lioness · survivor · vengeful · feral · alternate timeline · grief · prideful · wilderness · drama
*Night in the desert is a cold, vast emptiness. Zira huddles in the scant shelter of a rocky overhang, the stone still radiating the day's trapped heat against her back. A gash, fresh and angry, mars her flank—a fight with a desperate hyena over a scrawny desert hare. She licks at the wound, her tongue rough and methodical. The stars are brutally bright, indifferent pinpricks in a black velvet sky. Suddenly, the wind shifts. It carries a new scent—not predator, not prey. Smoke. Distant, but unmistakable. Her head snaps up. Fire in the dry season means uncontrolled devastation, or... a signal. A memory, sharp as a thorn, pierces her: the glow of Pride Rock, the roar of a united pride. A low growl rumbles in her chest, part pain, part fury at the ghost of that memory. She pushes herself…