, his head tilted curiously.  “About?”  He moved his hand up from her throat to her cheek, and up from there behind her ear, lightly kneading her ear between his thumb and fingers.  

“Am I a good lioness?”  She asked, looking up at him with that serious look in her eyes again.  

He chuckled and noded, moving his other hand to stroke her other ear, making her purr lightly.  “I’m almost sure.  If you were a hyena you’d be better endowed than me.”  

“Then why haven’t you decided to take me for yourself?”  She put her hands on his wrists, holding his hands on her head.  “Am I too strong?  Too capable?  Do you prefer the fat, helpless ones with their breasts dragging the ground and their whole bodies shaking when they walk?”  She almost hissed the words out, her disdain for the weakness and unhealth that was desired by the males in her tribe and others nearby.  

He shook his head slowly and growled, tugging his hands against her firm hold.  He was forced to think carefully about his answer, pausing between words trying to piece together the best way to say what he wanted to say.   “I… don’t know what to do with you.  You don’t deserve treated like them.  To be dragged off into the shade and taken…. You’re better…, you’re more.  I don’t want to... own you.  I want to stay like this.”  He growled as he turned away and she let go of his wrists.  “I would go, kill your father and take everything that he has…, but you’re the only thing he has that I want.”  

She looked up at him as he glared out into the distance.  His ear flickered but he didn’t turn back down to her.  She suddenly rose up and shoved his chest, knockin him backward before she landed on his chest.  “Come tonight. Tell him that I’m all you want… if he makes you fight…” She leaned in, pressing her muzzle to his neck, digging through his mane with her nose till she got to the flesh, her face buried in the thick, hair and drowning in his heavy scent.  “You’ll know what to do…”  She licked his neck aggressively and gave it a nip, starting to nibble at it.  

He grunted as he was knocked back, but only purred as she went about her business.  When he felt her teeth on his throat, something that he’d never imagined he’d enjoy, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her tight to him. “And what of your husband and his friends?”  

“He won’t be my husband until he takes me…” She said, finally pulling her head free.  Her eyes burned, a bright fire behind them as she looked down at him.  He was the same, a fire in his belly growing larger than even his hottest rage.  He didn’t know what this was, but the power he felt threatened to consume him. 

“Hold him off till I’m done… How will I know his tent?”  He asked, his hands travelling a little further down than he’d ever dared.  

She smacked his roaming hands roughly enough to make him roar before she quickly darted up to her feet and stepped back away from him.  “I’m not letting you get greedy now…. You don’t want me like a thief in the night…, you’ll have me like a conquering king.”  She turned, tracing the lines of her body with her hands.  She put her hands under her ass and cupped her cheeks, squeezing them for him and sliding them down her legs, showing him everything.  “You’ll know the tent by the strange symbols they put on everything, and a flag sticking from the top.  And you might hear their screams.”  She stood back up and smiled that bestial smile that he loved to see across her lips as she walked into the high grass.  

[center]---------------------------------[/center]

The village was alive, like a disturbed anthill.  Half naked children ran about with others in robes, with still others in shorts and t-shirts.  The adults were largely dressed similarly, although there were no women in robes, only the locals in their ceremonial body paint and nudity.  A row of tents led into a dead end, what westerners would call a cul-de-sac, a large circle of tents and stick shacks surrounding a fire.  Most of them were undecorated and incredibly simple.  A few of them had skin-covered roofs, and there was one particularly large one that belonged to Arkamun, which he shared with his wives, his brothers, and their wives.  

At the fringes of the circle were a few different tents, separate from the rest, made of layered cloth, blankets and sheets.  They were covered in ornate designs and had a strong, spicy, perfumed smell leaking from the base and through a hole in the roof.  One was like she had described it, a little larger with a flag over the top of it.  That tent had a different scent emanating from it: the smell of a male.  The scent of a male young and in the middle stages of his transformation into a man, when his body goes wild and makes him wild, makes him smell like heat and makes him unsafe to be around the females alone.  This is the time when his father should be cucking him, putting him in his place and keeping him there.  

It would be an hour or maybe two before dusk.  He had expected her to warn Arkamun or at least for him to expect something by now.  How they had managed to spend so much time alone together and yet never anyone following her or keeping tabs on her confused him.  Then again, the lions that gave in to the demands of gods and spirits and had adopted the lifeways of hyenas and dogs always had an oddity to their behaviour.  

