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Areli had no idea how he was going to explain it to his mates. That was the problem, it was inherently inexplicable. He was far from foolish, but the life of a desert lion was not one that had prepared him for great intellectual challenges. Mating, protecting the pride, and occasionally hunting when his mates were in a foul mood or otherwise occupied. Those were the things he'd been ready for.

Not this. Not having a great invisible something direct his actions. As though he were a cub swatted by his mother, that Person (he could think of no better word for it, not knowing whether it was Lion or Human or something else entirely) had made him break the laws. Without any real effort. He had simply succumbed. Never had Areli known such strength. Never had he ever met a being that had will and personality and desire, but that he could not see. The thought had come to him to try to attack, of course, or even to run, but how could one attack or flee from the air? The Person had been inescapable just as it had been unidentifiable.

The laws were broken, and he didn't feel guilty about it at all, and he had no idea why. It was just one more confusing thing about the whole experience. Padding back to home from the kill, the fine yellow sand getting in between his pads, he thought about how his mates would scold him, laugh at him, mock him for his obvious insanity. To do such a thing, and then, worse, leave it half done, was idiocy. The sort of completely inexplicable idiocy that they had learned to expect from the humans, but not from a lion. Certainly not from HIM.

There were many laws, mostly unspoken, mostly taught by example and implication. Cubs were not stupid. Stupid cubs died. Areli's brother had been stupid, but Areli had watched and learned and survived. One of those laws, not particularly important but nonetheless a part of them, was this:

Don't kill humans.

This wasn't a matter of compassion, mercy, or generosity on the part of lionkind. Smart lions were wary of humans even while scorning them for their weak, slow two-legged bodies. They had learned, over time, that not all easy prey was alike. Some kinds of prey fought back even after dying. There were the poisonous serpents, and the beasts in their herds, but especially, there were the humans. You didn't kill a human, even if he was easy to kill, because afterwards, others like him would come and hunt your pride with surprising enthusiasm. And they would bring the slender fangs on sticks that flew like birds, and the long claws of bronze and iron, and they would kill.

It wasn't that lions liked humans, or didn't like the taste of humans, or didn't feel that they could hunt and kill humans. It was that there were more humans than lions. And that humans were strangely vengeful creatures, not understanding the natural balance between predator and prey. And that lions, more than anything else, liked living.

That was one of the laws, and he'd broken it today. He certainly hadn't INTENDED to. When Areli had set out, he'd thought to find a gazelle, or perhaps a pig. A chase or a fight, either one would have served him just fine. All he'd meant to do was work out his restless energy, having grown bored of watching Keren-Happuch and Diklah and the others go on the hunts and turn the unwary, weak prey into delicious meat. His mates had certainly encouraged it, given that his only other option for amusement was to abuse the cubs or them. Areli was not a cruel lion, though.

He was starting to rethink that position at this point in his life. Were he a colder, harder lion, the sort to keep his pride in line through fear, this problem would not be a problem. He would disobey the laws at a whim and cuff anyone who dared speak against him on the matter. Or perhaps he would even have had the strength to say no to that Person....

Just thinking back on it made him recall the incredible presence of it, the pressure like being underneath a thousand other lions, the light like staring at the sun. It had been nothing, and yet it had been something. Something he did not have a name for. No, Areli couldn't have refused that Person. Perhaps if it hadn't spoken to him directly, been right THERE. He tried to encompass the possibility of refusing the Person within his mind, the mind of a hunter, a leader of prides, a mater of mates, and his mind couldn't contain the idea. No, cruelty would not have changed things. It was better this way. In fact, he still felt strangely... happy... about the whole thing. As though he'd eaten to his fill of a wholesome prey.

That was the other problem, of course. Areli pondered over it as he strode down the rocky hill that was so far from his usual stalking grounds, having had that strange compulsion to go in a new direction for this hunt. It hadn't turned out like a hunt should turn out. He had killed. But then he'd broken a second law, a far more serious one.

He hadn't eaten.

