KOPA'S STORY PART 3

Young Kopa was growing fast, way too fast, in Zazu's opinion. Simba watched him as he played with his tail in the gentle Autumn sunshine. Kopa got up and bounced over to where his beautiful grandmas were sitting in their favourite shady spot.

"Grandma Sarabi! Grandma Sarafina!" Kopa exclaimed and nuzzled them both. He sat beside them, thinking deeply.  Then he suddenly piped up- "How come I don't have a grandpa?" Sarabi's face darkened like a thunder cloud, and Simba suddenly ran up to stop the situation getting out of hand.

"Kopa, my son, I think you are old enough and responsible enough to learn your first lessons." Kopa's face brightened at the prospect and bounded after his father, trying to puff out his chest to make himself look as grown-up as possible.

Simba  took him up to a small rocky hill. Then he stood tall, alert and waiting. Kopa was confused.

"Father, what are we doing?.." Kopa began,

"Sssh! You'll scare it away!" Simba hissed. He crouched down low on his belly, and beckoned for Kopa to do the same. Then Kopa saw a cricket sitting on a small rock just ahead of them. Simba whispered in his ear...

"Today you're going to learn how to stalk prey. Now remember, keep as low to the ground as possible, don't move, don't speak! Just watch that cricket and follow the pattern of everything it does. Concerntrate on nothing else.  When you stalk your prey, you become your prey." Kopa found this statement a little odd, but he didn't let it bother him. "Wait until everything is calm and quiet. That's right, slowly inch forward, and..."

"YAAAAHOOOO!" Kopa pounced with all his might, and found himself rolling head over heels. He yelped as he tumbled down the hill and landed with a thud at the bottom. Hardly daring to believe, Kopa slowly opened his paws. Inside, a cricket was fluttering its wings and humming.  It had actually worked! He smiled up at his dad, who noddded wisely. Then the cricket jumped out of his paws! It bounded away like lightning. Kopa chased after it, snarling. His trophy wasn't going to get away! He tried to catch it with his paws, but it bounced nimbly through the gap. Simba laughed and ran down to join him, and the game all ended with the two of them collapsed in a big heap, chuckling, while all the crickets hopped and chirped around them.

"Dad, am I going to learn something new again tommorow?" Kopa asked.

"Yes, something far more precious. Wake me up at sunrise tommorow morning. Then you'll learn something special, something only little princes get to learn." Kopa's eyes shone with excitement. He watched his dad as he padded down the hill.

"So it's going to be top secret, just you and me?"

"Yes, top secret, just you and me." Simba turned and grinned at him. Kopa scrambled after his dad and the two of them made their way back to Pride Rock together.

The next morning, a tired and sleepy Simba dragged himslef out of Pride Rock, with Kopa tugging on his paw.

"You promised!" Kopa yelled at him.

"So I did." Simba smiled.

He took him up to the top of Pride Rock, where he could see for miles and miles around. The sunrise lit up the grass red and gold, and Kopa gasped at how eautiful it was.

"Kopa..." Simba began, but he felt a sudden stab of pain in his heart as he found himself speaking his father's words. " One day the sun will set on my time  in this world, and rise with yours."

"Really?" Kopa said confused as he watched the sun rise. "What do you mean by that?"

"It's just, err.... One day I won't be here, and we will need a new king, and it will be your duty to carry on in my place." Kopa felt a sense of pride in his heart. But then he said, "So you won't be here  one day? I could never think of you going away...." His face reflected his disbelief. Surely, he'd always have his dad beside him? Kopa couldn't imagine it any other way.

"Kopa....it's the Circle of Life." Simba said, smiling. "When something dies, another is born, and so life continues in a never-ending circle, bound together by the lives of all creatures great and small." Kopa thought deeply about this.

Simba's attention turned to a movement in the grass below them."There, see that antelope? It's a part of the Circle of Life, just like you and me. You may think the antelope are lower than us lions, we eat them for food. But when we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass, and so we are all connected, in the great Circle of Life."Just at that moment, the sun rose just above the horizon, so the two lions could see it in all its wholeness, a brilliant, blazing circle that bathed everything around them in glorious light. Kopa's face brightened in understanding.