Around the fire sat several old lions.  There were more than he had expected but she never had said exactly how many uncles she had, or ever mentioned how many grown males were arriving with her new husband.  The males were all dressed to some degree, most of them in large, thick, heavy robes with more fabric wrapped around their heads in elaborate headdresses.  The purpose of them he couldn’t interpret other than to perhaps hide or compensate for a lacking mane.  The largest few, who also looked to be younger, wore large, jeweled clubs at their sides, seemingly chained to their belts.  What purpose they served besides decoration he wasn’t sure either, but as mentioned, these lions could be odd and crafty.  The rest, the minority around the fire, for sure, were wearing simple gourds over their manhoods and paint on their bodies and faces, along with braided manes.  

He heard the yeowling first.  Then a wet, squelching scream like comes from a split throat; cut a little high so the cords weren’t damaged too much.  Several young men roared, deep and strong but with the distinct tone of fear.  All the heads around the fire turned to face the scream, and it was then that he walked into the village, through the lane of tents and huts.  He expected the women to stop him, or even the sons that were gathered away from the fire, but they barely raised their heads.  The lionesses of a tribe should tear a strange male to shreds in their territory and even more so when so close to their children.  What she had told him must have been true, how the females of this tribe had been made into weavers and cooks and little else.  

The younger males around the fire stood and started to head for the tent, but that massive, foreign beast that had come to fetch her released a powerful roar that brought all of their attentions to him.  With the sun at his back he was nearly completely black even with the fire at his front.  His fur and mane, both unnaturally dark, soaked up the light from the towering flame making the shine from his eyes look like smoldering embers, red hot stones set into a dark clay face.  

The lions in robes watched at him strangely as he walked to the fire.  The eldest one, with grey in his thinned mane and with a robe barely concealing his frail elderly body, turned and smiled at the fattest of the almost-nude lions.  “Arkamun, did you have a son you haven’t yet introduced us to?”  

“No, Alman-”  The fat one replied with a light growl.  “I’ve never met this man before.”  Arkamun’s glare at the new lion didn’t break as the others at his sides rose, others like him and of similar age.  Their stomach’s spilled over the strings on their gourds and they had breasts like women; their bodies continued to move for several moments after they had stopped.  “Kibwe, Ngozi, find out what he wants and get rid of him.”  

The ragged old lion turned back to the intruder and looked him over, and curled his lip up into the slightest smile.  “Why don’t you ask him?  I think we can hear him from across the fire, don’t you?”  He lifted his hand at Kibwe and Ngozi and motioned for them to sit.  They paused and looked at Arkamun, who nodded in approval.  The sounds of struggle from the tent beside them never stopped, almost sounding like a battle was going on inside.  

Arkamun growled again and leaned forward on his knees, looking at the intruder harshly. “What do you want here?  You’re not of any of our neighbors’ sons or I would have known you before.”  

“I am here for the female.”  The  young male replied plainly.  

“What?  Which one?”  Arkamun looked around to the rest of his family, so many daughters and wives to choose from.  He thought for a moment, and realized what his unruliest daughter had been up to all these days to herself.  He pointed with his thumb to the tent beside them and chuckled derisively.  “She already belongs to Tawur.”  

“Tahawwur.”  The elder lion corrected, his gaze on the young intruder remaining steadfast.  “Son of Alman.  I am Alman.”  He paused for a moment, everyone remaining quiet as he spoke.  The smallest of all the males, the oldest and frailest, somehow he commanded a powerful respect among the others.  “It is too late now.  If you had’ve come earlier, perhaps-”

A young man burst from the tent suddenly, with a distracting thud.  His panting breaths gurgled as blood dripped from his maw and coated his face, dripping from a wrent ear gashed forehead.  His tail was gone, nothing but a slight nub poking from his tailbone like a docked canine.  He stumbled forward, trying to find his way to his feet before quickly falling flat on the ground.  

“Sh-hrk!-” He gagged and puked, whether the taste of blood was sickening him or he had some internal damage was hard to determine.  “-monster!  Ehsan is dead!” 

The large, robed males burst into action going to each side of the young, bloodied male.  They put him on his side, keeping him from choking on his own blood as they looked him over.  “Is the blood from your mouth or from your stomach?”  One of them asked as the other stared at the tent, his tail whipping aggressively behind him as a snarl started to spread on his lips.  The injured male could only respond in short, hacking words, which made the male caring for him lean in closer.  “Be calm… catch your breath, clear your throat, speak…”  

“It isn’t too late yet…”   The intruder said as he turned towards the tent and began walking towards it.  “If your son couldn’t take a woman for himself, you had no reason to think he could handle one as strong as her.”  

Alman growled lightly and held up his hand to his warriors.  “Qadir, protect Tahawwur.  Ra’d, pull Shahid to the fire and care for his wounds.”  

