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Nala half expected Mirembe to jump up and gnaw on her father's ear the way she bounded up the steps at the back of the stone. She stopped short however, and merely brushed up against the larger figure. "Mirembe, I'm glad to see you are doing well. You should be cautious when you go about, I was fearful that you'd gotten caught up in the water, like so many other unfortunate creatures yesterday."

"Oh, daddy, I know how to take care of myself."

The patriarch drew a deep breath, released it and said, "And who is this that you have brought with you? I do not recognize her scent."

"This is Nala, I found her down river, to the north of here." Mirembe gestured with her paw to come up, but Nala thought it would be presumptuous. She was about to go all the way around the rock, in fact, to meet the patriarch face to face, but instead he rose and turned to face her. Nala looked up to his face which was proud and noble as it rightfully should be and bowed her head. He was indeed an older male, but she hadn't been expecting him to be quite this old.

In fact, he was almost what you might call elderly, though such a condition was rare for the average wild lion. His face was deeply creased and while his long, prominent mane was largely dark, it was shot through with large streaks of grey. The skin sagged a bit around his shoulders and he sported something of a belly, but he was still wider of chest and shoulders than Nala herself. Still, Nala doubted that he could have put up much of a fight against even a weaker male like Scar. Nala wondered why Fauzi hadn't already challenged him for power yet; but she wouldn't dare speak that thought aloud.

The patriarch spoke as he stared down at Nala, "Care to tell me where you hail from, stranger?"

Nala met the old lion's eyes and found a surprisingly intense stare the belied the seeming weakness of his body. "I... honestly couldn't say. I was washed away by the flood you see and carried along for I do not know how long. I awoke in the water and wandered around for a long time before catching sight of your daughter..." Nala almost forgot to amend her story. "Oh, I'd also found this colt drowned nearby. I'd been about to eat it when Mirembe said I ought to present it to you as a gift."

"Hmm... In return for letting you stay with my family I suppose. Mirembe must have insisted strongly to deny such an obviously famished lion a good feast." He turned his neck to look at his daughter, who smiled bashfully in an obviously guilty fashion. Nala could have face palmed herself right there. But there was nothing to do but stick with the story now. However there was a twinkle in the old lion's eye that seemed to suggest that he knew what was going on.

"I would not presume so much, Elder."

"You are wise not to, stranger. I haven't been leader of this pride as long as I have because I let every stray and hungry lion into its ranks that happens to wander in here..." Now he glared at his daughter again, "...invited or not." Mirembe visibly shrank under the old lion's gaze until it seemed that she really was just a cub against him.

Nala hung her head. "I understand. I don't want to do anything to upset the balance of your family. I'll take my leave of you in peace."

"Not so fast, stranger... or Nala was it?" he glanced down at Mirembe who nodded vigorously. He heaved a heavy sigh. "You've happened upon us in a time of plenty. Other animals' misfortune in the storm yesterday had been our gain, as it always is, so we have meat aplenty for now. It will surely rot before we make use of it, even with an extra mouth. So, you are welcome to stay as long as the food holds out, so long as you don't make a nuisance of yourself."

Nala's smile spread effortlessly across her face. It was as if a large weight had been removed from her shoulders. "I can promise you that I am more than just another mouth to feed." she said with some passion.

"That remains to be seen." said the patriarch, but he ended with a smile. "Go now, eat your fill and play with Mirembe. I'm sure that you two will have lots to talk about."

He send his daughter down from his perch with a scoot from one of his large paws and she flowed down the steps to embrace Nala enthusiastically. "Oh goodie! You get to stay! You get to stay!"

Nala smiled awkwardly. But before she left, she gestured down to the dead colt with her nose. "Shall I leave this here then?"

Mirembe's father snorted. "Take it. I've eaten more than my fill already."

Nala sighed mentally. It seemed she wasn't done dragging the thing around yet after all. However, Mirembe bent down to take the colt by the neck. "Oi'll 'Ake h'iss." she said with her mouth full and began to trot away at a brisk pace. Nala smiled and followed. Mirembe's father watched them go and then slowly turned his head back out towards the soggy, grey skied savanna.

***

They did not go far, but also they did not return to the cetral area of this strange... complex was the only word Nala had for it. "I like to come over here when I want to be alone." Mirembe explained after she'd spat out the colt's neck.

And indeed, this area seemed slightly more secluded, with more trees and only a single stone path leading in and out. More wooden things hung from the branches here, Nala noticed and there was also a strange stone edifice here. It kind of gave Nala the creeps for the rock had no visible purpose - save perhaps to rub one's back against - and it was unusually formed and unusually delicately formed as well. And obviously it'd been placed to draw the eye of the occupants of the hollow, though Mirembe didn't give the thing a second glance.

