IC Timeline: In the months following Out of Focus.
Kabiro stood unsteady on his paws, his haggard, gaunt face reflected in the still blue of the watering hole. Exhaustion was all he'd known for days. There in his eyes he could see it. His paw plunged into that wearied gaze and ripples moved across the surface, distorting his likeliness, changing things if only for a moment.
When the wind blew, he swayed, no more sturdy than the pale flower and its jagged leaves beside him. Beyond this oasis, past the valley, past the pile of rocks So and Shwari once used as currency for their games, was his foreign princess, or what remained of her. She had lost her sight, lost her mind, but she hadn't lost him. Maybe he... Maybe he was what remained of her.
While his good sense was combating fatigue, his imagination betrayed him, finding refuge in the arms of instincts that demanded he sleep. Together, they conjured a distant, foggy world. There, Talis fell in this water and drowned, her body sinking to the bottom, never to be found. Then he was free —
— Alone. That's what he should call it. He would be alone, remorseful for ever having wished such a thing, and evil for not having helped prevent it.
Kabiro closed his eyes. In. Out. Deep breaths. This wasn't him saying — no, thinking these things. He could never speak of his turmoil aloud, not the full truth, for what came from the tongue as a cry for help too often arrived at the ears as selfish acrimony. Talis was a good lioness and didn't deserve to be thought of as a burden, subconsciously or not. They'd agree to that a little too well and think him a monster. As bad as hyena or the murderer who killed their greatest king.
It's fine, he assured himself and his demons. It will pass. As Talis writhed in agony beside him at night, he told himself this. When she awoke only to ask his name and where they were, over and over, trapped in an endless loop, he told himself this. They relived that first day more times than he cared to count. With desperation he clung to the memory of the sunrises they'd spent together, the hunts they'd had, the hours upon hours of talking.
"Just be careful if you're planning to visit," Kabiro said. He couldn't have been sure it was his voice if not for the ache in his throat every time he opened his mouth. "She had a vision earlier and kicked a stone at me." He sounded older by the day.
"What did you do with it?" Alake found her question reasonable as everything else she'd done. Seven grandchildren she'd never formally met were old enough to stray from their mother now. "The stone," she said after Kabiro had taken too long staring.
"It flew out of then den," he replied. "I just managed to avoid it."
"Then she has nothing left to hit me with." Alake had plainly had enough of the conversation and turned to go. This was becoming routine for her, fleeing before the tide turned and left her lost at sea. She herself had been the one to explain that euphemism and tell Kabiro of waters that reached farther than the eye, and how not a drop was potable.
"Alake, Amira wants your permission to—"
"I don't give permission as freely as my daughter," Alake sneered. She frowned out at him. "Don't let her drag you into this. Gods know you have enough problems in your own den to handle."
If he were to count them individually, each Pridelander who could anger Kabiro to his core would be tallied on his front paws' toes and he'd still have some to spare. Alake he counted twice. "She's not dragging me into anything, and Talis is..." Is this what they'd have to resort to? Using these gossip sessions and arguments about their loved ones as a catharsis of their built-up resentment?
"I know she's dear to you," Alake began.
"I love her." Kabiro said it definite as the sky was blue, definite as the grass grew green or gold, grew tall; definite as a lion needed meat, water, and sun, he needed Talis. She was not his burden, her visions were, and he wished dearly he could say this as firmly to himself as to Alake. "I — I love her," he reiterated. Alake looked at him, taken mute.
She and Chyou had brought Talis to him with her mind in shambles. Her will to live was a small flame in a great, dark nothingness, so far away most felt they'd never reach it. Kabiro had only done one thing differently from the others before him: He'd tried.
After her visions subsided, as Alake had said the tide revealed the shore, there was Talis waiting for him. Not Talis the seer, nor Talis the princess. Just Talis. She was older than him, less rosy, and she had this far off look those his age couldn't mirror. Because what she saw was time gone by.
These were things that made him love her... Made him want her.
"I want her back," Kabiro wheezed. He walked from the mud like one asleep, not sure where he was going, but when he reached Alake, there he stayed. He was taller and stronger than a lioness with more years behind her than ahead of her, same as his beloved, yet he'd never felt so small. "Some of us — Some of us don't get to keep who we love, Alake, and here you are refusing seven of them you've never even given a chance."
"It's not the same thing, Kabiro."
"No." Shaking his head, Kabiro stepped back. What you're doing is wrong, Alake. The words couldn't breach his thoughts. He didn't look at her because he didn't want to see those sympathetic eyes. There was so much good in her if she'd only surrender the bad. "I should get back."
She was right about some things, whether he liked it or not. He was exhausted and if he exerted all his strength here, that was less he'd have for the war at home. "Take care, Alake."
"Take care, Kabiro..."
