piece.”

Falana lay her forepaw on the lion’s back. “He’ll be fine with mother Nengwe. Now then, what say you I rustle us up something to eat?”

“Falana? I’ll come with you,” he said, starting to rise.

“No Nengwe.” She pressed down with her paw. “You had better stay here and rest. You heard Shaha.”

***

Falana shifted and opened her eyes slowly, yawning as she pushed her forequarters upright. She glanced around. Her afternoon had been frustrated and fruitless and had swung her mood dramatically. Sleep now tugged at her eyelids, a soothing voice that was sorely tempting. She resisted its call and stood up, scanning the grass around herself curiously. Something had intruded upon her senses. She decided that whatever it was, it had better be faster than she, but then everything had been faster that afternoon. Her attempts at hunting had been unrewarded. She would have preferred not to return to Nengwe empty-pawed.

“Probably his monkey again,” she muttered as she paced about, ears twitching. The grass gave gently beneath her paw pads as she circled, sniffing, but the whispering wind brought no indication that she was right. Stealthy as he could be, Mtundu’s odour was unmistakable, even from a distance, but it didn’t hang on the hot, humid breeze.

A distant scraping of rock on rock; her ears perked sharply.

“It can’t be, he’s with mother,” she growled, claws unsheathing. She rose, paused for a momentary stretch, and then broke into a slow run, emerging onto a low, open area from beneath the shadowy boughs of the tree under which she had rested, recovering from her last empty strike. The grass was shorter here; it barely tickled her forelegs up to the elbow. Her ears flickered and her body answered unconsciously, turning toward Nengwalamwe’s barren spire of rock.

The lioness slowed to a walk, then to a slow pacing as she neared the looming shadow of the out-thrust promontory. Laying her ears flat and growling nervously to herself, she passed under it quickly where she had lain with the lion, jerking her head as the sound of rock on rock came again. She heard the clatter clearly now. She stepped silently to the small pile of rubble and straggling weeds that marked the foot of the path that led up.

Falana paused again, tail flicking agitatedly, and then began to pick her way up the path. Her frustration had by now faded and been replaced by foreboding. She still didn’t much like this stony monolith, with its grey colour and forbidding stone that seemed to watch her. She preferred the open plains, with the waving grass and it’s soft, whispering voice, not this cold and silent thing. What sort of creature would make its home here? No sane lion surely, but what did that make Nengwe?

She crested the head of the path. The ground ahead opened up onto the promontory. Nengwalamwe crouched a short distance away, the bulk of his tensed body between her and a pile of rubble which lay at the base of the rock which scaled away into the heights above. As she approached him from his off hindquarter she saw his tail flicking back and forth steadily, as a lioness’s might do when preparing to launch a strike. Circling round, pad by silent pad, to one side, she caught a glimpse of the expression on his face, and it was almost enough to make her laugh, then she remembered he should have been resting.

The lion’s mane hung limply to either side of his cheeks. While not entirely unattractive, did give him a rough, unkempt appearance quite unlike his accustomed look. His eyes were almost shut, slitted into gleaming spears of reflected light that glared downward along the length of his outstretched foreleg to where his paw should have been: vanished into a dark wedge in the rocks where the rubble met the face. He shoved forward again, his foreleg coursing into the crack up to his elbow, but lodging there. Muscles rippled under the fur of his shoulder as his paw flexed about out of sight, seeking some unknown purchase and finding none.

“Hey! Stop that! You’ll break your paw doing that. You’re supposed to be resting!”

Startled, Nengwe jerked backwards, yelping as his paw caught. “Falana!” A wave rippled up his back. “You’re back!”

 “Yes.” Falana cocked her head at him, sniffing. “Come on. Get it out before you hurt yourself. Again.”

 “Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled, leaning backward, and then grunted suddenly, “now you’ve messed me right up. I’m stuck!”

 She rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, blame it on me.”

