Children of a Gentle Land

by robotminione

Vitani sighed and flopped down on her stomach, head dangling over the point of Pride Rock.  From here she had a good view of the whole kingdom, and, more to the point given her current thoughts, of her pride gathered below. They were gathered around the carcass of a zebra caught earlier in the day, eating and talking quietly with each other.  They looked tired and hungry after the day’s training, but also content and rather pleased with themselves.  Occasional bits of laughter drifted up to Vitani’s ears. She herself was not hungry, merely exhausted, but she had much to think on before she could sleep.  She sighed again, and rolled over onto her side.

            As she continued to contemplate the lionesses gathered below, she dimly heard her mate Tanabi pad softly up and lay down next to her. He could tell, however, that she had sought the place out in order to think, and so, except for a brief murmur of greeting, he left her to her thoughts. She was glad, because what she was thinking, she wasn’t sure he would understand.  It was something she had to come to grips with alone, without even him.

            She had been training the Pridelanders in combat skills for over two weeks now.  After recent close calls, the necessity had become frighteningly apparent. Rouge lions, mostly outcast and wandering young males, had become an increasingly large issue for the Pridelands.  Most just skirted the borders, or quickly passed through, heading for lands beyond.  Tanabi and a group of lionesses patrolled the borders daily, and they were quick to intercept any strangers in their lands.  Most accepted her offers of food and then continued on, seeking their places in life elsewhere.  A few, however, were aggressive, bitterly denying her right to stop them from roaming as they pleased. Even more worrisome, the pride had recently driven off a coalition of rouges, males and a few females, who had hidden just beyond the border for some time, and had picked off and scared away the best of their herds. 

This, for Vitani, was a truly provoking act.  Her mate had, of course, seen it as a danger to the balance of the Circle of Life, but she had her own reasons for her anger. Although she truly loved him, she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe fully in the mysterious balance of nature that he put so much faith in. For her, the only real order was that that you made with your own paws. No, this, for her, was more a matter of theft and dishonor.  Although she had no problem extending temporary hospitality to a few harmless wanderers – the Pridelands were certainly rich enough to share – she had no tolerance for bandits, for those who took what was not theirs.  (She had not been quite so firm in this belief when, in her days as an Outlander, she did a bit of poaching on the Pridelands herself, but she had believed in those days that the Pridelands were her pride’s by right in any case).  As she had learned growing up, it was a tough world, and one had to guard what one had.  That which was hers and her pride’s she intended to defend.

And therein lay the problem. Although the pride’s encounters so far had all been resolved by a simple blood-less show of force, their opponents retreating in the face of superior numbers, Vitani was worried. The lionesses had put up a good enough show of aggression, but as they had gathered to meet the threats, Vitani couldn’t help but hear the nervous whispers. “Where are we going?”  “What do we do?”  “What if we have to fight?”  The Pride Rock lionesses, to put it simply, were unprepared.

Soon after driving off the coalition, she had begun to worry.  Thus far, appearances and luck had been on their side, but what if in the future they faced a group just that much more greedy, aggressive, or desperate? What if they found themselves pitted against someone who would stop at nothing to gain the riches of Pride Rock?  When threatened by Zira, the Pridelanders had found themselves in just that situation, and the battle, initially a dead-even thing, had begun to tip in the Outlanders’ favor by the time Kovu and Kiara arrived.

The next day, therefore, she had called up the pride and run them through a series of drills to test their fighting skills. The results were not outstanding. Although the well-fed Pridelandresses’ blows packed a punch – a swipe of a paw could send you tumbling backwards – they lacked quickness and speed, stamina, toughness, discipline, and, perhaps most importantly, aggression, a killer’s instinct, and courage, a fighter’s heart.  Seeing this, Vitani had insisted on the implementation of a training regimen, to cover almost all time not needed for hunting, eating, sleeping, and a minimum of rest. There had, of course, been murmurs of discontent, and a few whispers of her wanting to “turn the Pridelands into the Outlands”, but she had silenced these with a commanding roar and a few words of explanation – something her mother would have never dreamed of, but surprisingly effective nevertheless. Remembering her mother’s training – effective, if harsh – she drilled them with unrelenting expectations of perfection, and insisted on joining them herself when not occupied with her royal duties.

Since the beginning of their training, they had improved markedly in their weakest areas, but still lacked a certain something, a certain drive, the need to win because there was no other option. In the Outlands, she had used her skills every day hunting what meager prey there was just to survive, and had viewed the war as the only way out of a life certain to be painful and short.  Vitani sighed, thinking of the past, and rolled over onto her other side, realizing with a start that darkness had fallen, the pride had dispersed, and her mate snored beside her.  She lay there and continued to think, her slight figure silhouetted in the dim starlight.

She couldn’t exactly starve the pride to focus them, as nature had done to her in the Outlands. Even if she could, it was a life of constant fear and constant pain; while it had shaped some of them into deadly weapons – giving her a razor-sharp mind, an iron heart that only Tanabi could soften, and steel cords of muscles (a figure that had only just recently begun to fill out a bit) – it had withered and broken others, driving her brother Nuka into scrawniness and a degree of insanity.

So, then, she wondered, was weakness the price to be paid for living in a gentler land?  For the Pridelands were definitely the closest thing to an earthly paradise she had ever seen.  The grass was truly greener, the herds more abundant, and the water sweeter. Wisely ruled, the lands flourished, and Vitani was proud to have thus far upheld their prosperity.  Yet, she knew that struggle and hardship were what gave one a true sense of what was worth fighting for in life.  In the Golden Sands, a simple drink of water was seen as a gift from the stars, yet her brother apparently loved his new domains all the more for it, and she knew his pride would die to defend their home. The Golden Sands’ sun and wind and the bare dirt of the Outlands forced one to fight for what one valued, but did that mean that for living in a land of plenty a lion had to lose his fighting spirit? Did a rich land mean weak bodies and cowardly hearts?  Was her pride guaranteed to lose if they fought someone who was simply tougher and more driven?

Perhaps, she pondered, perhaps.  What would happen if they had to fight for their lives, she did not know. Perhaps they would go out in a blaze of glory, putting up a grand display of skill and courage, but overwhelmed in the end by snapping teeth and flashing claws. Perhaps they would be toyed with, taken down one-by-one by opponents with the strength and speed of lives of training and struggle, who would run rings around them as they struck at the air in frustration and anger, only to be wounded once, again, and then suddenly finished off.  Perhaps their courage would fail them, and they would turn and run, only to be run down and killed in cold blood.  Perhaps the invaders would spit on their corpses and curse the weak Pridelanders, unworthy of the treasure nature had given them.  Perhaps.

Shaking these dark thoughts from her sleepy head, Vitani yawned and felt the warm wind ruffle her fur. She heard birds calling.  Drowsily, she realized there was only one real conclusion to make.  This land gave her pride their life-blood, and they would give their blood for their land, one way or another.  Secure in that knowledge, if not entirely cheered, she let her eyelids shut and quickly drifted off to sleep.

A/N:    Please rate and review/comment on this story.  This is my first fanfic, so any comments or criticism would be welcome. Also, ideas would be good, if you have them.  I feel like this would make a good intro to a larger story, but I don’t really have any ideas for a plot, other than the general concept of Vitani’s fears coming true, or being proved wrong.