Pizarro's heart was pounding so fast and so hard that the young juvenile was positive that it would beat its way right out of his chest, regardless of the ribs and muscles and flesh which were supposed to keep his insides on the inside of him. He still could not quite get his mind around what had just happened to him, but as he trod water in an almost hysterical doggy paddle style stroke and watched the gigantic winged lion take to the sky from the beach he almost soiled himself again. He had been convinced in those moments that the water would be unable to protect him from the wrathful creature after all, and that it would swoop down and snatch him out of the water like he sometimes saw seagulls do. He wondered if the water could even give the fiery lion trouble anyway. He knew water put out fires, but there was a lion in addition to the fire, and Pizarro himself was proof that water was not harmful to lions.Fortunately for the terrified cub, the gargantuan lion who had so very badly frightened him did not seem inclined to try his paw at hunting like an osprey that day, and merely flew away, which left Pizarro treading water and watching the huge figure gradually growing smaller. It seemed to take a very long time for him even to get as small as a seagull would be up close. For him to turn into the kind of hard to see speck that seagulls eventually became seemed to take hours. It didn't, of course, but for a scared and enervated cub like Pizarro was, hours was not a completely unreasonable estimation.
While he watched the slowly shrinking figure of the hell fiend who had pursued him through the foliage and the underbrush and across the beach and into the water, Pizarro did his best to calm his rapidly beating heart. He was fairly certain that it was possible for a heart to explode from beating too fast or working too hard based on what he had seen of dead rodents with bloodied noses, and he did not want to become one of their number. Not after going to all that effort to keep himself alive. So he took a few deep breaths which actually helped him to stay afloat a little bit better because they filled his chest cavity with buoyant air, and made himself go over what had happened slowly in his thoughts. It was not an easy task to which he had set himself, for he could barely order his thoughts enough to recall anything with any degree of accuracy, but he made himself try anyway.
To begin with, Pizarro knew that he had been out near the borders of the lands held by the Maestros del Mar. He was out there because he was old enough to stay out until a little bit after sunset as long as his mother knew where he was and because his mother had mentioned to Pizarro and his siblings that if they would soon be joining crews they should learn the lay of the land around the pride. Always eager to please his mother, who was also his favorite person, Pizarro had been doing just that when he heard the most awful sounds and feeling the occasional earth-shaking thumps through the ground beneath his paws.
Pizarro had never experienced an earthquake, but if he had done he might have thought that he was in the midst of one. Instead, he had no idea what was going on and remained rooted in place as the biggest lion he had ever seen came into view. He was dark, except for where fire seemed to be breaking through his skin, and his eyes glowed like embers. He had wings. He was also large enough that he could knock over trees, and the scent of burning Pizarro had picked up on earlier was caused by leaves getting too close to him. He was a nightmare figure, and Pizarro was petrified by the sight of him.
And then, to his shame, he had soiled himself. He remembered that part vividly now, mostly because the urine which dampened his hindquarters and hind legs had made that part of his body feel a bit cooler than the rest of him as he fled later on. One good thing about having fled into the ocean, Pizarro supposed as he began to calm down, was that no one would be able to tell that he had wet himself like a little baby girl. It was a truly humiliating fact, and he vowed that it would be left out of any retelling of his story that took place. Instead he would tell them how the lion had mentioned the Stormborn, and so he was clearly the leader of the enemy pride, and every bit as terrifying and cruel as Pirato had described him.
Pizarro would say how he was first threatened with being eaten, and then threatened with being taken away, presumably in the air, and then dropped somewhere so that he would be allowed to plummet to his death below. Then he would explain how it was only reasonable for him to have turned tail and fled to the water. After all, if so much of this lion was aflame, surely he would have no desire to get as wet as he would have to get in order to get Pizarro out of the water. It had been a stroke of genius on the large cub's part which far outweighed the cowardly motives behind it. And it wasn't cowardly to have a sense of self-preservation anyway.
Which brought him to where he was now, treading water as night fell over the pride's lands and looking anxiously toward the sky, just in case the Stormborn returned with a vengeance, as he had promised to do. Pizarro was cold and tired, and he wished he could swim back to shore and forsake the black waters around him, but fear kept him where he was until it was definitely night and both the moon and all the stars had come out to give him enough light to see that the beach was empty. Only then did he begin the laborious process of swimming back. At the end he let the waves carry him onto the sand, where he lay still and spent for some length of time unknown before dragging himself to his feet and making for his mother's den.