"You can tuck in Nala. I'm sure that you're hungry after all you've been through. Don't worry about the mess either. We'll just chuck the left overs into the forest just over there."

There were so many things that Nala wanted to aske Mirembe, but certain things had to take a priority, such as the fact that she hadn't eaten in days and had almost been killed in a flood less than a day ago. Licking her chops, Nala said. "Thank's Mirembe..." she could barely keep her face away from that round soft abdomen now... "Were..." oh her mouth was salivating so much! "Where there any p-parts that you wanted me to save?"

Mirembe just grinned. "Nah. I'll just snack on what's left over. Go for it!"

She needed no more invitation than that. Nala sank her teeth into the belly and ripped it open straight away. She went for it alright, she really did.

Some time later, Nala laid with on her side and heaved a massive belch. She licked her paws which were red with blood. In the background was the sound of crunching bone and snapping sinew as Mirembe picked at what was left... Nala had wolfed down her meal in a true lion fashion; a starving lion at that. She'd left none of the vital organs, hollowing out the young calf and then eaten an entire haunch on top of that. She felt bloated and sleepy afterwards, but in an exceedingly good way. She couldn't even remember the last time she'd been able to eat like this.

Belly round and distended, Nala felt like sleeping for the next 20 hours or so. Mirembe, of course wouldn't have any of that. In fact, she began fishing for conversation before she was even done worrying at the rest of the carcass.

"So Nala... What's it like where you come from?"

It's a dried up wasteland with hardly any signs of life left... Nala thought darkly. She looked at the ground for a bit, there wasn't any point in lying, but she could phrase it less dramatically. "It's not too different from here, actually. Mostly savanna, although there's quite a few hills and gullies and clefts in the earth. I'd say it's dryer than around here... but it's a little hard to tell."

"Yeah, you've caught us at a particularly wet time, heh." Mirembe laughed. She dug her snout into an open wound on the other haunch Nala had left and tore loose some delicious thigh muscle.

As she chewed it, Nala elaborated. "However, my lands come under hard time... very hard times actually. There's been no rain for the longest time and most of the animals have moved away."

Mirembe stopped chewing. A strip of flesh dangling from the side of her mouth, she asked, "I'm so sorry to hear that, Nala. But droughts sometimes happen in different areas. Why didn't your pride follow the herds away?"

Scar's cruel laughter filled Nala's mind briefly. "It's complicated."

"Oh, I'm sorry..." said Mirembe, turning her head away and dragging her paw across the stone floor.

Nala picked her head up slightly. "It's... alright, Mirembe. It's a sensitive matter, but its nothing that you could help with. Maybe I'll tell you about it later."

That seemed to brighten her up. She slurped up the stray strand of meat into her mouth and gulped it down. "Oh, a secret! I do enjoy secrets!"

"Later." Nala sighed and shut her eyes. Ancestors, she was feeling like her mother, and that was strange. Grinning, Nala suddenly lifted up her head again, feeling a brief rush of energy. "Mirmebe..."

"Yeah?"

"A question for a question."

"Huh?" asked the younger lioness, tilting her head to the side.

"You asked me a question and so now I get to ask you one."

"Oh great! A game. I love games even better than secrets, hehe. What do you want to know, Nala?"? "What's up with all the rocks and carved wood?"

After Nala asked her question, Mirembe scratched her chin with her paw in confusion, oblivious to the red stain she left on the creamy fur there. "What do you mean ex-oh! You mean like this?" Mirembe walked over to the carved stone piece that occupied the far end of the small hollow.

"Yeah." said Nala. "Where did it come from? How did a rock come to be shaped like that?" The shape of the stone still gave her the creeps, but she didn't know exactly why. To her eyes it was still abstract, and yet bizarrely familiar as well.

"Oh, well... this thing has been here as long as I can remember." Mirembe cocked her head, looking at the stone thing as if with new eyes. "I guess the neighbors must have made it at some point. I've never really thought about it. I think they made a lot of the stuff around here, but it was like... a long time ago. Most of this stuff has just been here forever."

The neighbors again... Nala suddenly wanted to know more about them. "Mirembe, who are-" but the younger lioness cut her off.

"Ah-ah, question for a question, remember?" She said with a wide grin. She bounced down to where Nala was resting, meal forgotten in a way that only a regularly fed lion could have managed. "Now its my turn. Um... Uh..." She scratched her head with her claws as she puzzled and Nala waited. "Tell me about... your mom."

