time I need a drink some dead body turns up, two in this case. Yuk. Maybe I ought to migrate to a place without carcasses lying around everywhere; I just can’t drink with that god-awful smell around. Not that these particular ones are that smelly, yet… Some scavengers better get rid of ‘em soon or I’m outa here.

A small family of vultures slowly circled above their meal, not intent on munching in too fast for any meal could also be a trap. But there seemed to be nothing around but a bored cheetah, which yawningly looked at the vultures as they smoothly soared down, carefully manoeuvring their huge wings for a soft landing. Personally, the cheetah rather disliked vultures, and all other scavengers for that matter. Rough, nasty crowd. But he kept watching them nonetheless, knowing that seeing a lioness getting torn open by the birds would give him some satisfaction at least. If there had been hyenas as well to join in on the feast however, he would’ve long since left: they could, from time to time, act rather inappropriate, even when unprovoked. But now, it seemed as if the hyenas themselves were on the menu.

The first vulture landed only inches away from his meal, and then carefully made his way onto the body. Before pinching away the hyena’s eyes, the bird decided it’d be best if he double-checked one last time however, as those hyena’s yaws could easily rip the huge bird in half. The vulture pecked the hyena’s side, but before it got the chance to tear off a piece of flesh, the animal below him emitted a loud whoop, and jumped up below him. The vulture quickly flapped his wings and took flight, only missing the hyena’s teeth by an inch. The vultures that had amassed around the bodies simultaneously flew up as well, rising up in a chaotic flapping of wings.

The cheetah, shocked at the sudden revival of the presumed corpse, decided he’d stay and watch the show anyhow, even though the vultures hadn’t had a chance to dig in on the lion. But now the hyena could, and that would mean the show would become a bite more crunchy. The awoken seemed to need some time to get back to his senses however, as he almost immediately collapsed after having jumped up. The cheetah continued observing him. After about one minute, the hyena got up again, though still a bit wobbly. As it looked around, seemingly confused, his eyes caught the sight of the cheetah, who tried keeping his cool as not to attract too much attention. But the hyena quickly lost interest in the bystander when he noticed the lion next to him. He then trotted towards her, falling down and getting up again halfway. For a moment he seemed to study the body in front of him, but then, in stead of the eating and bone-grinding the cheetah had expected, he just sat down next to her and laid down his head on her chest, after which he closed his eyes again as if he fell asleep.

Strange morning indeed. Why doesn’t that miserable hyena eat her, god knows he needs a decent meal. Or why doesn’t he just walk away, or why doesn’t he do anything, except for what he’s doing now? Guess I missed something here… It’s safe to presume they washed up together, so they probably fell into the water together as well, but that still doesn’t explain what I’m seeing here, now does it? Relationships between the two of their kinds are usually a bit chiller. Strange, strange. I wonder…

Pain. Darkness. Emptiness. No memories, no name, no hunger, no consciousness, only dark, empty pain. And a deep, everlasting silence. Or maybe not? For a moment it seemed like she could here a distant, muted whoop, nothing more than a vague sensation somewhere beyond darkness. Then another one, but no sound, more like a faint touch. Then more pain again. As time passed by, time she could hardly come to grasp, her empty universe started filling up bit by bit. More sensations: a faint breeze, a touch of the warm morning sun, the soft caress of water. In time, even the darkness faded to make room for a succession of colours: first brown, then red, orange, yellow and finally a hellishly bright light. Her body came back again too, though only hair by hair and bone by bone it seemed. The pain remained however. Then suddenly, like thunder from a cloudless sky, it all came back: all memories, all recollections, all names, all faces, everything. Especially the chase and the ensuing fall. She tried to react to this sudden shock, but was unable to: although she had regained feeling in all of her body, her muscles didn’t obey her yet. She felt her mouth was open, not to mention dry, but she could hardly move her jaw. The best she could manage was lifting her eyelids. It took her an unusually long time to adjust her eyes to the light, but after a while, her vision was back again too. First thing she saw were two dark, fuzzy paws. She tried closing her mouth again, which was a success, but when she tried to utter a simple sentence, her abilities appeared confined to a silent groaning. That, however, sufficed to turn the two fuzzy paws into one fuzzy head.