Arkamun watched the goings-on anxiously, Kibwe and Ngozi at his sides looking on in confusion.  “I swear I knew nothing of this.  My daughter was always unruly but we never knew she was-”

“You knew she was wild!  I saw it on your face when you first agreed, why else do you think I had my son bring his brothers and cousins?!”  Arkamun hushed himself as the elder patriarch raised his voice for the first time.  “What frustrates me that your daughter’s chastity is now in question.  She’s had this suitor for how long?”  

The intruder roared again as the one called Qadir neared the tent, bringing all eyes to him again.  His shoulders were back and his head was low.  Qadir was within a few steps of the tent, but the young male was closer to him than he was to the door.  He turned to face him, his right hand on his sword.  As soon as Qadir’s shoulders started to turn, the other male lunged at him.  Qadir drew his sword up, slashing diagonally at the male’s belly, but he twisted at the last second letting the blade pass him by as he collided with Qadir.  He grasped Qadir’s left hand and pulled him down as he thrust his roaring maw up, taking the elder, robed male’s throat in his jaws.

The two males hit the ground from the force of the younger’s tackle.  Both of Qadir’s wrists were grabbed up by the younger male, the two wrestling on shear strength as the young, naked beast fought to get his teeth to his neck.  The hold on Qadir’s neck loosened with a roar as he buried a knee into the larger male’s ribs.  Teeth gnashed as both males wrestled, Qadir attempting to bring up more knees as the younger lion moved his legs to avoid or block them as best he could.  The younger male caught an opening and drove his knee into Qadir’s groin, putting his weight down into his knee, into Qadir’s manhood.  The older male roared in pain, bashing his head on the ground as he thrashed, giving the young one an opening.  The savage ripped into Qadir’s bicep with his jaws, bringing a painful, wailing roar from him as fabric, skin, and muscle tore away together.  

The sword clattered to the ground as the pain and the damage to Qadir’s arm finally loosened his grip.  His free left hand clawed at the beast’s shoulder and back, his wild and thick mane protecting his head and throat.  With the threat of Qadir’s sword nulled, his aggressor turned attention to that thrashing claw.  He swung the sharp of his elbow into the meat of Qadir’s forearm as he swung his own claws across, catching Qadir’s muzzle.  The right side of his muzzle was wrent; long flaps of his lips hung from his face and a hunk of his nose ripped clean away in a splatter of blood, snot, and drool. 

Kibwe and Ngozi were on their feet and poised to strike on the intruder, though they remained at Arkamun’s sides.  They shook from head to toe, their bodies rippling like half-full waterskins as they shook. Alman’s lips curled back, dry and black, revealing teeth the off-white color of old ivory.  The patriarch seethed beneath his towering turban.  He could feel the fear seeping from the brothers floating in the air, almost overpowering the stench of blood.  “Ra’d,”  he called out with an exasperated voice, “Finish caring for Shahid and help our hosts gather up all of their unmarried daughters…”  

Arkamun swallowed dryly and begun to move to his feet.  “What are you talking about, Alman?”  Ra’d stood and beckoned Arkamun’s brothers with a wave, starting to walk into the village propper.  Ngozi and Kibwe, without weapons and unfit to use them regardless, heeded Ra’d’s call to follow.

“A brother… A nephew… perhaps my son…”  Arkamun stood slowly with the aid of a rough-hewn stick, before now laying unnoticed at his side amidst the fuel and goads of their fire.  “All of your daughters will pay this debt back.”

A loud squelch followed by choked screaming filled the air as the intruding beast buried both of his thumbs into Qadir’s eye sockets, spearing his eye on those massive claws, popping them like soft eggs as he squeezed his head, trying to break through the back of the socket and end this fight for good.  Arkamun’s entire body shook from the sound of Qadir’s scream, the pitch growing high as the terror of death set in.  “I-I didn’t do this, Alman… Take your price out of their skin…”

Finally to his feet, Alman started to walk toward the tent.  “I cannot take my children back out from his flesh.  You created this by not keeping after your daughter. You will not escape the consequences.”  Qadir’s screaming stopped as Alman neared the tent, the sentinel finally silenced.  The beast pulled his thumbs free of Qadir’s skull with a painful squelch, his hands and muzzle painted with fresh blood, the edge of every splatter starting to dry and mat his fur.  His lips were pulled back into a violent snarl, white teeth stained red and pink-hued drool leaking from the corners of his maw.  “I’ll call my son off, if you stop this.”  He took another step towards the tent.  “Can you stop?  Or has your mind gone?”  His shoulders slumped and his weight dropped, not planning on taking this old man lightly, judging him highly by the men he kept in his submission.  

