Jini’pomoka lay weeping.
The sobs were heart-breaking, filled with such desperate passion that all who heard would be drawn into the grief themselves. Her face as wet with tears, buried between her forepaws in an attempt to pretend that she wasn’t as sad as she was.
She was home from her journey to the desert and still she could not release herself from the guilt…from the knowledge of what she had done. It refused to let go, wrapping her in its terrible embrace. Sleep no longer came easy and every day was a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. Her only comfort was Tope but even that comfort didn’t work for long.
She’d be laughing one moment then crying the next. She couldn’t help it. Everything reminded her of that day. That moment when she had committed that terrible crime.
The sobs drew attention today.
--
Close by an adult male stalked the lands. He was as dark as shadow with a grey-brown mane that hung draped across his face. He was a sleek male, well-toned. He had sharp eyes, sharp ears and claws to match. He missed nothing in these lands. Nothing at all.
He was named Altair, The Flyer, and he was silent as swift as an eagle. He possessed such stealth that he could pass by a few paces away and never be noticed. He intended to do this when he noticed the female lying on the ground.
Had intended to…until he realised she was crying.
He was an assassin, a swift and deadly killer, but he was also a gentleman and he would not allow himself to walk by without enquiring to what was wrong. So, with this in mind, he altered his course and moved over to her side, dropping his stealthy habits and purposely scuffing a rock across the ground to alert her.
“Greetings Lady. Does the Night Mother watch over you this day?” He paused and berated himself for using that old greeting. It would mean nothing to those not of his old pride.
--
Jini startled at the sound of a strange male’s voice.
In seconds she was on her paws, whipping around to face him. The arthritis in her legs had grown worse since her journey and they had yet to settle. Because of this she shook where she stood, her face creased with pain.
Curling her lips back to reveal sharp teeth, she growled a warning. “Who are you? Why are you bothering me?” Fresh, hot tears trembled down her cheeks. “Leave me alone!”
--
Altair took a step back, shocked at the sudden viciousness in what he was being greeted with. He had only meant to help but apparently this female anted to be left alone. He supposed that he would, too, if he was upset. Why would he want a stranger to come up to him and start questioning him? Either way, he would have felt worse if he’d just walked on by.
“Please excuse me, Lady. I did not mean to offend or upset you further. I was passing by and heard you. I couldn’t bear to walk by when you were clearly so distressed.” He paused and tried to put on a kindly face.
It was more gentle than kind but it seemed to have the right affect.
--
Jini sank onto her belly with another racking sob. Then, with a sniff she lifted her brilliant pink eyes up to look at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. It’s just…my life…my life is a little bit of a mess at the moment.” With a huff she pulled herself up into a sitting position – which seemed to take a lot of effort. “Everything has been turned upside down.”
She lifted a paw and rubbed at her nose in an attempt to dull the sobs.
“I thought everything was going to be okay but…but it’s the opposite. I’ve ruined everything!” She blurted the words. “I’m sorry.”
--
“Not at all, Lady.” He replied, seating himself a little way from her to show that he was neither in a rush to get going nor willing to invade on her personal space. “I am Altair. Exile, outcast, unwanted by the world. I get by now as a rogue.” He gave her a wry smile. “No pride, no family, no friends to speak of. Just a life of endless wandering.”
He looked at her with his brilliant, clear green eyes. “Maybe I can help you, Lady? Did someone upset you?”
--
She lifted her ears cautiously. This one was very odd. Polite and strange with his mannerisms. He seemed friendly enough in any case. Besides, all it would take was one roar and Tope would come bounding to her rescue. She needn’t worry yet.
“Nice to meet you, Altair.” She smiled. “I am Jini’pomoka of the Kusini’mwezi, the lands of whose borders you stand upon.” She lifted her paw to rub at her eyes and tried her best to see through the haze of her grief.
She was afraid to put it completely to one side in case it returned without warning to slap her in the face.
“I don’t think there is anything you can do to help me. I brought this upon myself.” She sighed deeply. “I made a terrible mistake and now I must live with the consequences.”
--
“A pretty name indeed.” Altair replied softly. “I was aware that I was getting close to a pride but certainly not aware just how close. I’ll make sure to steer away from this area in future. The last thing I would want to do is upset a pride.”
He drew both ears forward then. “A terrible mistake? Dear Lady. Dear Jini’pomoka. Everyone makes mistakes. If we cannot fix them then we must find someway to move on. I, myself, have made many mistakes. Far too many. The memory of them chases me sometimes but I cannot and will not allow myself to pause and look back to them. Instead I run to the future.”
He canted his head. “Trust me. Whatever pains you now will fade in time.”