After having taken a rest upon Vitani’s chest, partly to check whether she was still alive and partially because he couldn’t manage to stand upright, Vincent got up again, hindered by a nagging pain in his left-front paw. He seemed to have cut it open somewhere, and the cut was shallow enough not to be serious, but deep enough to be annoying. For a moment he considered his options: waiting, and waiting. Vitani was alive, but she still seemed to be incapacitated for a little while, so best he could do was wait: he wasn’t going anywhere anyhow, not after what had happened earlier. Not on his own. For the time being he tried not to think about it, but the obvious plot against him kept clouding his mind. Who was in on it? Or who wasn’t in? The only one he could trust was the one who had been targeted with him. The only one he could trust was a lioness. Thinking about Vitani suddenly made Vincent realise she was producing some faint sounds. He bent over to have a look. Her eyes seemed to be open, though the sunlight seemed to hinder her.

“Hey Sunshine, you all right?

More groaning.

“Well, I guess that’s something already. Yell when you’re about ready to to begin forming actual words.”

Vincent walked around the lioness, sitting down against her back, resting his paws on her shoulder and his head on his paws.

“I do hope you don’t mind.”

“Jerk…” Vitani uttered slowly.

“Ah, you still remember me I see. Maybe it’d be best if I, while you are still unable to break my neck in a blind rage, stress the fact that I had nothing to do with whatever happened earlier.”

“Yeah, I guessed as much…”

Vincent giggled, although he realised his present situation was far from desirable, let alone humorous.

“By the way, thanks for getting me out of the water earlier, I’m not a great swimmer,” he added.

“My pleasure…”

“Where are we anyway? I kinda lost track about when my head banged into a rock.”

“Dunno, I just grabbed you and tried to get us ashore. But I’m pretty sure we’re on the wrong side of the river... Exciting, no?”

“I’ve had my share of excitement for this year…” Vincent mumbled.

Vitani started laughing, as her pain started making way for relief.

“You wouldn’t know how much I’ve missed this…” she smiled happily.

“Missed what?”

“This! Excitement, running for your life and talking it over while feeling absolutely mangled. Life! I’ve missed life!”

“Once you’re born an outlander you’ll die an outlander, I guess…”

“You bet. This is your life too, isn’t it? The hyenas’ I mean. Don’t you guys have to fight for it too? Really fight for a living?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Hey, you’d be surprised how quickly you’re tired of the easy life.”

“At least you had ‘em both…” Vincent replied, meaner than he intended, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you’re probably right.”

For a moment, both animals just stared out in front of ‘em, tired and confused, until Vincent took the trouble of really looking around for once. He quickly noticed they were stranded on a small depression between three steep hills and the river, flowing by slowly as it was now deep and broad, as opposed to the thin rock-ridden wild waters they had been flushed through after they had plunged into the river. As he gazed south, he found himself looking upwards to be able to see the whole of the white passes, whose cloud-covered flanks seemed only a few kilometres away. That could only mean they were indeed on the wrong side of the river where he had never been there before.

He suddenly noticed one of the hills surrounding them had some grass and trees on them, much more comfortable than the rock bed they were in now.

“Wouldn’t you fancy lying down somewhere else? The sun is killing me, and having to sit on these nasty rocks ain’t helping either.”

“Sure… but first, I got to try getting up…” Vitani mumbled. With a tired groan, she got up, and both her and Vincent dragged themselves up the hill, to a spec of shade below a couple of low, thorny trees. Lying down again, they didn’t notice the cheetah that had been discreetly following them. Vincent did see him, but didn’t actually notice him as his thoughts were elsewhere: what had actually happened the previous evening?

Kali had tried to ice him, that he already knew, and if she had been the only one in on it, her motives would have been crystal clear: avenging her mother by killing the descendants of her murderer, a plain old blood