to create one of the most astounding sunrises in the history of these birds.

Hewa sighed, she didn’t want to do this to Zazu but she had no choice. It was the necessary option. As Zazu came to the lookout rock, Hewa said, “There is nothing more you need to learn from what we’ve already taught you. Run from enemies, you know how to feed yourself, and fly high so nothing can reach you.”

“Then why did you want to talk to me now?” Asked Zazu bluntly.

“Because I decided I need to keep you here. If you leave, all of us will die and the mighty Rangi flock will finally fall from its place in the hierarchy of nature. We cannot let that happen! I will go to great lengths to keep you here. We must survive!”

“You don’t sound like my mother anymore Hewa, I’m leaving now and there’s nothing you can do to stop it!” With those words, Zazu launched himself straight up and propelled himself through the jungle canopy.

“You’re not away yet!” Hewa took off after her son in a high speed chase.

Zazu was a better flyer but his mother was faster and more experienced. To exploit his advantage, Zazu dipped into the thickest part of the jungle where visibility was only a few beaks ahead. Zazu though he could fly faster in this terrain because of his fast reflexes. He was wrong. Hewa was slowly gaining on him. She was about to knock him out the air when he accidentally snagged himself on a vine.

He was yanked in a sort of loop and was thrown backwards before Hewa realized that he was gone. She slowed down and looked behind her to try to determine where Zazu was now. This was her unluckiest moment of her life. At this exact instant, a snake coiled around a branch tried to throw itself to another tree. Instead, the snake crashed into a still fast Hewa and found itself falling down to a branch slightly below the one it was aiming for. The snake quickly slithered to its preferred spot.

Hewa, however, was not so lucky. The impact stunned her and destroyed her flight pattern. She was now cart wheeling through the air with no sense of direction. She desperately tried to correct this, but nothing could be done. Her carcass tumbled down past the branches of the tree it had just now hit.

Zazu climbed above the trees and looked back to find his mother. When he didn’t see her, he started flying away to start his journey of wherever the stars let him.

Right now though, the stars didn’t want him to get away. Just after he started celebrating for getting away from his evil mother, a bird he had never seen before that had talons designed to shred things to pieces and a beak that was designed for that same purpose.

Zazu’s heart skipped a few beats there. This was one of the legendary Mwewe family. They could kill without thinking, but they were supposedly the most intelligent birds on the planet. Zazu hope that this one wasn’t out to kill him because he had little chance against it.

Zazu saw one chance and he took it. He dove straight down as fast as he could toward the jungle again. The hawk was too big to fly in there so all Zazu would have to do is get there. What surprised Zazu was not the fact that the hawk caught up within milliseconds, but that he flew next to Zazu and started talking.

“Why are you running from me?”

“Because you will probably eat me!”

“I just want to talk with you.”

“About how you’ll eat me.”

“No, I swear on the Mwewe family that I won’t harm you.”

Zazu stopped dead in midair and landed on the closest tree. That was a swear that could not be broken. It was also used in only the direst of situations. The fact that the hawk was from the Mwewe family made it all the more powerful.

The hawk landed next to him and said “Wow! You can stop really quickly in midair. Threw me for a loop there. What’s your name?”

“Zazu, may I ask what your name is and why you need to talk to me so desperately?”

“Of course. My name is Kucha and I just wanted to travel with you.”

“Travel with me? Why? What makes you think I’m traveling?”

“Silly Zazu, I know you’re traveling because you’re a lone hornbill. Hornbills never travel alone so something must have happened between you and your flock. You probably have nowhere to go and I don’t either so I would like to come along with you as a partner in any adventures.”

“Wow.” Said Zazu, “I never though I’d ever imagine a mighty member of the Mwewe family joining up with me. Sure you can come along, as long as you’re fine with going where the stars say we should and you won’t ever try to harm me with your claws or beak or other more secret weapons I don’t know about.”

“Great! Let’s head off.”