Nala fought down the urge to press Mirembe. After all, it had been her idea to turn this into a game in the first place. However, she unconciously placed a forepaw on her distended stomach, the young lioness wasn't doing her overfull stomach any favors. "Well, her name is Sarafina..." started Nala. Mirembe looked at her with wide, imploring eyes. "And her coat is a little darker than mine. She's a huntress of course and..." Nala clenched her teeth, suddenly finding it difficult to come up with anything else to say. Granted, she had lots of things to say about her mother, but most of them had to do with her tenacity against the tyrannical and incompetent rule of Scar. But Nala didn't feel like bringing out the skeletons in her closet yet.

"And what?" asked Mirembe, trying to fill the pause. She slinked closer now, totally uninterested in the bloody foal.

"And she's a very strong lioness." said Nala, "She's always looking out for me and for others around her. When I was a cub, I used to think her protectiveness was stifling, but now I can see that it really was for the best. Before I left the pride on my mission, she was one of my few close friends."

"Aww, that's sweet. Personally, my mother's usually too busy with her duties to spend a lot of time with her children. What about your dad?"

But Nala just waved a claw at her. "Uh-uh. My turn, remember?"

Mirembe stuck her tongue out, "Oh gosh! sorry. Go ahead."

"Alright." said Nala, licking her chops. "Who are these neighbors you've mentioned?"

"Oh, them..." said Mirembe, again cocking her head. Her eyes drifted back to the carved stone thing again. "Well they're the humans we live near."

"Humans?!" cried Nala, jumping to her feet despite the unplesant way her round stomach rocked beneath her. "There are humans near here?" Suddenly Nala was very afraid. Humans were bad, they were worse than bull hipos, they were worse than rutting rhinos, they were worse than hyenas, even. Or at least so the stories went, though Nala had a hard time believing that anything could be as bad as hyenas, having grown up with them serving as Scar's personal army; although in name they were supposedly their allies.

"Settle down." said Mirembe, placing a paw gently on Nala's shoulder. "The neighbor's aren't anything to be afraid of, silly."

"Silly? Mirembe, humans aren't anything to play around with. Every animal in the world knows how dangerous humans are."

The younger lioness frowned and sat. "Well, have you ever met one?"

"Of course not. I'm still alive aren't I?" said Nala brusquely. The fact that Miremebe seemed unfazed was disconcerting and it was difficult to believe that she could possibly be this naive. Scary stories about humans were what her mother had told her and Simba at night when they'd been misbehaving. But more seriously, Sarafina had instructed her daughter in the art of detecting the tall bipeds if they ever chanced into the Pridelands. Always the second step after detection had been to run away; there was never any thought about standing and fighting against a human, they were not prey.

"If you've never met one, then how can you say that you know what humans are like?" asked Mirembe, surprisingly defiant. Nala was at a loss. Surely this was common sense.

"Oh, and you've met one I suppose?" Nala scoffed.

Mirembe's jaw dropped and Nala blinked in surprise. She was even more surprised when the younger lioness said, "Nala, I meet humans all the time. I must go into the village at least once a week. Hundreds of humans live there."

To say that Nala was knocked for a loop would have been an understatement. It felt almost as if the ground had shifted under her feet. What Mirembe was saying just couldn't be possible. She might as well have said that she visited the world of the Ancestors on a regular basis. Slowly she shook her head. "Mirembe... that's just not possible."

Now Mirembe got a little agitated. Lashing her tail, she said, "It is too so! I'm not making this up. It's how we live. We help the neighbors and they help us. It's been that way forever."

Nala had to sit down, although the pressure of the ground was uncomfortable on her now uneasy stomach. "I've never heard of anything like this. All I've ever heard is that humans will kill you as soon as look at you and if you see one you should run away."

"Well, our humans aren't like that at all. They love lions."

Nala shook her head. "They say that they can make the rivers run dry. They can turn jungle into desert and desert into feilds of grass. They lure you in with fat slow animals and bring death down on a trespassing lion with a bolt of lightning."

"Nala! That sounds like nonsense. I'm telling you our humans aren't like that at all. We live together in peace!"

"Peace?" muttered Nala. the idea rubbed strangely against her thoughts. Peace had been unknown in the Pridelands for years now, even among the common species, let alone monsters from legend.

Mirembe got up and sat beside Nala, leaning against her bony frame. "Yes Nala. We live together in peace. Is that so hard to believe?"

