She was forever singing. Herr voice could carry for miles when she decided to belt out a tune. As she had been born a rogue this wasn’t entirely ideal. Her mother had tried to dissuade her away from a life of singing, but she had managed to carry on and found many tunes in everything she did. She quite often simply broke in to song just because. It didn’t matter if it was a happy or a sad song, it just had to be a tune. Of course with music came words and she loved to string words together. Sometimes they rhymed, sometimes they didn’t but it didn’t matter that they didn’t it just mattered that they existed. She was lucky really, she was blessed with a voice for singing. She could hold a tune and any song she heard, even if it was just once, she learned. She supposed that was quite a skill really. She could memorise a song just by hearing it the once. She liked it, she loved it in fact it’s meant she had quite a repertoire. It was just as well really because she always feared that others, upon hearing her singing all the time, would get fed up with her dulcet tones because she sang the same song on permanent repeat. Of course that was not the case, she often switched it up, learned new songs, dropped old ones to the bottom of her ‘pile’ and picked up new ones.
She had once been a rogue. She wasn’t any more. The life of a wandering minstrel didn’t really suit her, she really enjoyed singing so much it interfered with her hunting, though she was quite adept at fishing and she had taken that up as her hunting for quite a while until she found the Mwezi’johari. The pride fascinated her from the start. Its beautiful culture and tight knit families made her smile.
She had of course heard that there had been much unrest a few years ago, but now the lands were at peace. She had stumbled upon the place quite by accident really, she hadn’t been looking for a home. She’d simply been wandering. Her mother had always said that she could convince anyone of anything by singing, she often in fact had traded a song for a meal and on coming upon the Mwezi she had offered her services to one of the guards in exchange for some hearty grub.
He had fed her and listened to her song and when she was done he had told her all about his pride. About the great lion and about the moon. The moon swayed everything for these lions and she liked that. Their superstitions, no, traditions were just so fascinating after a few days in the borders she had decided to stay.
The sleep was strange. She had slept for very little time really, though it felt like an eternity and when she awoke she felt like she had not in fact woken from a dream but from some alternate reality. She had been groggy but when her eyes finally rested upon the world she had woken a high class lady. This rank, it suited her down to the ground. It meant that she could sing and dance and play and generally just enjoy life. She didn’t really have to work for a living. It was nice, but she still sang often and offered a tune in exchange for the food that she was provided with. She had of course decided this was a good exchange a long time ago, long before she came to the Mwezi so she simply never decided to give it up.
Her life was a blessed one and she knew it, she counted her lucky stars every day. She had always felt like she was missing something though, she had never quite put her paw upon what that was. When her waterbuck friend had come in to her life she found a new blessing in her world. Someone to help her compose. She knew of course that many would see the herbivore as food, but she protected her friend no matter what and together they had created some beautiful music. Music that rang off the hills and sang down caverns. Her friend could make quite a lovely backbeat to her singing, her hooves beating out a dull thrum that made her songs so much more fulfilled. They made beautiful music together.
Occasionally she would run in to the lion that had brought her in to the pride in the first place and she would convince him to sing with her, though his voice wasn’t fantastic it was a lot deeper than hers and she found beauty in that too, beauty in the way his voice sounded against hers. In a way, she knew that music was not everything, that there were other things in the world, that there was probably more out there for her she just had not managed to find it yet or pin point what it was that she was after, what she needed to make her life complete.
Perhaps, just maybe one day she would find out what the missing piece to her musical was but for the moment that didn’t matter. For the moment she was happy, happy being a lady, happy singing her own song, happy pulling words from the sky and knitting them together in to beautiful symphonies. She was happy and really what more could a lioness want from life? She loved her pride, it was home, it was wonderful and filled to bursting with mysteries she had yet to discover and sing about. One day she would know more about her world, about her pride about life itself but really for the moment, she was content to simply live in the moment and grab life as it came. The dark lioness stretched her paws out in to the sunlight, she had been resting under this tree for quite long enough. It was time to go and sing for her supper, she wondered what the hunters would bring in today, giraffe or some zebra? Anything would do, as long as they accepted a song as thanks.
W/C 1038