Not even the eldest villagers could remember a time when she had not been there, the healer who lived on the fringe of the village. The young children avoided her at all costs; they knew she was of the old gods, the spirits and entities who had existed long before the missionaries. It was for this reason they feared her - they feared what she could do. They suspected that her powers reached far beyond simple healing spells.

It wasn't until the massive lion began to terrorize the village that they came to her without reservation. Her look was grave when they approached her chantey, for she had dreamed true dreams the night before of their futile hunts. She knew before their knuckles hit gnarled wood that they had gone to the savannah with spears in hand and dogs at their heels but to no avail. This lion was no ordinary one; in her dreams she had seen it dragging children screaming out of the village. Its taste for human flesh was unquenchable. So the chiefs came to her begging for her help when the first children began to disappear, because they knew she was powerful. It was for the ways of old that they came to her.

She accompanied them on their next hunt, and they encountered the lion again. They stopped 30 yards away and she was the first to step forward, closer, closer, closer, until she could see flecks in its golden irises and she knelt before it as it stared at her. She was close enough to reach out and touch it. Above its right eye, a scar split its face into two sections. It lowered its head before her, but when she reached out the men behind her moved their spears and it snarled, stepped backwards, and loped away. She stayed there, kneeling, with a pounding heart, until she could see it no longer. She had known from its eyes that it was different. For she had seen lions before, fearsome and awe-inspiring, but this one was different.

She returned to the village with fear in her heart and suspicion on her tongue. She studied each villager she saw deeply, looked into their eyes in hopes of finding yellow-gold irises. But she couldn't find them. She made no mention of it to the chiefs, for she had to be sure.

It was many days before she summoned the courage to call upon a spirit. When she did, she told the shade that she needed to know who the lion was. The shade guaranteed her that she would know within a fortnight, and he made her promise him something in exchange. But it was her village, and she had vowed to protect them. Hundreds of years ago, she had made a pact with the ancient gods to look over her people and she was determined to keep it no matter the consequences.

The shade brought him to her in the form of a wounded man. On a hunt, the man said, a pitch black fire had suddenly engulfed the savannah and burned his leg raw. She brought him into her hut and began to mix a paste to put on his leg. He looked at her with curious golden eyes. She noted the wicked scar above his right eyebrow. She asked him about his eyes, if his mother's had been like that as well. He said to her that he couldn't remember. That he hadn't been born with them. A gift from the gods, he said. It rolled off his tongue like honey.

"Did they give you any other gifts?"

He moved to her then. It was primal, animalistic. When she woke he was gone and she imagined she could taste childblood on her tongue. Outside her hut he had left nothing but paw prints.

She met with the village elders and told them that she knew who he was - but it was no use for them to hunt him. He was powerful, she said, a spirit, or even a young god. She promised them protection, and they asked her what in return? But she left them there with discarded spears and worried faces.

She called the shade again, and she asked it to give her the power to kill the lion. It agreed, on the condition that it got a soul in return. She accepted.

She tracked his scent to the savannah and found him in human form. He was perched on a rock, eating a squealing antelope raw. He looked up on her with blood on his hands and face, eyes sparkling. Then he dropped the hunk of meat and jumped towards her. He circled her once, twice, three times, and then she saw the air around him ripple and his once tall, proud human body had been replaced by a snarling lion, facing her on all fours.

She staggered backwards, lightheaded, and in the hot sun she felt her limbs compacting, spine straightening, muscles rippling. He watched with lips drawn back and teeth bared as she bent low to the ground, armbands popping. She looked at him, hot blood coursing through her veins, a solid, streamlined, and most of all - wild - animal. She roared at him. And then she lunged.

She was strong, stronger than she had ever been, but he was larger and stronger. He had ripped through her coat in a matter of seconds and torn at her back. Behind her, she heard noises and then she saw the men. The fools. But in the second that he looked towards the firelight and began to growl she lunged for his neck and tore it out. They saw her and a man poised with a spear but the chief held him back, pointing at the markings on her face. They watched her as she writhed, shed her coat, and turned back. They cheered when they saw her, bloody but breathing, curled into a fetal position beside the corpse of the massive lion with a gaping hole where its throat had been.

They took her back then, made a pelt out of the lion-man, that mischievous young god or spirit or whatever he was, and called her protector. And since then, and years before, she has always been our protector, our lioness, hidden away in the cabin at the edges of the village. She may be old now, but her power is unimaginable. Sometimes I see a lion alongside us in the savannah as we hunt and I wonder if it's her. Watching us. Protecting us.

As for the shade, what did he take from her? Rumor has it that she exchanged the soul of the young god for her powers. But one may never know.





adopted from Rin c:
AMAZING fullbody by roar!
HELLA rad profile by hermes