Nala sighed. "Well, I don't understand how what you're saying can possibly be, but I won't call you a liar. Maybe if I saw it for myself."

Mirembe patted her on the back. "Well that's easy enough to arrange. The village is less than an hour's walk away."

"Err... I'd rather start more slowly than that if you don't mind." said Nala, quite sure that she did not want to venture into place were supposedly hundreds of lion-slaughtering creatures lived.

Mirembe snorted and was quiet for a moment, but only a moment. "Mind if I ask another question?"

Nala smiled a little and turned her face towards Mirembe, "Heh, no. I don't mind."

"Well, I was about to ask you about your father, but now I think I'd rather ask you what's your pride like."

Nala cocked her head at the abrupt turn in conversation. Then she thought that Mirembe probably just wanted to move on from what had become a heated topic. "And maybe she's trying to figure out what else is different about us." Nala thought and realized that perhaps Mirembe wasn't all fluff in the head after all. The engorged cat laid down again, Mirembe across from her. "Well, it's seen better days, I can tell you that right away."

"No, not that. Just tell me about how you do things where you come from. What's it like living there?"

Nala nodded, thoughts confirmed. "Well, obviously hunting is the biggest thing..." Nala went on to talk about the typical Pridelander day, waking up, grooming, socializing, drinking at the water hole and organizing for a hunt. Nala also mentioned the duties (or supposed duties) of the head male and any male cubs that happened to be in the pride. Nala mentioned that a huge stone prominence that looked over the entire savanna was their base of operations and their home for the most part.

"That's really interesting." said Mirembe when Nala had finished her summary. "You're really..." Mirembe licked her nose as she thought how to continue, "Down to earth lions aren't you?"

Nala raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well..." said Mirembe before elaborating.

"I mean you like like my pride's ancestors did. Roaming the wilds, taking down raging buffalo, fighting crocodiles and hyenas!" cried Mirembe, actually standing up on her hindlegs and swatting imaginary foes with her paws.

Nala blinked in surprise, initially speechless. Who on Earth was this strange lion to romanticize what should have been ordinary life for any lion as if she were an outsider? Especially in such a ludicrous way. Mirembe was rolling on the ground, wrestling and laughing when Nala found her voice. "Well... honestly, I'd rather not fight a crocodile if given half a choice."

Mirembe looked up from the ground and rolled over onto her belly. "Well, I'm sure you and your family have very exciting lives as wild lions."

Nala scratched behind her ear, "That's just the thing though..." she hesitated, unsure how to phrase something she'd taken for granted her entire life. "You're saying you don't live like us? Your pride doesn't hunt?"

Mirembe got up. Kicking aside a small red bone from the foal, she said, "Oh, we hunt. At least some of us, but not all the time. We tend to view it as more of a passtime, that and something of a stress reliever."

"Stress reliever..." mumbled Nala, tasting the word and shaking her head slightly. For her, hunting was serious business, why it was core to life as a lion and to survival itself. "Mirembe, what does your pride do for food if you all don't hunt regularly?"

The young lioness sat down. Waving her paw, she said, "Oh, cattle and goats for the most part."

"What and what?" Nala asked, she wasn't familiar with such creatures, though she felt like she might remember if she saw one.

"Cattle..." said Mirembe slowly, as if that would facilitate understanding, "They're just food beasts. The neighbors raise and keep them."

Nala's brow furrowed, trying to reconcile what Mirembe was saying with everything she'd ever been told about humans. "Like they keep lions apparently." said Nala more harshly than she intended.

"Nala!" gasped Mirembe, obviously hurt. "They don't keep us!"

"Well, what am I supposed to thing when you tell me your pride doesn't hunt and you let humans raise your food for you?" Nala looked at Mirembe who was looking at her pleadingly, guilty that she was accusing Mirembe's family of this, but also certain that it needed to be said.

"It's not like that..."said Mirembe, shaking her head.

Nala released a long breath through her nose, "Then how is it?"

"We live together. We... We help each other." said Mirembe a little shakily, but strong towards the end. She sat up, head high and well over Nala, who was still lying down on her churning, meat filled tummy.

"And how do lions help humans exactly?" asked Nala a little skeptically, but very interested. So much of this seemed fantasy, and yet Mirembe seemed so convinced and more did not seem the type to lie; at least on this scale.

"We... er," she scratched her head, "We do things." Mirembe grimaced when she saw the older lioness raise an eyebrow, "We have professions."

"Professions." said Nala slowly, remembering she'd heard Mirembe use the word before.

