just stared at the gemsbok. “I suppose you want to help me with cleaning them. Get this right and I might even let you.” Nengwe continued to stare. “Pity we can’t be on the other side working down. We’ll just have to work our way down here, over the stream and up to the long grass around those boulders. See?” Nengwe turned his ears round toward the boulders.

“Yes, I see.”

“Come on, you’re doing all right so far.”

Falana led on to get ahead of the herd: down into the valley floor and over the stream, which she crossed without any regard to its pitch-mudded bed. Nengwe picked his way across, then realising that he needed to keep up and keep down, he slipped across lightly, soon joining Falana in the boulders.

“Wait here. They are coming this way.” She retreated, slipping out of sight. She re-emerged to Nengwe’s nearside, closer to the still seemingly untroubled gemsbok.

Nengwe whiled away the next half an hour or more watching Falana and the herd, steadily but painfully slowly approaching. She appeared calm; content to lie in wait. Content for the herd to come to her, and come to her it did. As it approached the boulders the leaders grew tense and anxious; looking about, listening and scenting. Nengwe watched Falana breathe in steady, unchanging rhythm. The leaders moved on, feeling secure enough to graze within eight lengths of Falana lying in the grass ahead. They kept further from the rocks. In time they moved away, the bulk of the herd slipping by. Still she waited.

Crouched among the boulders, looking like just another of them against the moon, Nengwe waited and watched. His eye turned to the tail of the herd. It thinned, and almost as Falana had predicted there at rear were what he thought must be a mother and pre-adolescent. Both were horned, the youngster though lacked the black belly band of the others. That, he thought, must be their target, but how to take it?

He remembered Falana, lying patiently in the grass. Her ears now scanned slowly. Her shoulders rippled tensely. Her hindquarters shimmered. She was ready, but for what?

The mother looked up from grazing. She had strayed too far from the herd. She moved forward. For a moment the youngster held back. That moment shone clear in the moonlight. It was all Nengwalamwe needed. The time had come, and he knew what to do. He broke from cover and charged toward the mother. She panicked and ran toward the herd, only then realising her mistake. The youngster heard her go, and decided to run the only way that made any sense: down slope in a curving arc behind the charging lion. Before it had picked up any speed Falana broke right in front of it and lunged up at the hanging skin of its neck. She swiped at its flank, knocking the wind out and breaking some of its ribs. Gasping for breath and falling, the lioness bit down hard on its neck and carried it down to the ground. She held on tight. She wasn’t going to let go.

Nengwe stood and watched as the herd dashed off in to the night, then turned to return to Falana.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded, still gripping the gemsbok’s neck.

“Falana, I think it’s dead. You can let go.”

She bit deeper, shaking her head. The gemsbok’s lifeless eyes stared back at her. Her strike had broken its neck; it had been dead before it hit the ground.

***

They took their fill from the carcass where it fell. It was Falana that dragged it most of the way back to the rock, Nengwe took over for the final haul up the boulder path. He had to drag it backwards up the steep slope, Falana encouraging him from the promontory. When he stumbled backwards over some of the fallen rubble the pair set about clearing yet more of the entrance to the cave. The moon had set before Nengwe dragged the carcass into the cave. Falana was already inside, resting quietly on the platform.

As he approached, padding gently and with renewed vigour, he looked on Falana, lying at her ease on her side exposing her pure cream under fur which seemed to glow with warmth and strength. He stopped for a moment unsure as to whether she had heard him, unsure whether he would be welcome at her side.           He smiled gently and felt a surge of guilt at the thoughts that he was unable and unwilling to suppress. Falana was not just a lioness; she was his mother, friend and daughter all in the one golden furred body. He knew his thoughts were totally inappropriate for those so he pushed them mentally to one side and with a shake of his mane walked up to within a length of her outstretched forepaws. She did not move as he drew close but just lay watching the stars through the cave entrance. Nengwalamwe let his hindquarters drop to his offside, his hind paws sliding across the earthy bareness. For a moment he said nothing but just watched Falana’s eyes as they gazed unmoving out into the night. He was just about to drop himself to the cave floor when Falana spoke, softly and assuredly, but with a strong sense of ‘Not now Nengwe!’