And so Zazu and Kucha traveled away from the jungle and left the Rangi flock behind to face their fate. They traveled for many days and had death defying adventures about once every three days. Zazu would not have survived the first few had Kucha not been there to help him in some way or another. They became best friends and wouldn’t willingly part each other unless one of them died. Every night they shared stories from their childhood and their greatest adventures.

 

 

A History Lesson: Chapter 3

 

Ahadi was sleeping in pride rock when the winds started blowing. Safe in the cavern of pride rock, he did not notice the wind. That is, until Uru woke him up. “My king, look outside, there is a great mysterious wind.”

Ahadi immediately noticed the winds howling about rock. He heard the piercing shriek as it whistled past the towering structure, he could see pebbles getting blown away, he could smell the scents of hundreds of animals leaving to return later, and he could feel the slight breeze that never penetrated past the opening of the cave.

 Even he, in his long years as king had not seen winds like this. It worried him, made all the more frightening by the sudden mass migration of the herds into territory which was fraught with danger. The herds had sometimes gone one by one through the danger area, but never in one big group.

Sleepily, he murmured, “The winds are strange today; did they ever blow like this? Rafiki!” More awake now, Ahadi called the newfound shaman to ask him about the old stories of priderock.

“Sire, there is one story about a great wind that arrived once. If history repeats itself now, there is a great evil coming. Last time, the wind suddenly picked up like this, the pridelands also emptied of animals. However, what happened after that is the most frightening.”

“What happened Rafiki? I need to know. Will I be murdered brutally in my sleep by some mysterious spirit?”

“I don’t think that will happen my king. The one other time this has happened in remembered history, something went terribly wrong with one of the sons of the king. His name was Dhiki is you prefer that.”

“Just get on with the story. What happened to his son?”

“Well, the younger one of Dhiki’s sons was out with his older more adventurous brother when the winds picked up. They managed to escape the winds, but the younger son had terrible luck for a long while afterwards and almost caused ruin upon the part of the pridelands that was not decimated by the wind.”

Ahadi thought about this for a second and decided because his sons were now in priderock, he was safe from this curse. Just to make sure though, he looked around for Mufasa and Taka. He couldn’t understand it. They were gone AGAIN! Maybe they had just stepped outside to feel the true wind. They weren’t out there either.

Ahadi was panicking now. Maybe history would repeat itself and Taka would have some sort of curse. Ahadi at this point would have accepted two possible outcomes of the curse. The first would be that Taka didn’t get a curse, and the second, much darker hope, was that Taka would die quickly leaving Mufasa the uncontested throne.

 

 

The First Winds: Chapter 4

 

Rafiki was forced to sleep in the den tonight instead of continuing his search for a suitable home for himself. While he was sleeping, a vision came to him in the form of a lion that was fairly small but more imposing than almost any other lion. The face swirled around and said something that would leave Rafiki pondering for several seconds until the truth was revealed.

“My name is Dhiki. I will show you what happened when the winds blew stronger than they ever had before, maybe you can learn something from my memories.” With that message, the voice faded out. Soon after, the entire lion started swirling around in a multicolored rainbow.

Rafiki was lost in wonder staring at this whirlpool for what seemed like a lifetime. It just kept swirling until he remembered that something was going to be shown to him. He focused on the center of the rainbow until a tiny dot in the center expanded to fill his vision with two young lions that looked strikingly similar to Mufasa and Taka.

They were laughing and rolling around playing some game lost to the ages. There was a lone tree nearby. Everything else was a flat savannah. In a few moments, the herds came thundering by. The cubs were scared half to death. Fortunately, the animals went straight past them. As the two cubs pondered what happened, the grass started swaying and what appeared to be a wave in the grass was approaching.

They were frozen in terror watching this line of dirt approach. The larger one that looked more like Mufasa acted first he dashed toward the tree, quickly followed by his smaller, more scared brother. They got behind the tree not a second too soon. The ripple of ground threw them up and nearly dislodged the tree from its roots. Then came t

“Just get on with the story. What happened to his son?”

“Well, the younger one of Dhiki’s sons was out with his older more adventurous brother when the winds picked up. They managed to escape the winds, but the younger son had terrible luck for a long while

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