Sometimes, when things get crazy and animals start shouting and someone is a little bit too paranoid, people get killed. And that was probably what had happened, Uyahambe guessed, eying the gruesome scene before him.

He had just been minding his own business...well, partly. It hadn't been that long ago that he had left the Antianeira, no longer interested in the take-over. Certain...things had caused him to change his mind. Or perhaps it was better to say, certain lions...namely a female he called Sia. She was a doll-face--sweetest girl he'd ever known. He'd gotten a little caught up in things and had ended up leaving her with a couple of furry bundles of joy.

Not that he hadn't received any in return...

He had two sons to look out for now. He didn't roam the lands on his own anymore, looking for a place to climb the ladder. His two cubs were back at home while "daddy" went out hunting.

And that's what he had been doing when he stumbled upon this scene.

Black nose wrinkling and eyes placid, the male lion observed his surroundings.

To his right were several pools of blood, to lionesses dead and seeming to be draped across one another--a coincidental pose that happened as they fell into death, he guessed. Their maws were contorted open in a grotesque look and their gold eyes were wide and bulging. The attack had come as a surprise, then...how unfortunate for them.

They looked related, each one brown in coat color with intricate gold markings on most of their bodies. One had black hair, the other a sandy-brown. They looked very much alike. Maybe they had been sisters...

To the left of the lionesses was a small adult male lion, blonde mane sticky and clumped with sprays of blood. Uya frowned, reminded of his sister at the sight of the light-colored mane. His sister's hair had been somewhat the same color. He wondered for a moment if the male had been related to the two lionesses, or if he had just been passing through. Or maybe he was one of their mates? Or...both of theirs.

No matter how his mind danced from subject to subject, possibility to possibility, the male kept noticing the blonde mane the dead lion possessed. Now instead of viewing the nasty scene with an air of nonchalance, something personal gave a little tug at his insides. All because of his younger sister, even though it had been more than a year since he had last seen her. Shaking it off, Uya contined his observance.

To the left of the small, twisted male were several splashes of blood against a few elephant ear trees. The savanna grasses were dyed dark red in several places--old blood. Well, he had already guessed the attack had happened some time ago. It certainly smelled like it. But then something else caught the male's black eyes--something he hadn't noticed before.

Entirely to the left of the scene was a small, fat jackal. She was eating something rather happily, blue eyes wide and shining as she smiled and chewed. In all honesty, the lion had been wondering about the lack of scavengars. It put him a bit at ease to see one now. He pondered whether or not he should go forward to see what the jackal was doing...if he approached closer, she might flee.

Then again, why was that bad?

So the lion moved forward, expression lax and tail coiled up behind him.

The jackal's ears flicked to the side a bit, but she didn't seem to pay attention to the obvious sounds of footsteps. After a few more steps, however, her blue eyes flicked and met Uya's black ones, and the jackal's jaw dropped, blood-splattered teeth showing.

There were only a few moments of staring until the little, fat female suddenly bolted off in another direction, making a strange wheezing sound as she ran.

Uya watched with a bewildered expression until the pudgy female was out of sight. Then, he made his way towards what she had been feasting on.

His cheeks seemed to rise as Uyahambe clenched his teeth in preparation for something gruesome. He did well to have done that, because what he saw did shock him and disgust him a bit. There before him was a male lion cub, just younger than his own two sons. It had been eaten away quite a bit, and Uyahambe looked away before he could spend too much time observing the...details.

That was two personal tugs in his chest now. Maybe even three....The two related lionesses perhaps had been sisters. Things were getting too translatable for Uyahambe. He didn't like that. He didn't like feeling...compassion.

It made him weak.

Brows furrowing both in some type of mourning, as well as frustration that something of that caliber had happened, Uya turned from the dead cub and cast one last look over the lion corpses. He sighed, something in him deciding to release any pent-up emotions, and then he turned away from the entire scene.

Something had killed those lions, the male thought to himself. Something or somethings.... His mind raced with ideas. Had the culprits been related to the dead lions, or strangers? Had they a grudge against them? The expressions on the lionesses had been that of shock and horror.

But were they surprised at being attacked by a certain someone, or were they just surprised at being attacked? Or maybe they had arrived on the scene later...and their lover was dead...their cub was dead, also.

And what of the male lion? He did seem to be in a different position compared to the two females. He was on his back, legs sprawled, jaw open and broken, with wounds all over him. Someone had wanted the small male to suffer.

But the females had gone more quickly--less suffering, at least in the physical sense. But why the cub...? An innocent youth. Perhaps the culprit had slain him to cut off any attempt at revenge? But that was stupid. Cubs were easily changed into various ways of thinking. If he had been adopted, he wouldn't have been worrying about revenge at all had he been picked up by the right lion.

After several moments of staring at the clouds, Uyahambe sighed again and closed his eyes, playing his imaginary scene out in his mind.

A large male (he had deduced the culprit to be a large male lion by the look of his enormous claw marks in the flesh of the corpses) had been sneaking through the savanna. He had known exactly where to go--where the lions lived. He probably knew what time they would be separated, too. He had sneaked up on the blonde male and killed him in quite a horrible way, making him suffer. He hated him. He hated him because...he had stolen the love of the female (or females) that he loved.

The two lionesses--sisters...returned. They saw the seen, and they saw the murderer. They gazed in horror and shock--shocked at the sight of a male they knew who had killed their mate, and horrified that their love was dead. They probably questioned him and cried...but were stifled quickly as the male murdered the both of them. They fell upon each other and died.

That left the cub...the cub the male wished he had had with the two females, but was not able to. Yes, of course he would see the crying cub and feel the urge to kill him--end the life he wished he had brought into the world with the females he loved. The cub was savagely slain.

Then the male left, body soaked and stinking of blood, dragging himself off into the grasses and far away...

Maybe one day he would've gone after the culprit...but he wasn't about to go looking for him. He had two little boys waiting for him back home, tiny bellies rumbling in expectation of food. So the male walked away and left the murderous scene, nose ignoring the scents of the attackers. He pointed his paws for home, no longer possessing any appetite for food.

Maybe one day he would've gone searching for the murderer...gone out in some outsider's revenge. But not now.


He was a father now.