“It’s been a long night, and I’m still hunting.” She didn’t look towards the young but not unattractive male sitting within striking distance. For a second Nengwalamwe was at a loss and just sat shaking his head distractedly.

“Still hunting? But all I wanted was to lie and enjoy the night with you. Is that too much to ask?” Falana smiled gently and played on:

“Yes.” She kept her eyes fixed on the distant horizon

“Well if that’s the way you feel I’ll go. I just wanted to be with you for just little while. You know, that company you mentioned.”

“Yes...” said Falana in a distant voice.

“Are you going to lie there and just say yes all the time?” asked Nengwalamwe in slight irritation. Falana chuckled, beginning to purr under her breath.

”Yes”

“Come on, I know you never much liked me, but how is playing games going to help?” Nengwe dropped his head and looked away towards the distant line of green, blue and black that seemed to so captivate Falana. Falana turned towards him wondering how long it would take him to realise that she was different and rather more female than she had been for some time. She raised her hindquarters a little in the pretence of getting more comfortable. He turned back to look at her when his ears caught the light sounds of her movement.

“Yes,” she said slowly with a voice that talked to Nengwe like he had never been spoken to before. Suddenly he felt like a greater lion than he had ever been, suddenly his feelings for Falana bursting up from within, feelings that he knew were wrong and that might well get him clawed and humiliated. He felt like he had felt once before: helpless at a lionesses paws. She had come to him, and helped him open the very cave they now lay in. They had hunted together, the kill laid just few lengths away. He couldn’t hold his gaze on Falana’s loin achingly beautiful emerald eyes and tore himself away with a self-disgusted grunt.

“How can you tease me like that? Hey, what is it with you? What is all this about? It’s not even as if you’re in season or anything.”

Falana unhesitatingly and strongly felled him with a short and penetrating word that struck Nengwalamwe firmly, “Yes.”

Nengwalamwe had come a long way since entering the Pridelands. He had entered the land and yet that was nothing, he was still a loner, a wandering vagabond without a pride. Later he had longed to enter the cave and become a part of the rock yet it was cold, hard and dark and yet it was nothing to compare with what he yearned for now but knew she would never allow him to have.

“Good for you. I hope you find some nice lion and have his cubs. I know you don’t want to mate with me.” Nengwalamwe turned back to watch Falana.        She had already risen up, forequarters first. She stretched out her forelegs, pushing her head and shoulders upwards, her back sloping down in a gentle curve that ought not to belong to such deadly an animal. She turned her head away from Nengwe as she pushed her shoulders towards him. The touch of her strong shoulder against his whiskers sent shivers down to his tail. He sat spellbound as she drew herself up and forwards running her back and thighs past his nose. He could not fail not notice her scent as she slowed to hair by hair pace as the base of her tail crept tantalisingly beneath the soft fur of his muzzle. She continued forwards, moving away from him in one long movement. She flicked the end of her tail lightly over his nose, toying with his most complex instinct. She walked forwards a pace and stopped, turning her head and looking him in the eye. She watched his incredulous expression for a moment before saying with a mischievous cub-like smile: “Yes?”

Nengwalamwe leapt forwards but Falana anticipated his move and, already standing, moved off with strong pushes from her supple legs. She laughed as she ran out of the cave.

Nengwalamwe growled and ran headlong after her. In a few lengths she slowed a little and he felt the flash of her tail tip past his head, then, in the next pace he was by her hindquarters, even here in the open air of the promontory her scent was irresistibly strong.

He stumbled on one of the smaller stones left from their earlier exertions. It pricked his pads of his forepaw. He lurched on to Falana’s work heated thigh. She responded by tensing. Nengwalamwe tumbled to a stop at her side, falling over onto her ungracefully. Thinking he might have hurt her he scrabbled to his paws, his right forepaw pressing hard onto