Heavy monsoons drenched the landscape and the marshes where Siavash had played as a cub and that were home to 'gangs' of youths were nearly lost. Definitely unrecognizable. The black lion felt he existed in a constant state of wetness. Even in his den — usually so secure and dry — he felt like water seeped from the walls. A new, dank smell had taken over and clamminess pervaded his very bones. Luckily for him, though, he had his new mistress to keep him warm. The slight, black lioness who took his breath away was almost always by his side, scarcely speaking, but always keenly observing his every move, every interaction with any pride member, seeming to memorize every word he spoke. The proud lion chalked it up to infatuation, maybe she was a bit of a jealous lioness, but so be it. He could be jealous, too. But lucky for him, she seemed to only be interested in him. The fledgling seer was working his way toward becoming a captain someday, hoping to make his companion proud of him — which felt a bit odd when he thought about it. She was a thrall, after all. She didn't have much of a choice when it came down to staying with him or not. But when he remembered such things, he quickly tried to put them out of his mind. (His grandmother was still enormously disapproving of the practice of keeping thralls — seeing as how she and her daughter had been kidnapped into the pride as slaves themselves.)
Siavash was padding through the territory now, on a hunt. His quarry was his mistress, though. With his ears pricked forward and his mud-caked paws slushing through puddle after puddle, he tried to find her. What was odd were the times she wasn't around. Siavash would ask her familiar, Cú, a maned wolf, if she was around, but if she didn't want to be found, she wouldn't be. It had takne Cú a few weeks to catch up to his mistress and Siavash, but the reunion was as heartfelt as any moment he'd seen his lady exchange with anyone. Today, Siavash had awoken to find himself alone, and received no helpful information from Cú on the prospects of where his mistress might be.
Curse this rain, he thought. It made tracking the elusive lioness impossible (not that it was easy even in ideal conditions). A crack of thunder sounded directly above him, and he couldn't help but react to it even a little bit. Though he was accustomed to the recent weather, there was no getting used to the sound when it was that close. He shuddered and padded along.
And as sudden as the lightning, she was beside him. That scared Siavash even more than the thunder.
"Gods... you scared me! Where did you come from?"
She shrugged her shoulder as she walked along, her shoulders rippling beneath her glossy, black coat. She looked soaked to the bone, too, but she never seemed bothered by much. Siavash watched her from the corner of his eye. She walked very purposefully, but he didn't have any idea of where she was going. Did she? He wondered if she was just following his lead, but he'd achieved his purpose when he found her.
"Do you want to go back to the den and dry off? You look half-drowned and half-starved." True, they'd all suffered from the famine that had taken hold over more than just their pride, but the lioness seemed a bit more waifish than usual. His pink eyes scanned over her. She didn't look that bad for it, though. She seemed to be made more beautiful in the intense weather. She stayed far cleaner than any other lion or lioness he'd seen, and where the famine had even the most robust captain looking worse for wear — losing patches of fur, having ribs sticking out, wounds that took longer to heal and skin that sagged over once-toned muscles — she didn't seem to want for much. Siavash had noticed the stares she got from some of the other lions — did she? He tried to inhale her scent as she walked alongside of him — to see if there was any other lion's smell clinging to her — but the rain overwhelmed his sense of smell and all he got was mud and rain and wet vegetation.
She looked up at him without speaking, her rich, purple eyes staring into his bright pink ones, but it often felt like her stare bored into him far deeper than any others' eyes had gone. Could she somehow tell that he was suspicious? She did often have these random absences where she could not be found and she made no attempts to explain herself...
"I'm alright... are you?" She asked. Siavash slowed his walk, and she mirrored his change in pace.
"Are you headed somewhere?"
She shrugged again. "Not any place in particular, no."
Lightning and thunder tore the sky above them again, and a large limb came crashing down just feet from where they stood. Siavash nearly jumped out of his skin and landed a few feet away, his reflexes having reacted before his mind could even process what happened, but the lioness hadn't budged an inch. Was she so much slower to react or was she just that confident that it wouldn't land on her? This was one moment, like many before, where she made Siavash feel uneasy. His animal instincts told him to beware of her, but his rational mind overruled his gut feeling. How could she be dangerous? She had been a damsel in distress when they'd met in that maze of caves. She was small, delicate. And now underfed and probably weaker for it, too. What could she possibly do? What was beneath the surface that he didn't know he was reacting to?
"Follow me, we're going home," he ordered. Their eye contact lingered before he turned his back on her to lead the way home. He turned back once when he didn't hear her footfalls, but she was following him as closely as a shadow. He decided not to look back again.
the end — total word count 1,034
