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Date Posted: 16:27:37 05/13/10 Thu
Author: celtgirl
Subject: Journal entry inside- this is more of the Africa stuff, and though I've really enjoyed writing it, I don't think I see it fitting into 'Angels'>>>
In reply to: celtgirl 's message, "I just thought I would do a quick update, and maybe post a snippet." on 16:15:31 05/13/10 Thu

copyright 2010 Cindy Brandner

May____, 19__


Last night we had a fire. There is always a chill in the evening air up here in the mountains. We were pleasantly quiet, the way you are with someone you have known much of your life, when a terrible howl split the night air. It sounded much like glass scraping over rock. I knew at once what it was, though someone unfamiliar with it might have thought some strange African banshee was loose amongst the blue hills.

Sophiene laughed and said, “Your lion is come back.”

There was little use in protesting that he is not my lion, for he does tend to make many of his visits whilst I am here. Herodotus has an unmistakable roar, that sounds a bit like gravel being poured on a pith helmet, while a knife scrapes your eardrum. He suffered damage to his vocal chords while still a baby, and the result is not musical to the ears, to say the least.

I have no explanation for why I attract animals in the way that I do. Not all have good intentions, admittedly, and I have a good scar from a leopard scratch on my back to prove it, but mostly they come to me from curiosity or perhaps some strange aura I have that tells them I will help, not hurt.

We named him Herodotus all those years ago, because he arrived as I was reading the beautifully gossipy pages of the old reprobate Greek, who traveled the known world of the time and wrote all his observations down, not to mention embellishing and embroidering with his ivory stylus. Our Herodotus talked a great deal those first few days of bottle feedings and reeling through the nights, trying to keep him satiated with food and warmth. Sophiene still insists he found me, rather than the two of us finding him, abandoned and crying next to the body of his dead mother and sister, who had succumbed to dehydration, before her more stubborn twin.

It became a game for Sophiene and I, where we invented the great travels our lion would embark upon once he was grown and gone from us. Even now after a long day, when we are sitting before the fire, always aware of the blue and wild night outside, Sophiene will fill our glasses with brandy and say, “where do you think Herodotus is traveling now, what adventure is he having?’ Which is my cue to tell her some new story in the ‘Chronicles of Herodotus, Vagabond Lion’. These chronicles have been ongoing for so many years, we’ve both lost track of the places we’ve sent Herodotus, as well as the other travelers he met in our crazily spun fancies.

I step out into the night, onto the dew-lapped lawn, feeling the big cat’s presence even though I cannot yet see him. He likes to bide his time, call me out and then sneak up on me as though I am prey- which all things considered, I suppose I am. It’s unnerving to say the least, for he is a wild creature and therefore completely unpredictable in what mood he might be sporting- will I seem an old friend to him this night or merely an upright meal? The one good thing about a lion’s presence is that most other nocturnal hunters will stay clear of the area. Herodotus’ roar is singular enough that I know I cannot be mistaken in just which cat has come to call. That doesn’t mean he won’t eat me, but that perhaps he will have the mercy to render me unconscious before he does so.

I soak in the night while I wait for him, the particular silence of these Kenyan highlands. The night is alive here in a way I have never found it to be elsewhere. The scent of the eucalyptus plantation from further down the mountain, is sharp on the air, the night itself a river of vapour trails for the big cats and small rodents that find the dark their natural habitat. The stars are bright, burning at this equatorial latitude.

He emerges from the deeps, a slipstream of golden silk, a king of the grasslands below, fearing no one, not even this man before him. He eyes me gently, and then saunters slowly to a place only two feet away, and sits. There is something different about him this time, some secret pride that shimmers from his eyes and in a moment, as my eyes adjust further, I see what that secret is, for he has brought his son with him, a small bundle of golden fur and big, tawny eyes. Herodotus eyes me as I hunker down, giving a soft rumble of fatherly pride.

I give them my hand, extending one finger at a time, slowly carefully. The cub comes forward on fat tumbly legs, not so careful nor wily as he will one day be. He nips my fingers and it takes everything I have to not pull them back, for it is painful, though he has not broken the skin. Blood spilled before a lion is like diamonds scattered before a miner, he must follow the trail to its inevitable end.

Herodotus rumbles at him, a parental admonition, for the cub sits on his plush bottom and hangs his head.

We look at one another for a long moment, lion and man, as though through that gaze we can melt back through time, to when both our kind roamed the veldt together- when we hunted and lived in the trees.

We were boys together, this lion and I, and I tell myself that he remembers the innocence of that time, just as I do.

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