clearly put up strong resistance they had better give it the respect a fallen adversary deserved. Falana brought her instinct to bear on the carcass, opening it over a length of half a metre and began tearing away the flesh of its haunch. Shaha settled beside her daughter, laying full length. She began to sate her gnawing hunger with the warm, bloody flesh.

For a few minutes the pair ate intently. Occasionally Falana pulled her head back sharply, knocking her mother who responded rapidly with a toothy growl or a shove of her foreleg. Shaha felt her daughter’s tail slap hard on her hindquarters. She looked behind, raising a hind paw and, when the sting came again, thumped it down. Falana cried out in confused pain.

“Aeeeergh! Get off!”

“Well now girls. Thank you so much for keeping it hot for me; and the gemsbok too.”

Falana totally forgot the pain and turned her head sharply to look behind. When she saw from whom the voice had come she tore her tail from beneath her mother’s paw and tucked it neatly behind her.

“Which rock did you just crawl out from?” She snapped, “What do you want?”

“I’ve been here a while or so and I want to make you happy, but first...”

“Get out of here! Come on, move your tail! This is my kill.”

The lion stood firm with his head up, his mane flowing with each slow breath.

“Now then, is that any way to treat a lion? Now you two - you had better step aside so that I can share this kill with you.”

Falana’s ears turned forwards. Her eyes, almost as yellow as the sun, burned into the lion. She had worked hard and suffered for the gemsbok and there was no way she was going to step aside for anyone. Not even for this young and admittedly handsome male lion who must have weighed at least a quarter as much again than she did. She held herself low and, turning her forequarters away from the kill, slid her body tightly round, advancing on the lion who stood close to the top of the rise. The fur rose on her back. With bared her teeth and exposed foreclaws, she closed on the stranger. For a few moments he seemed surprised that she dared to threaten him, and then he began to laugh.

“Oh, so you like to play hard to get, do you lioness? I can play that game too, if you want - but I really think you...,” he paused with widening eyes. He grew agitated as Falana, no more than a length from him, stopped and growled fiercely. He shuffled uncomfortably from paw to paw, shaking his mane and twitching his tail. “Err, I think you may be going a little too...” He never managed to finish the sentence. Falana sprang at him with the full force of her forequarters, pushing up irresistibly as her head hit his exposed neck. “ge - eggghft!” choked the lion as the force of Falana’s spring threw him up and over violently on to his back. He became disorientated, his eyes desperately trying to find the horizon. The ground shook as he landed heavily on his back, his spine crashing down onto the slope of the rise.

She pulled her foreclaws tight, sending searing, stabbing pains shooting into his shoulder. He gasped for breath as Falana’s jaws exerted a sharp pressure on his neck. She scrabbled her heavy clawed rear paws on his hindquarters as she fought for another hold. She felt his heart pounding through his hot fur pressing against her chest. The lion’s eyes closed tightly and he froze beneath her. She felt her victim’s helplessness and increased the downward pressure with her hind paws.

“No!” He croaked. “I don’t…”

Falana pressed again with her off hind.

“No! You win - you can… have it!”

She stared hard at the lion beneath her. His breath, surprisingly sweet, washed over her forehead in short, increasingly shallow pulses. She eased her jaws open and the lion gulped for air. She let his semi-asphyxiated neck drop from her teeth, but she did not let him rise to his paws.

“What do you want?” she scowled.

“I -” he coughed dryly between urgent gasps for air, “I was hungry.”

Falana was taken aback. For all the lion’s great appearance he was lying helplessly under her claws, she could taste his blood on her teeth and feel his wounded flesh under her claws and what was this? Was he afraid of a lioness?

“I was just,” he sniffed sadly, “hungry.”

“You want my kill? You want it do you? Do You? Go on, say it!”

The lion blinked at her face, dark against the brightness of the sky, and sniffed again, “Please, may I share your kill?”

She growled loudly and extended her claws a little further into the lion’s flesh.

“Falana!” called Shaha firmly.

