The Clearing Between Us
820 Words
Chapter Eleven: The Clearing Between Us
The fire was out, but it still burned in Simba’s heart.
He had not slept. He could still smell the smoke, still hear the crackling, still see the way Ndovu and Edy’s voices rose like a psalm even as the flames devoured them. He had lit the torch. He had stepped forward. He had watched them die.
And now… he couldn’t breathe.
He was fifteen — a boy in a man’s world — but tonight he felt neither. He felt other. Cracked. Hollow. Terrified. A thread had snapped inside him, one that held his sanity together.
He walked.
Through the moonlit forest, past the trees whose trunks had known his laughter, the place where he and Salah would meet, share stories, dreams, and stupid jokes about growing beards. He walked like a ghost.
He didn’t care if wild animals found him. Or if someone followed him. He just wanted to disappear.
When he reached the clearing, the one carved between roots and stars, he collapsed to his knees. The soft moss beneath him soaked up his tears. He took out his harp — the one Salah made for him — and blew gently into its mouthpiece, a single soft note. Their signal. Their secret.
He hoped Salah would hear it. And if not… he would know he had tried.
Miles away, Salah sat around the fire with his brothers. Roasted goat and sweet maize filled the night with warmth, but suddenly… something cut through.
A sound.
A single, aching note.
His heart jolted. He knew it. The clearing.
Simba.
Why would he be out there at this hour? Alone?
Something was wrong.
“I’m not feeling too well,” Salah said, pressing a hand to his stomach and wincing.
His brothers barely lifted their heads. “Go sleep,” one of them muttered.
He rose slowly, walked to the hut, waited… then slipped out through the back like smoke.
He ran. Fast. Barefoot. Ignoring thorns. Ignoring fear.
He saw him before he reached him — a lone figure, curled on the ground like a fallen animal.
“Simba!” he whispered urgently, kneeling, pulling him close.
Simba didn’t speak. He clutched Salah like a lifeline, his sobs silent, like the world had stolen even his voice.
“I knew you would come,” Simba whispered through broken breath.
Salah caught his own breath and held him tighter. “What happened? Please, talk to me. You’re scaring me.”
Then Simba broke — not loudly, but in sharp, painful fragments. He told him everything: the accusations, the torch, the crowd, the betrayal. The way Edy and Ndovu forgave him before their deaths. How the village clapped like it was a celebration.
Salah didn’t interrupt. He let him cry. Let him speak. Then, when Simba was quiet, he spoke gently.
“Simba… you are the only son of the Chief. I have nine brothers. I will never be king. But you… whether your father bears more sons or not… you have to become Chief one day.”
Simba turned his tear-streaked face toward him.
“I don’t want it, Salah. I can’t. I don’t belong there. I’m not like them. I’m not like my father. I… I’m like Ndovu and Edy. I’ve known it for a while. I feel it. And you know it too.”
He paused, the words hanging between them like a wound.
“I don’t want power. I don’t want to lead. I want to breathe without hiding.”
Salah cupped his cheek. “You don’t need to want power, Simba. But sometimes, to protect people like you — like us — you must hold it. Because power in the wrong hands does what happened today. You saw it. You felt it. You can’t be a nobody and stop it.”
He hesitated, then added, “Maybe I don’t know who I am yet. Maybe I’m different too, maybe not. I don’t know. But I know it’s not right to burn people for love.”
Simba closed his eyes. The pain still throbbed, but so did the warmth in Salah’s words.
And then… it happened.
Their lips met.
Not in lust. Not in sin.
But in sorrow. In silence. In need.
Simba trembled as he leaned into him. Salah’s arms wrapped around him, steady, safe. They kissed again, then rested in each other’s arms — boys clinging to something pure in a world that had made it shameful.
But just before the sky could start to lighten, Simba pulled away.
He stood up.
“We have to go. Before anyone wakes. Before someone follows.”
Salah nodded, brushing his fingers gently across Simba’s hand. “Okay. I’m with you.”
And in the dark, without words, they walked back. Together.
But something had changed.
A flame had been lit that night — not the kind that destroys.
The kind that fights back.
- Writer