--
“This land is peaceful, the lions here won’t harm you unless you bring threat. Any sniff of danger on the wind and the kindly lions will turn mad with anger. Such is the way with most prides I would imagine.” She nodded briskly. “In any case, if you do nothing to arouse suspicion you may pass as close as you like without problem.”
She sighed.
“Yes…” She listened to him but didn’t look at him. Instead she looked down at her paws, wishing that the ground would suck her up.
“You don’t understand. What I’ve done…what I’ve done…” The tears brimmed but she bit them back fiercely. Not again. Too many tears were being shed. She was surprised she had any more left after the days of uncontrollable sobbing she had partaken in.
“And what I did was all in the sake of revenge.” She shook her head fiercely. “Empty, pointless revenge.”
--
“Hear me, Lady.” Altair urged. “Revenge is not a good feeling. It is never a good thing. At the time it seems to right. I know because I too have sought revenge. I sought it against my very own brother for the heart of a lady. He took my one love from me and broke my heart. He did not know that I wanted her for mine. Thinking about it now, it was not his fault at all. But, I was blinded by love and I could not see the truth. I struck out at my brother – intended to kill him – but was stopped when the warning call rang free.”
He shook his head.
“Surely your taste for revenge could not have been so awful as that?”
He hastened to add, “revenge threatens to consume us all at some point or another. Sometimes we fight it and win, other times we give into it, let it fill our hearts with hate. It’s the reaction we have to try and comfort ourselves, to ease the anger. It doesn’t ever work, but we don’t stop to think about that at the time.”
He paused then, concerned, for her weeping had started again. “Lady?”
--
“Oh, Altair! What have I done!” And her weeping had erupted again, more passionate than the last time. She was on her paws in a moment and reaching for him, burying her face in his mane to muffle the sobs of her broken heart. She didn’t care that he was a stranger, that he might not be trustworthy. All she knew was that he understood what it was…
…what it was too hate someone so much you wanted to end their life.
“I’ve shamed my family. My mother…if she could see me now…” Her words were stifled but he could hear them from their closeness. “She’d be disgusted.” Her words were broken by the sobs and her body shook with each gasping breath.
“I have done worse than you. I have murdered!!”
--
He did nothing. Nothing except raise a paw to set it gently across her shoulders. He enjoyed female company and had been enjoying it sparsely over his days of travelling. He enjoyed them as friends, as talking companions and sometimes more. However, that ‘more’ was rare and he certainly wasn’t expecting anything from this encounter.
The gesture – the hug – was nothing more than an attempt to console this poor creature. So fragile, so delicate and yet falling apart, crumbling away like sand in the rain.
“Shh, shh now.” He murmured. He imagined this would be how he’d comfort his daughter – if he’d ever have one. “Your mother would not hate you, Jini’pomoka. A mother could never hate her daughter no matter what crime she had committed.”
“Listen. Listen to me.” He shook her gently and then pulled himself away from her grasp so he could make eye contact with her. “Jini...listen to me now.” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “Maybe I can help in some way. Why did you do this thing? What crime had they committed to drive you to such an act? I do not believe for an instant that it wasn’t deserved.”
--
She blinked tear-filled eyes at him and tried to find the words to explain. Then, without any other prompt, her mouth opened and the story poured out. How her mother had been such a gentle soul, dreaming of adventures, dreaming of travelling the world. She told of how that had all been taken away, snatched cruelly from her as a youth. She told him of the Firekin, how they had enslaved and wounded her, how they had made her life almost unbearable. She told him how her mother had escaped the lands and given birth to them here in the very Kusini Lands. She told him then that her mother had died, died from her weakness due to a life of slavery.
When the story was done she was sobbing again.
“What have I done? I thought I was doing the right thing. I wanted them to pay for what they did to my mother! I wanted them to stop doing it to others! I wanted them to realise what terrible thing they had done!! But my mother…my mother was so kind. To think she had given birth to a monster…to me!” She broke off, unable to speak.
But Altair did not speak until she had regained her composure.
“Now I’m a murderer. I killed a Firekin. I went there with that in mind and I found one. An old one on the border. I didn’t know at the time…how could I have known?!”
--
He watched this girl crumple in front of him.
Altair was an assassin. Death was his craft and he was good at it. He killed for others – for a price – and spared no thought to it. There were rules – of course. The victim had to have committed a crime that justified their murder. However, Altair – and other Assassins of his old pride – had only had their client’s word for it. Solid proof was not always possible in every job and so exceptions to the rule had to have been made.
But this…this job was one he would have taken on in a second if Jini had asked it of him. These Firekin were obviously evil and unjust. It would have been an honour to show them their wrongs and bring them to justice. But how could he explain that to Jini?
