Safura could not sleep again. For several days now the sweet comfort of sleep and dreaming had been denied her. Instead the little pale cub found herself tossing, turning and only getting winks here and there. Her mind was not calm, not still, which she had determined was needed for sleep. Safura couldn’t help her wandering mind with its constant questions of which no one could give her answers. It was the curse of having the sight, she supposed. When you could see into the future, there was no one around to explain what it was you saw, because often times you were the only one seeing it.
Safura had once asked her mother if she could decipher her visions for her, but Kizuka shook her head to her and said, “Only you can understand what they mean.”
That didn’t really give the usually sweet faced juvenile much reassurance and only managed to annoy her, something that was not an easy feet to do. If only someone saw what she saw, maybe than she could get the answers she sought, but she knew no one could see what she saw. Her visions were unique to her, unlike many in the pride. They saw only fragments, things that would need to be interpreted later on by the scribes and council, but her? Safura saw whole visions and the one she was seeing over and over again caused nothing but confusion and pain.
There was a male in the pride, and adult of white, yellow and orange. He was an offensive commander named Kosoko. He never much acted like he liked the little kids like her when he passed. Safura had tried several times to get his attention, to try and talk with him, but he had always managed to escape her one way or another. This is what caused her confusion and caused her pain, because it was him, Kosoko, that was the main focus of her visions of late.
In one of her visions she saw herself pregnant and him by her side, as if he fathered the children in her belly. She was confused by this vision because she could never see herself with someone who was so unwilling to be sociable or who would be so rude to cubs like her. She would much rather end up in the arms of Ithunzi’lusizi, despite his brutish attitude. At least she knew that knucklehead had an ounce of good in him, but with Kosoko she was not so sure.
Safura growled to herself, clutching her head tightly between her paws and rocking back and forth I her frustration, “I will not be with someone like him!”
She wanted to be happy in her life, and in her visions she was happy, but how? With the Kosoko she knew, she didn’t see someone she could be happy with. She saw someone who kept to himself, and disliked contact with the rest of the pride, or at least with her. Rejection was not the beginning of her happily ever after. She knew that much.
Letting go of her head, Safura fell to the barren ground beneath her and sighed, creating a bubble of dust about her. She wished her father were there. He would know what to tell her, even if he didn’t have visions. He was her father and father always knew best. Sometimes she thought about leaving the pride and searching for him. She missed him so badly. She was his little doppelganger. She never did go looking for him, though. She could only see the misery on her mother’s face with her leaving the pride; the worry and the sadness of losing her daughter. This was the only thing that caused her to refrain.
Safura peaked up to the heavens quietly, little tears falling from her cheeks in he frustration. She growled again and hissed angrily, “Why would you give me this gift if it only causes me pain?! It lies, Gods! You lie!”
She didn’t regret the words she had uttered, not now anyway. Maybe later, when she realized the blasphemy that came from her little white maw, she would repent to them. Deep down she would never want her pride to be punished for her discretions, but right now in her rage she didn’t care. She didn’t want to care.
She wished Tofauti was around right now. He would cheer her up and make her feel better. Even Alfijiri had a way of making her feel better without needing to even try. She loved those two the best out of her siblings for it. She contemplated getting up and searching for them to tell them her woes and her pain, but she was far too tired. Not being able to sleep had taken all the energy she had. Being angry and confused and in pain took all the energy she had. She wasn’t sure if she had any energy left to live.
Safura sighed again, quickly being hit by the biggest yawn she had ever heard from forth from her tiny little mouth. She could feel her eyes grow heavy from sleeplessness. Her body felt almost like the jiggling fat of prey beasts as it began to relax without her consent. Her visions had betrayed her and now her body was staging its own rebellion. It couldn’t go on without sleep, and neither could she.
As Safura drifted off to sleep her mind swirled with an array of colors, like a pale rainbow had developed in her mind, dancing about like butterflies skipping from flower to flower. It was a happy feeling, a warm and calm feeling. Once the colors stopped swirling in her mind a clear picture came to it. The same vision that had haunted for so many nights now.
Safura was happy, smiling and plump from pregnancy and by her side was Kosoko. He seemed just as happy as her, petting her stomach gently with a paw and giving her a soft nuzzle to her neck. The only time she could remember being that happy was the first time she had met her father. She was so overjoyed that her heart felt like it would beat out her chest. As the vision continued things began to grow darker and darker. It was almost as if the vision was fading away, replaced by the darkness that was deep sleep, and no matter how much she struggled in her mind, Safura could not beat it back. She couldn’t get back to the vision that gave her so much happiness.
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