Looking back, he had said he wasn't going to stay, she knew that. He had said from the moment she had met him that he was a traveller a rogue unwilling, or unable to settle down. Still she had hoped. She had wanted to hold on to Ali, she'd wanted to grab him by the tail and tell him to stay, to stay with her forever. She hadn't done that though.The reason? It was his dream to see the world. It was his dream. It had been a couple of weeks of adventuring, exploring every inch of the pridelands, which, she realised, was far larger than she had ever truly realised, they even went to places she had never gone before. Her world had expanded, she just hadn't allowed it to go any further. Ali had left, he'd left without her.
A part of her had wanted to go with him. A part of her wanted to pick up her paws and run after him when he left. Why hadn't she gone? Her heart hurt, why hadn't she followed after him? The truth was for all her talk of being brave and happy, she was afraid, she was afraid of leaving that which she knew so well, that which she knew like the back of her paw. The pridelands had always been her home. She couldn't remember before. Her mother told her she had been born in the rogue lands, she had even told her about her father, though she had told them never to seek him out.
Her father was a god. The god of hate, he had no love in his heart for the children he had sired and she had been told that he was more likely to kill and eat them than strike up a conversation. She had never asked her mother how they had been born, why that had been conceived. She didn't want to know.
Still she knew she and her siblings had been born in the rogue lands, but their mother, seeking shelter and help had moved them as soon as she could to the pridelands. It was her that she had spent her whole life, her whole, pretty dull life. Others had always been pretty afraid of her because of her looks but Ali, he had come in to her life and told her she was beautiful.
Why hadn't she followed him? Maybe she could have seen the world, spent eternity by his side. She loved him, she truly loved him yet she had chosen to let him go. Maybe that was why, maybe that was what she had to do, she had to let him go because she loved him.
He had gone, he had gone off in to the world that he so wanted to explore and he had promised he would be back. He had promised he would be back. His words had been so tender, the promise that he would return. He would return, for her, he would return and take her to places she never knew existed. His favourite places. She hoped that this was one of those places, here in the pridelands, here by her side. She didn’t know if when he came back she would go with him. It was a niggle in her mind, an irritating itch that the pridelands was home so she had to stay here that she knew no other place. Yet.. Yet when he came back, when he came back she would go.
She heard herself sigh, she loved Ali, she loved him more than anything, she had never known such love. From the moment she met him she had liked him and when he spoke to her without fear without anger or hatred, with a smile and a laugh and a voice that felt like velvet on her ears. His whispered words were nothing but wonderful, his promise, his promise to return one day. One day.
One day could be never. Ali had promised he would come back, he had promised but what if he never returned, what if he found some other place, some other time, some adventure that kept him away forever. She would have to live with that. Maybe, just maybe, she should have just gone with him. She should have left this place a place where she really had no true friends though she did have family and she loved them. She did love this place, this place she called home. It was home, the pridelands was home. Again her own sigh echoed in her ears. Why hadn’t she gone? Why hadn’t she just followed him in to the unknown? Why was she such a coward?
Her paws tapped stopped her at the border of the pridelands, in the exact spot she had left Ali’dido just a few days earlier. She had come back here every evening since. Every evening just to check if he had come back yet. She pondered why she kept doing it. He had gone, he had probably gone far away, he could move quickly, he was tough and swift and his paws were hard. She missed those paws. She felt a tear roll down her cheek as she gazed out in to the great unknown and she let her mind wander, question, why she kept coming back, why she kept standing on the edge of the world she knew, looking out in the hopes that the one she loved would return to her, the one she adored would come back sooner, rather than later.
Standing silently in the spot that she had watched him leave from she waited quietly as the sun dipped below the horizon and as darkness settled over the edge of the world she knew, she let a little smile lift her lips. “Come back soon Ali, I’ll be waiting.” Blinking owlishly the dark lioness allowed her gaze to adjust to the starlight. She stood for another long moment, hoping he would arrive over the crest of the horizon, though she knew in her heart he would not. Without another word in to the darkness the wing marked lioness turned away from the border making her way back to the only home she had ever known.
(W/C 1040)