Shiohn

Name: Shiohn, pronounced 'Shee-Oh-En'

Joining the pride: Wooed in the shrubland.
5th lioness to join Ichika's pride.

Story:

Heat. That is what she knew from the moment she was born. Heat that burned, heat that killed.
Her pride was not a great pride. She was born to a scrawny lioness and a scraggly lion in the most unwelcoming climate she could imagine. Most of her siblings died at birth, or shortly afterwards. Her brother, Shimarx was the only other survivor, and perhaps it was better that way, though it might be difficult to accept that truth. Their deaths were perhaps the only reason she and her brother had survived at all.
Food was scarce. Shiohn never learned to hunt, for there was nothing to hunt. They fed on the carcasses of animals who became lost in the sandstorms, or succumbed to thirst. Nothing ended up her willingly, as there was little vegetation, and little to drink besides cacti that spiked the mouth when gnawed upon. Vultures were never far away from the little pride, forever taunting.
As a cub, Shiohn pitied the dandelion pods that ended up in this dry, arid land, for she knew they would never grow here. There was no hope.

Her father was the first to die. It happened while she was still a cub. Perhaps it was thirst, perhaps exhaustion. The vultures fed well that night.
Her mother was next, attacked by a pack of hyenas. Usually, the creatures weren't so brave, but her mother was nothing but skin and bones, and the hyaenidae were desperate.
Shimarx was last. He disappeared into the sandstorm, hoping to find food for the pair, but he never returned.

What was left then? What was left here for her? Nothing but the unrelenting heat.
She would leave this forsaken land, but she could not do it alone. One day, somebody would come. That, or she would die. Perhaps that was her fate.