Kali stopped at the small, burbling stream to quench her thirst. The heat of the day had just passed, the female having just woken up from a nap to escape the suffocating temperatures in its worst hours. The sun was beginning to set on the horizon, and would disappear into the dark blanket of night in a few short hours. Kali liked traveling in the dark. The world around her always seemed more calm, more at ease. If day was the world holding its breath, then nighttime was a gentle sigh of relief. More so, the day was filled with haunting memories of spending afternoons frolicking in the ocean's caressing waves, scuffling about with her brothers and sisters in her youth, and fighting off jeering males when she had come of age. In some ways, she missed home. In other ways, she was glad to have left. Regardless, the sun held too many reminders of her old life. The female straightened with a sigh, toes squishing into the sandy banks of the stream.
Sand. Kali missed sand the most. She missed the way it warmed her belly on a cold day, the way it clung to her wet paws after a swim, as if begging her not to leave the shore. Sand was home. It had been a few weeks since Kali and taken off to find a place to settle down. But the lioness had yet to find somewhere she could call home. Kali was beginning to doubt that such a place even existed. For starters, she didn't even know where to look. As a cub, she had heard many tales of different prides and coalition scattered throughout the savannah, beyond the lands of the Pirates. But being a female, she had never been able to go out and search for those lands. The lioness really had no idea where she was going, no idea how to find the right path. Kali was lost, both literally and figuratively.
Mufasa was not having a great time of it lately. His head hurt constantly from the stream of visions that had left him blind for days. He felt like he was drowning. It was getting better, though. He hadn't had a vision in weeks, and he finally stopped seeing spots. He could wander again, travelling along the gentle slopes of the plains. 