Not easily.
“Known what?” He pressed gently.
“Lady, listen to me.” Realising he was repeating himself he started again. “I have killed, too. I have killed countless creatures like those Firekin. It sounds to me like you did this world a favour by killing this one. Even if she did not have any direct link to your mother’s death she clearly enjoys enslaving others. Such a terrible thing must be abolished. You could be seen as a hero in the eyes of past and present slaves.”
--
“She had a cub.” Jini burst. “Firekin are red. They are always red. Her cub was yellow. Yellow as the sun with bright green eyes and a streak of red in his otherwise white mane. Her son was not red. It meant…well…I hate to think of what it might have meant.” She shook her head in despair. “Even still, I’m no better than the Firekin. I took a life from them. I took that little one’s mother from him just as the Firekin took mine.”
She was shaking again.
“And if they come after me I won’t stop them from killing me. I’ll let them do it and face the consequences when I meet my mother amongst the stars.”
--
Altair listened to her and something shifted in his chest. His heart?
This girl’s words were so innocent, so purely spoken. He’d have laughed and called her innocent in the old days. Now, however, there was something that rang true about what she had just said. It was true. She’d taken the life of a mother just has they had taken the life of hers. Strictly speaking, what made them any different?
This female here was a murder, she had taken the life of an innocent bystander – punished for what her pride had done as a collective.
Altair felt a mix of emotions bubble forth as he looked at her but could not find the right words to express his feelings.
“Jini’pomoka…” His voice quavered.
Did this mean that he was no better? He was a murderer. He had killed in the name of justice, in the name of the Night Mother whom he adored even now. And yet…what if those killings hadn’t been justified. Was it is his right to say whether a life should be taken or not? Should he go by a few words of a client?
He didn’t like this train of thought. Not one little bit. So, instead he stood and moved towards the quivering female now standing a couple of small steps away from him. He leaned forwards and touched his forehead to hers.
“Protect your life, Jini’pomoka. If they come, do not give it so willingly. I can see what you are saying and can understand why you are so devastated by all of this. But they are not without fault or sin, either. I can see now that judgement is not so easy to pass. I’m starting to see that we do not have the…” No, wait, he couldn’t question that. It was how he was brought up! To kill! To kill for the good of those who were good and pure.
“Listen to me, Jini’pomoka. Go home. Go to your mate. Have a family and be happy. Promise me that, okay? Your mother would want that much for you. She loves you still. A mother’s love for her child never dies. It lives on even after her physical presence is gone. Embrace it and use it to comfort you. I will not judge you for I have wronged too. This is all I can say.”
--
She nodded wordlessly, staring up into those green eyes that were startlingly close. It made her feel uncomfortable – what she saw in those eyes. Something had happened in him. Something she had said had changed a part of him. She wasn’t sure what it was but…
“How do you live with it, Altair? Killing all those people like that?”
Her voice was a whisper.
--
“I never thought it was wrong.” He replied simply. “I saw it as ridding the world of the scum. Purifying the savannah so those that deserved life could live without torment. My journey never took me to the Firekin but I think it would have taken more than just me to rid that land of sin.”
He shook his head and sighed deeply.
“Every life I took is still in my head if I think of them. You don’t forget. You move on. You learn to accept what you did was for the good. Even if it was not for the good you must learn to accept it anyway. You cannot change it. You must simply repent and move on.”
--
“Repent and move on?” She repeated. “I don’t think I can.”
--
“You will someday. We all move on eventually. Time is a healer. Your wounds are deep but one day they will heal. The ache will never go but it’ll be easier to live with. Trust me on that. Not a day goes by when I do not regret my actions towards my brother. No, I did not kill him, but I severed our bond. I am dead to him now. We will never see one another again.”
He lifted his face away from hers and gave her a deep, piercing look.
“Promise me, Jini, that you’ll go home now. Sleep and try to wake up to a new day. Don’t repeat the same one over and over again. That is how you can repent for what you have done. Live for the moment, live life to the fullest. Make the most of your mother’s sacrifice and do not give any reason for your children to seek out their own revenge.”
He stepped away, thinking how odd this meeting had been. “May the Night Mother watch over you, Jini’pomoka.”
--
Jini stood and watched him go.
He was an odd male but his words had rung some sense of truth in them. She couldn’t stay like this forever. If she did she’d probably die from grief. She knew it was going to be hard but someday she would repent for what she had done.
Until then she’d try her best to live each day as it came.
She had a mate to care for, a pride to play her part in and maybe someday soon she’d have her own cubs to raise.
“Thank you.” She whispered after the fading figure, wondering briefly who the Night Mother was as she turned and headed for home.
/fin