The man had been easy enough, certainly. In truth, humans made it far too easy, far too tempting, to kill them, which was why the law against taking them for prey was often so frustrating. They had set paths to roam, very distinctive ones that they went back and forth along. These paths branched out from the places of towering, hollowed out hills, and were simple to find, simple to follow. Almost always, if one cared not for the inevitable retaliation afterwards, one could find a lone human walking without the protection of the flying fangs or the long claws. They were foolish creatures. No lion had ever understood why humans were so foolish, and acted so poorly, so vindictively, when called on their foolishness. Areli wasn't an exception in this.

The Person had told Areli to go to a certain spot on a certain path and wait. Areli hadn't even known it was a person until he'd walked halfway there, that presence growing slowly stronger. Stronger, and stronger, until it stopped being an internal whim and began being an external will. Areli had obeyed, not knowing why, not understanding, only feeling deep inside himself that this was a Person who was good. Not good in the rather particular sense lions used, in the sense of being good for the lion himself or the lion's pride. But good in a way that HURT to refuse.

Areli kept trying to think of how to explain it to his mates, that unique feeling. It reminded him of when he'd laid with certain mates at certain times, particularly when he'd taken Vashti in the dark recently. It reminded him of that odd sensation he'd felt when his first mate's first litter, only that very first one, had been born. And of when Keren-Happuch had been gored and given the ground so much blood, and seemed fit to die, but had instead gotten better and lived, forever bearing that ragged pink weal at her neck. The Person had made him think of those things for no particular reason that he could tell. The events had nothing to do with the Person. The Person had nothing to do with anything. And yet... it had to do with everything, somehow.

'It was just something I had to do,' was the only thing Areli felt he could honestly say, and it was inadequate as an explanation for breaking even one law, let alone both. His body was weary. His belly was empty. He could still recall the taste of blood in his mouth, but there had been no meat to follow.

'Eat what you kill' was one of the most important laws. Hunting expended energy. A tired lion needed food to be better. If you gave the world energy, you had to take back. Otherwise, one might as well let the mates hunt, and take from their kills, and be full without any exertion. This trumped even the law about killing humans, for once a human was killed, the deed was done, and one might as well take what good from it that could be gotten. Besides, if one ate the kill, there was always a chance that the body wouldn't be noticed, and the angry humans wouldn't come. Lions were fortunate in that way sometimes. Areli wondered if he would be fortunate.

DON'T BE AFRAID.

Areli stumbled, caught himself, walked more slowly, his tail lashing in shock. He'd just imagined that. Bored lions imagined things, foolish things. The Person was gone now, surely. He'd walked far from the kill!

WHEREVER YOU GO, I'M THERE, ARELI.

Instead of being frightened, threatened, Areli felt somehow comforted by that immense and unspeakably strange voice that made no sound. It was bad for a lion to stop paying attention to his surroundings, even when all one could see was rock and dirt and dust, but he stopped thinking about what he could see. He tried to think, to direct a thought, at what he could not see.

'Why shouldn't I be afraid? I broke the laws for nothing. Men will come in anger. The pride will have to flee.' Milka would have the most cause for anger, having just had cubs. But it was the wrath of Vashti and Keren-Happuch he fretted over most, save for the sentiments of the humans themselves.

YOU WON'T HAVE TO RUN. THE HUMANS WON'T BE MOVED TO ANGER.

'Why?' Areli thought again, careful and clear, though he felt like a daydreaming cub, to think a thing without saying it.

THE MAN YOU KILLED NEEDED TO DIE.

Was there sorrow in the Person's expression of itself now? It seemed like sorrow. Areli thought back to Keren-Happuch pouring red onto the sands again, and shuddered, walking faster.

'Why?' he asked, yet somehow feeling that it was a mistake to do so.

THAT ISN'T YOUR STORY, ARELI, the Person told him as unyieldingly as stone, but not unkindly. TRUST IN ME.

More than ever, Areli felt like a cub. Scolded by a parent. Had he lived his whole life under the care of a parent he hadn't known of? In an invisible greater pride he'd never known existed? Who were the mates, then, and was this Person the patriarch? Were there other cubs? What did they all need to eat, and what were the laws of this invisible pride, that they superceded the ones that Areli had lived by his entire life?