“I was doing just fine until you came up here and started interfering!” Growling low in his throat, Nengwalamwe gave a sudden yank, snarling as his paw caught again. His claws extended and contracted as he began jerking back and forth furiously, his mane swirling about and flying into his eyes. “Damn it, come out!”

Falana’s breath was suddenly in his ear, hot and booming. “Stop! Now!”

Nengwalamwe froze in place, staring at her from the corners of his eyes. His breath came in contracted grasps; eyes widened slightly from anger, fear and not a little pain. “What?”

She glared at him for a moment before bending down to inspect his foreleg carefully. “Push it in a little further.”

“Huh?”

 “Just a little. Go on… do it!”

 “What for?”

Falana bared her teeth. “Nengwe, will you please just do what I tell you this once?”

 “Fine, OK, whatever.” Curling his lip, the lion sank his foreleg back in several inches.

“Turn it.” The lioness sighed exasperatedly. “No, the other way.” She peered downward again as he complied, then nodded. “Now, pull it back, gently.”

He grunted, and pulled his foreleg back, hissing a little through clenched teeth as his paw emerged from the crack, the fur covered in dust and scraped in several places. Limping back away from the rock pile, he sat down, turned away from Falana. “Thanks,” he mumbled, starting to groom himself.

Falana nodded, glancing at him. “You’re welcome. Are you hurt?”

“Huh? Oh, no, of course not.” He settled his weight on the scraped paw with a quickly hidden wince and began licking his other forepaw studiously. “I’m just a little dusty.”

“You really do want to get in there, don’t you?”

Nengwe shrugged, flexing his claws to clean between his toes. His head dipped slightly, as if nodding, and then began to repeat the motion as he washed down the fur on his foreleg.

The lioness sighed, “You’ll never do it like that.”

Nengwe paused momentarily, lifting his head from his fur in mild surprise. “I can wash you know.”

“No, not that; that. The whole lot’ll fall down on you for sure.” She stepped past him to a smaller pile of rubble that his earlier struggles must have dislodged. She selected one, picking it up in her mouth and carrying it over toward the edge of the promontory. She eyed the ground below for a moment before dropping the stone over the edge.

“What are you doing? That’s no use, you’ll be shifting that small stuff for ever and still do no good.”

She glanced around and eyed him critically. “So help me, why don’t you?” Her tail flicked lazily. “You can’t shift that big stuff, but you can move these small bits.” Lifting her head, she perked an eyebrow and held his gaze in her own. “Nengwe if a problem defeats your first efforts; don’t moan about what you can’t do. Focus on what you can do.”

“But Falana, it’ll take forever!” He straightened irritably.

 “Ok, have you got anything better to do then? It’ll only take half of forever with the two of us.”

The lion sighed, and joined her, nosing over the rocks carefully before selecting one that fit comfortably between his teeth. It was noticeably larger than the one Falana had picked up, but if she made a note of this, she gave no sign. Before long the two were carrying stones and dropping them over the side regularly. It proved to be monotonous, and a strain on the jaws. Every stone carried also held the threat of a chipped tooth. Yet it gave both some degree of satisfaction, and for Falana the benefit of distracting Nengwe.

By the time evening swept the light from the sky, Falana finally appeared willing to call a halt to their day’s efforts. At her insistence the pair made their way slowly to the waterhole and soothed their chafed lips; content for a while to sit by the water’s edge and drink as their thirst demanded as the savannah song swelled into night’s chorus around them.

She sat perplexed when Nengwe suggested that they both run into the water, now much swollen from the rains. It really was a waterhole now, not just a muddy wallow. He insisted, saying she’d like it; it would cool her and ease her pads. She declined, pointing out that Nengwe was in no fit state to go drowning himself. In time they returned to the rock, spending the rest of the night curled up separately but together on the dusty floor of the promontory before the rock’s silent face.

With dawn, Nengwe was up, nosing Falana awake. His enthusiasm was tempered by sore muscles particularly in his hind legs which had spent most of the afternoon and evening tightly hunched down on the rock floor. The clarity of the morning light cloaked his aches and breathed fresh life into both of them. The huge