The Lion Queen

Chapter 2

I had so much fun with Simba that I settled right into my new pride. At first no one knew where to put me. As old as the "peace lion" thing was, it hardly ever actually happened. It wouldn't be proper for me to sleep with Sarabi and Simba, since he was a boy. I wound up cycling around between all the lionesses with girl cubs. They were all very nice and treated me like a special guest, but I wished I had somewhere to stay.

There was one lioness I never stayed with. She always seemed to be off by herself. One day I saw her sitting at the edge of Pride Rock and looking at something off in the distance. I stopped wrestling Simba and flicked my ears at her.

"Who's that?" I asked. He brushed himself off and tried to sound serious.

"Oh, that's Sarafina. She's always sad," he said.

"How come?" I asked.

"Her cubs died. They just all got sick or something and they died in one day," he said. I scrunched closer to the ground in sympathy.

"That's too bad," I said. Before long we were playing again, but it kept pricking the back of my mind. I'd feel terrible if my mother died. It must be the same for a mother who lost her cubs, especially more than one.

That evening, as the sun was setting, I slipped away while Simba was unwillingly taking a bath. It took me a while to find Sarafina. I finally saw her lying in the shadow of a skinny tree by the watering hole. Her head was on her paws and her tail was curled limply around her body. I walked up next to her.

"Hey, you're always by yourself. Don't you get lonely?" I asked. She looked up to see who it was, and she seemed sad when she saw it was me. She didn't get up.

"I'm always lonely," she said.

"Yeah, I heard about what happened to your cubs. I'm sorry," I said. She curled her tail tighter and looked into the sunset.

"I get lonely too sometimes, since I don't get to see my mother very much," I continued. "If you want, I can stay with you sometimes. I can be your pretend cub, and you can be my new-pride mother."

Sarafina seemed happier right away. She cried a little bit, but it was happy crying. She scooped me up next to her with my paw and licked my head. I snuggled into her fur and she felt just like my real mother. I was the luckiest cub in the world. I got two mothers.