For her entire life Cor Oxidat had been telling the story of her parents' romantic and tragic meeting and parting. Her mother, she had always claimed, was a princess in the pride that she had come from, and although she and Cor Oxidat's father had been very deeply in love with one another, she had not been able to stay with him to raise their daughter. She had duties to her own pride and so she had been forced to return, never to see her daughter or her lover ever again. Cor Oxidat knew that her father missed her mother, even though he spoke of her only rarely, and so for the sake of her father she loved her mother without ever having met her. But she loved her father more.
Which was why her father's death was so very hard on her. Well, it was a very large part of it, at any rate. The other reason it was so hard for her was simply a matter of timing. Not that there is ever a good time for one's best beloved parent to pass on, but for Cor Oxidat, the timing of her father's death was particularly bad, since it came at the same time that a lion she had convinced herself she was in love with left the pride.
Atticus had never actually been a member of the Kitwana'antara. He had been a wandering lion from a pride called the Jini'msemi that lived in a swampy territory and sent their adolescents out into the world to learn about themselves and discover their true names. The Kitwana'antara had been simply one more place to see along his travels, although Cor Oxidat had fooled herself into thinking that he might have stayed there with her. It wasn't difficult for the lioness to fool herself, but this time had been easier than any of the others.
They had met innocently enough and at first she had expected nothing more from him than a pleasant conversation before he moved on, but he hadn't moved on. He had remained with the pride. For the first few days Cor Oxidat had been reluctant to become emotionally invested in him, and had only viewed him as a new audience for her stories and a source of new material, but as the days passed and he didn't move on she began to allow herself to care more for and about him.
In hindsight, she had been foolish. He had only spoken to her, only interacted with her. That was not the behavior of a lion who intended to make a place his home. If he had meant to stay he would have met her friends and begun to make friends of his own. Formed ties. Put down roots. He had not done any of those things. Instead he had restricted his interactions to her. And at the time she had been flattered, thinking it was a matter of his preference for her above all the others in the pride. Now she wondered if it was just because they both knew she wasn't sick, and he didn't think there was any danger from spending time with her.
But they had spent a lot of time together. They had talked, told stories, teased each other. They had flirted. Awkwardly at first, but they'd gained confidence in the act and eventually it had become obvious, at least to Cor Oxidat, that they were truly attracted to one another. She had consulted with a healer to make certain of what she already knew about how the disease was spread, just on the slimmest chance that she was wrong about being uninfected, and thereby reassured herself that when and if she and Atticus had sex, there was no danger that she would get him sick. Not that she was sick.
It was another one of those long periods where her father was away from the pride. She had wished that he had been there to talk to, even though she guessed the conversation would make him uncomfortable. He would have been able to give her advice, or at least meet Atticus, which was important to her since he was the very most important male in her life, but he wasn't around. Unbeknownst to her, he was sick and trying to make his way home without coming into contact with anyone he could infect.
She had no way of knowing exactly where he was and what he was doing the afternoon she and Atticus' flirtation finally reached its inevitable conclusion and consummation, but later, guilt-ridden, she would imagine that he was in truly pathetic and dire straits. She hadn't known, though, and she and Atticus had enjoyed each other thoroughly. And then one day out of the blue Atticus had told her that he had to move on. The spirits his pride believed in demanded it. She had been hurt and angry, and that made her spiteful, so she'd cursed him as he left her.
As it turned out, it was Cor Oxidat who would live to see everyone she loved die before her eyes. Her father returned mere days later and died within hours, and shortly thereafter one of her childhood friends succumbed to the pride's plague. Cor wanted nothing more than to die and be buried with them. She even fell ill in sympathy, although she knew for a fact she was not ill and that it was only psychosomatic symptoms. She allowed herself to succumb to them and wished that she truly was sick and that she could follow her father and her friend into the grave.
Later, when the illness passed, Cor Oxidat was feeling far more reasonable and far less suicidal, at which point it occurred to her to be glad that she had not been impregnated by her foolish dalliance with Atticus. That, combined with being sick, might well have killed her off. She didn't have a strong constitution. Oh, for a member of the Kitwana'antara she was impressive enough, but she knew that she was still small and sickly looking compared to most other lions, despite her immunity. Well, thank the gods for that, then.
Word Count: 1,030