"Yeah, it's like a calling, but different." Mirembe said with a wide grin. "Lions are better at seeing in the dark so we keep watch over the flocks and the town at night. Also we fight with the human warriors. There's quite a few things that lions do better than humans in town."

Nala's head was spinning. It was getting to be too much. Shaking her head, she sighed, "This is all so strange, Mirembe. Humans and lions... I think I'm going to need time to digest."

Mirembe stalked over to Nala's distended abdomen. "That you are." she said evenly. It seemed some of her liveliness had died down with Nala's reaction. She cocked her head in thought and then brightened a bit. "I know, why don't I introduce you to the rest of the pride, or at least those who are in the shrine right now. Let's just clean this up."

Nala got to her feet and though her stomach was sloshing around inside her, she helped Mirembe drag what was left of the wrecked carcass and toss it into the woods beyond the strange stone shape. Afterwards, Mirembe began to trot back down the twisting path. "Let's see if my older sister, Saida is about." Nala grunted and followed.

They found Saida lounging in the common area. She was chatting easily with two other lionesses. Nearby there was a slaughtered buffalo and though the three lions were impeccably clean, their stomachs showed the results of their recent gorge like Nala's; some more than others.

Mirembe bounced up to her older sister, "Saida! Good to see you!"

Saida, unlike Fauzi seemed far more amiable towards her sister. "Miembe," she drawled, "I'm happy to see you safely back from your little hike." She glanced sidelong at Nala and if she was surprised to see a strange lion ehre, she didn't show it. However, she did say, "And I see you found a new friend."

"This is Nala." Miembe cried before Nala could open her mouth. "She's from a distant land where there aren't any humans!"

Nala gave a small nervous laugh and said, "Um, hello."

Saida gave Nala a knowing look. "Hello Nala. And though I'm sure my sister's already told you my name, I'm Saida. She really is a fantastic host for visiting lions."

"And visiting dogs, foxes and turtles and anything else that wanders in here." laughed a heavyset lion to Saida's right.

"Or is dragged here kicking and screaming." The remaining lioness and the oldest of the three chuckled.

"Uzuri, Paka, be nice to our little sister." Saida growled with a snip of her teeth, turning to each of the other lions in turn.

"She's your sister." Uzuri corrected, turning her face away to lick a paw nonchalantly, "Mirembe is only my cousin."

"She's also your niece." Paka chortled, her rounded tummy giggling.

"Shh..." Uzuri hushed, turning on the cat next to her, though she was wearing a grin as she did so.

"Anyways," said Saida, twisting back to Nala, "What brings you to our home from distant lands?"

Nala struggled for a moment over whether or not to tell the truth. It still had been only a few hours since she'd arrived, she did not want to take the chance that the lions here might think she was only here to get something from them. So she said, "Well... mostly I'm on my own for myself. I'm... on sort of a personal journey."

"Very interesting." said Saida lazily waving a paw, "You know it's usually the boys who up and get the wanderlust, but I fully support a girl standing up and taking charge of her own life like that."

Nala kneaded the hard ground uncomfortably with her paws, "I've never thought about it like that before..." She hoped that this story wasn't going to get her in over her head.

To Nala's dismay, Saida seemed positively energized by her story. "But of course you are. All us lionesses are encouraged to do is stay home and mind the cubs. Bu here you are out and about and having your own adventure. I must admit , I'm a little jealous."

"I'm nobody to be jealous of." said Nala, thinking back to the desolation she'd left behind.

Mirmebe jumped back into the conversation with, "Don't sell yourself short, Nala! You're really cool. Even if you're paranoid about humans."

Nala began to sigh when Saida came to her rescue. "Mirembe, give Nala a rest about humans. The way we live isn't usually for other lions."

Mirembe lower her head slightly and Nala said, "So how is it your pride came to fraternize with humans?"

Saida chuckled, "Oh my, that's a long story and I don't even know all of it."

Uzuri butted in, "Saida doesn't have a head your history you know."

Growling softly at her sibling, Saida said, "Well, I'm sorry if I don't remember all the old legends and tales. We all can't be as clever as you."

"Indeed." purred Uzruri, priming her fur.

"Or as obnoxious." laughed Paka

"Anyways, Nala, why don't I tell you the story I do know about the founding of our pride?" She turned her head to the smaller lioness, "And I think it's been a while since you head this one as well, Mirembe."

Mirembe waved her paw away, "Ah, I remember the stories. But I don't mind listening again."

As for Nala, she settled down onto her tummy and spread her paws. "I'd love to hear your story, Saida."