He felt small. He wished, rather sourly, that the Person had at least let him EAT the kill, or even the mule the kill had rode on. He had gone to a place the Person had wished him to go, and killed prey the Person had wished him to kill, and not eaten it nor the mule because the Person had not wished either eaten. Thinking back to the tickle of the human's beard as his own teeth sunk into that warm, flimsy throat, letting out blood and air, Areli still could feel no regrets. Even at standing side by side to a mule, a strangely calm mule who had eyed him with something like amusement, doubtless under the influence of that same Person or perhaps another Person just like it. Never had a lion who was not a cub done such a foolish thing.

It truly was inexplicable.

He tried to think more things to the Person, but there were no more responses. Nonetheless, as Areli went back home, he didn't feel alone. He felt as though the Person were still there, at his side just like the mule, amused and steadfast. There was no way to tell if it was a cub's daydreams or not.

His mates took the news as well as he had expected, which was not at all well. Normally he would have snarled and swiped back at them, asserting his dominance, making certain his authority within the pride was unchallenged lest the older cubs get ideas. This time, he was submissive, somehow feeling it the right thing to do. For himself, and for the pride, and for those invisible, inaudible things. He responded with gentleness, agreeing with much of their complaints, and could only ask them to trust in the Person. The humans wouldn't come. The prey that hadn't been meat had nonetheless needed to die for not-meat reasons, and the humans would understand. That was what he told them.

Of course they didn't believe. They thought him mad from the sun and from hunger. He was inspected carefully for signs of snake bites, for poison stings and disease. But Areli knew himself to be healthy, and after he grew impatient of their inspections he rested in the shade of a palm tree and watched the cubs wrestle each other.

It was the day after that when Diklah hunted and gave the pride meat, and he took a smaller share than usual, while his mates eyed him warily. It wasn't that he wasn't hungry. It was that he felt some things more important than hunger, now. The meat would either be there or it wouldn't. That night, a lone male lion wandered into his territory. Areli intimidated the other off without giving chase, and oddly felt relief rather than boredom at not having to kill the lonely, rather scrawny-looking interloper.

The Person was still there, even if it wasn't talking anymore.

The Person's words were good ones. Humans didn't come, and gradually his mates relaxed and believed Areli about things, or at least didn't disbelieve quite so much. For some time, life became normal enough again, except that inside Areli had changed, and found a new joy in things he hadn't ever cared to notice before. Sunsets were beautiful. He'd never noticed how beautiful they were until now.

Then there was another day like that first one, when Areli had an urge to hunt in an unusually specific yet random place. He didn't fight the urge this time, recognizing it for what it was, and walked calmly and the feeling of being in the right place came over him. He hid behind a rock, and eyed the winding path, such a clear signal of human presence. A human female walked by carrying a large stick, and he tensed to pounce.

NO. IT'S ANOTHER.

Areli did not pounce, and waited.

The second human to come was the one. Male, like the first, and with even more light, fragile second skins about him than the first. Even another skin, pale, wrapped around the head. It was another strange trait of the humans, to wear skins that didn't keep them alive. Areli jumped, and pinned the man with his foreclaws, and once more sought out the neck underneath the long beard hairs with quick success. A clean and easy kill. Licking the blood from his lips, he stood up and stretched, ready to return home again.

YOU MAY EAT THIS ONE IF YOU WISH, ARELI. THIS IS THE LAST HUMAN PREY I'M GIVING TO YOU.

Areli paused, the wind blowing fragments of dust into his fur which he shook off as he turned back to gaze at the dead human. The prey wasn't fat, but had meat enough for the hungry. Areli hadn't eaten yesterday. Yet still, strangely....

'Thank you, but I'm not hungry,' he thought carefully at the Person, not knowing why this more than any of the other things. And it was true.

Areli walked home, feeling pleased with himself even though he was tired and his belly was empty.

It really was completely inexplicable. Keren-Happuch would curse him for it and be completely justified and right in doing so. Yet Areli was happy, and the sky had never been such a clear and pristine blue.