Falana drew her head up and pulled her off forepaw from the lion’s shoulder. She did not look across to her mother but after a moment folded back her ears.

“Falana! Let him alone! Let him get up!”

For a second she remained motionless, weighing up the consequences of her mother’s sharp interjection, before lifting herself up slowly from the lion’s sprawling mass. As she released him from under her hind paws she swiped at his muzzle with a forepaw. The flash of white and sand across his face brought a whimper and he clamped his eyes tight shut.

“Aaah - you’re not worth wasting energy over!”

“Falana!” Shaha growled firmly, “Leave him.” She turned to the lion, who seemed fearful of even rolling back over onto his paws. “It’s all right. We won’t hurt you;” she turned to Falana, “will we?”

Falana growled in vague agreement, padding back in agitation to her mother’s side. The lion’s eyes asked pleadingly to be allowed to regain some of his dignity and stand up on his four paws again. “Get up - get up.” Shaha, almost smiling at him, raised a forepaw with each ‘up’.

Falana ignored the stranger and set back about the kill roughly.

Shaha continued, “Who are you and what do want here?”

The lion, still on his back, rocked his paws back and forth in the air twice. The second time he continued the movement, rolling on to his side and, when his paws contacted the ground, right over back onto all fours. Once up, he shook his mane in a vain attempt to clear the dirt and dry grass that betrayed his defeat.

“I’m...” he shook again, “Nengwalamwe; son of Nengwala.”

“And?”

“And… I want to eat.” He paused for moment then added hurriedly, “Please. If you don’t mind that is.” He managed something approximating a half-smile. Shaha could see that this was something of an act, probably a deception put on to ingratiate him. There was still a scent of defiance about him. She could also tell he was unlikely to repeat the word ‘please’. He looked as though he had lost a battle in a war that had barely begun.

“If you stay there and behave I think there might be something left after we have finished. Yes Falana?”

Falana noisily tore off a great chunk of flesh in an exaggerated fashion as much as to stress to this Nagwalm… or whatever, that she was quite capable of causing him pain. “Yes, well, you just stay there Neng...”

“Nengwalamwe,” he said firmly, eyeing Falana suspiciously.

“Ah yes. Nen-gwa-lam-we,” said Shaha pre-empting her daughter. She turned away from him and rejoined her daughter at the kill. Both presented their backs to the now silent young lion. The elegant fullness of Falana contrasted sharply with the bony angularity of Shaha whose fur seemed borrowed from some other, rather bigger, lioness.

A short time later Falana felt she had to make sure the lio… no, the cub was behaving himself. She had heard slight sounds of him moving and wondered what he might be up to. She glanced back to see him lying down with his forelegs stretched straight out in front of him towards her. He was looking rather too intently at her hindquarters. She snarled at him angrily, “What do you think you’re looking at?” She adjusted her tail to ensure that it continued straight on and down the line of her spine.

The young lion seemed taken by surprise and stood awkwardly and turned, only to lie down again facing up the slope of the rise. Shaha paused and watched her daughter who turned back to the meat complaining and grumbling under her breath, “He’s just asking for trouble looking at me like that. It’s bad enough he wants my meat, let alone...” She stopped and dropped her head to the kill as she met her mother’s gaze. Peace, of sorts, settled over the uneasy trio.

Falana made a point of gorging herself on the gemsbok so that she felt full and bloated. She wondered if this is being a hundred days with cub might feel like, ‘Someone remind me never to lie for a lion.’ She stood up heavily, pausing for her meal to rearrange itself. ‘Ha! He’s had to wait for his meat, that’s for sure.’ She stepped away, feeling uncomfortably unsteady. She turned to the lion, her eyes closed, “Oowh - I won’t eat for a week! Mother, are you done yet?”

“Stop that Falana. He’s gone.”

Falana opened her eyes and stared at the empty space where the lion had been. Neither of them had heard him get up, still less leave. She looked about; lifting her head high over her mother’s to get a better view. There was no sign of his flowing mane, his powerful shoulders, his unmarred

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