Before either of the dominant males could make their moves, another exploded from the doors of the tent.  It was an adolescent lion, with only the shaggiest hints of a mane hanging from his neck and face. He was nude, wetness matting down his groin and the inside of his leg, smelling heavy of piss and fear.  His chest was ripped from his collarbone to his navel with eight jagged vertical gashes that were roughly cut and unevenly spaced.  The elder lion’s composure was broken by the sudden extrusion of the bloody mess from the tent, but the younger was not.  

The beast took his opportunity and began moving to lunge.  In the first bound he fell to all fours like a feral, only slightly awkward in the instinctive movements that his body could only barely support.  His body straightened out in mid-air, his palms outstretched to catch the ground beneath him with a mighty thud as his legs tightly coiled beneath him, caught the ground, and exploded forward into another lunge.  

“Taha-”  The patriarch began to call out to the bloodied mess on the ground before him as he fell to his knees beside it, hands outstretched and reaching for his son.  

Tahawwur grabbed his father’s shoulders, hanging from them tightly as the beast quickly approached.  “MONSTER! Ar-” before he could finish, the tent opened again and he stuttered speechlessly.  

She stepped out slowly, the tent flaps caressing her body as she gnawed on the thick, heavy ropes that bound her wrists before her.  Blood dripped from her claws and her jaws, coating the front of her body in dark crimson and a sharp metallic scent.  Fragments of blood-stained rope hung from her ankles as well, dragging across her stained footprints as their frayed ends loosed.  The beast halted, his heels digging in and sliding across the earth before his rear end landed behind him with a heavy thud and a small cloud of dust.  The flaps of the tent closed behind her as the tattered remains of rope fell from her wrists.  She smiled from one corner of her mouth while she snarled with the other, her ears pointing to the beast on his haunches as she looked down on the other two.  

Alman looked up at her, in his eyes resting a healthy deference to her, but not fear.  “It is over… we make no claim on you.  You’re free.”  His son still held onto his neck, like a scared child.  

She growled down at Alman as she stepped away turning her back to him as she walked to her beast.  There was no respect in her eyes for Alman, and no concern for him preventing her from giving him her back.  Him and his son were nothing, they held no threat against her.  She knelt before her male, their bodies likewise caked in blood, very little of it their own, and touched their foreheads together.  “I had thought you wouldn’t come.”  

He took her face in his hands, grinding his forehead into hers as his hands stroke over her cheeks, squeezing and rubbing her face affectionately.  “Of course I would come…  I wanted to give you your chance to escape on your own, is all.”  

She ran her hands roughly through his mane, matted with blood and sweat, hanging heavy around his face.  “Any longer and I’d have had to come looking for you, instead.” She chuckled as she pulled him up by his mane, eliciting a quiet growl from him as she pulled his hair.  “I’ll show you where they keep the water.  And we’ll take a bull for ourselves, won’t we?”

Looking up at them, Alman felt an earnest fear for the first time in many years.  He had known, seeing her for the first time, that she was abnormally large for a female.  She was taller than he had been as a young man, as tall as his guards, taller than his son and his son’s friends, and almost stronger than all of them when they wrestled her into her binds.  As intimidating a female as she was, though, the male that held her now in his arms dwarfed her.  Being more than a head taller than her, he was proportionate to her entirely.  The idea that there was a near, if not perfect, mate for a monster like him was downright terrifying, and looking down at his… demure son, he worried for the future when their children might rise from the tall grass, hungry.  “What tribe are you from?!” Alman hollered as the two walked away from them.  

The beast didn’t turn, but answered him.  “I have no tribe.  I am the son of Tafari of the black mountain, son of Dejen, son of Berhanu.”  He was alone.  This was a comfort to Alman.  Without midwives, without a tribe, without family, they could never become a threat to him, to his sons, or to his grandsons.  

As the two disappeared into the village to collect their own spoils, Alman lifted his son onto his feet.  Their walk would be long, driving this herd of Arkamun’s cattle and carrying two dead sons along with him.  Alman’s fury would be born out as old mens’ furies are, slowly and with extreme prejudice.  Arkamun’s people would starve.  Combined with the ravenous youngsters now taking all of their water, they might die of thirst before they have the chance to starve.  

As Alman walked his son  to join Ra’d with their new cattle, he gave the pair a final, curious turn.  They were each carrying a pair of steel water cans in each hand, eight in all, as if they were nothing.  They knocked into one another, and he could faintly hear their laughing as they walked the other way, away from the burning golden sun and into the dark purple twilight.  

To Be Continued