"And this, everything the light touches, it will all be yours one day." Kopa stared in awe at the vast land that stretched for miles and miles around. He beamed at Simba.

 "When I'm King. I'm gonna be the best King there ever was!"

"Oh yeh? Come 'ere you!" Simba leapt at his son and rolled him over on his back. Kopa tried to bite and snap and match his tiny strength against the big lion. Simba let him tug at his fur and the two of them laughed and growled and played in perfect happiness. Eventually Kopa curled up on his father's back and the two of them drifted off to sleep, so peaceful, like they were the only two people in the world.

"Faster, Nuka faster!" His mother's voice rattled through his ears as he chased after the little white tail that flashed in and out infront of him.

"I'll get it mum! I will!" He panted, he was getting closer, he was going to get it! He couldn't stop now. "Aaargh!" Nuka howled as the ground caved in beaneath him! He landed with a thud, and looked around him confusedly in the clouds of dust. What had happened? Oh no, he was in a deep pit. He scrabbled frantically at the walls of soil, trying to climb back up the sides, but he just slid down again in a shower of earth. He whined because he could see no way of getting out.He heard scrabbling and saw the hare had fallen in with him, and then he remembered his task. I can't do it. He thought to himself. Don't think about it, he told himself firmly. It was easy to catch the hare when they were trapped in a small pit. He pounced on the hare and after a short struggle of snapping teeth and fur he shook it vigorously...and it lay limp in his jaws. The truth hit him, he had killed for real, and it was like killing a part of himself. I'm sorry, but I have to make Mother proud. He pushed the body away, and turned away from it guiltily.Then he wondered if he was ever going to get out of the pit. He tried once again to leap up the wall, he grabbed a thick bristly tree root, and hung on as he tried to get a foothold. But the root snapped and he fell back down to earth, his efforts in vain. He slowly realised that he couldn't get out of the trap.Tears gently trickled down his scruffy face. At least he had food, but when that ran out he was sure to starve.  She isn't going to miss me, anyway. Hot angry tears spilled down his cheeks, in his short life he had never really impressed Zira, no matter how hard he'd tried. Even now when he was half way to becoming full-grown. Well, it was all over now, he might as well  try to sleep, it might ease his misery. He curled up in the dust and lay there for ages, unable to get to sleep.

"Nuka! Where are you, Nuka! Oh please, help! Nuka! NUKA!" A distant voice was yelling his name. He came to his senses and leapt up, and began screaming at the top of his voice-

"Mum! Over here! Over here! Help me! Help me!" Suddenly a lioness was staring down at him from the top of the pit. "MUM!!!" Muka yelled desperately.

"Nuka! Don't panic, I'll get you out!" Zira reached down to her son, leaning over as far as she could without falling in herself. They tried to catch eachother's paws. "Reach, Nuka, reach!" Nuka quickly grabbed the hare, slunk back, measured the distance, ran forward and jumped for his life! He was caught in Zira's paws and swept up and out of the pit.  He rubbed himself against her fur, purrs escaping from his throat, relived to have been saved. And for a second, she returned the gesture. Or maybe he imagianed it. Because he sprang away again when Zira burst out- "Don't you know to be careful when there are lots of leaves on the ground? That was a hunter's trap! He would have come back to it and taken you away if I hadn't found you in time! You stupid, foolish excuse of a son! You will pay for your ignorance one day!" Nuka stared into his mother's furious face, speechless. He quickly tried to redeem himself by grabbing the hare and dropping it at her feet.

"Well look what I managed to catch!" He said proudly, his eyes hopeful. Zira glanced at it for a moment and then began to walk away. Nuka grabbed it and scurried after her, trying to get her attention.

"Hmmm...good luck can be disguised as bad luck sometimes. It would have been quite easy for you to catch the hare when, by coincedence, you had both managed to fall into the trap." Nuka looked at his paws, he had failed yet again to impress his mother, his prize was worthless, it had all come to nothing. When she had tried to save him, he had thought she had actually cared about him. But now he was alright it was all the same again. Zira tilted her head on one side, as if considering something. "Perhaps you aren't as worthless as I thought you were. Perhaps." Then she strode away, her long skinny tail swishing in the grass. Her mind was buzzing with evil thoughts, the crucial part of her plan was soon going to be put into action. She needed to prepare herself and her followers.