Vera

Vera... was an outcast. Wandering the desert, the jungle, the marshes, she searched for any pride who would take her, but they all turned her away. A lion, after all, balanced with its tail, and how could she make the tight turns required of a hunter without one? And they didn't even know she was unable to bare cubs... She was sore, tired, hungry, but more than anything she was sad. She laid down, waiting for the vultures to come, but what stumbled upon her was a much different creature...

She awoke to the feeling of a beak nipping her ear, but it wasn't a vulture. It was a raven. One of its eyes was the normal shade of blackness, but the other was a bright and vibrant pink, and it was this eye that the bird kept trained on Vera's face, following her every move. It gave a caw, pecking at the weakened female's toes. She roared at it, swiping her deadly claws at the bird, but it easily dodged her impaired movements. It pecked her again, jumping back and away. Did it... did it want her to follow it? She hauled herself to her paws, legs shaking, and stumbled after the black bird as it hop-walked in the direction of a circle of trees. She knew that territory... the swamplands. They were ruled by a ruthless and wicked king, and she stopped following the crazy raven.

"No. No! I will not walk into that deathtrap, just because... because..." Because I'm already dying. She sighed, sitting down on her quaking haunches. She left her birth pride because she didn't want to be a burden, and now... she was starving, exhausted, and she expected another pride to take her in and nurse her back to health? She might as well walk into the jaws of death, since dying seemed to be the only thing she was good at. She began to slide back down to her belly, ready to give up again, when the raven let out a sharp caw, right in her ear. She snarled, turning away, which brought her gaze upon the single most beautiful sight she had ever seen. A warthog carcass! Another raven was perched upon it, but it didn't eat. It simply stared at her, and when she forced herself back up and toward the food, it flew off, into the marshes. The thought of caution never entered her mind as she tore into the hide of the warthog, ripping chunks from it and swallowing them fast. She never noticed the pair of eyes, watching her from the tree line...

Dragging her tongue across the bones of her leftovers, she realized that, now that she had eaten, she had to find water. Her body would use up what little it had left trying to absorb the food she had taken in, and she would die of dehydration fast if she didn't get a drink. She knew there was nothing back the way she had come, and she didn't know what lay in either direction to her sides, so that only left the place she knew water to be... the marshes. She suddenly felt her first meal in over a week threaten to come back up on her. Slowly, so slowly that she may as well not have been moving at all, she rose to her paws. It took her to nearly sundown to reach the interior of the trees surrounding the marshlands, and as the shadows lengthened they began to take on terrifying shapes to her already terrified mind.
Vera contemplated turning back. Surely dehydration couldn't be as bad as being ripped to pieces by a psychotic demon king! Just as she began to turn her path, she heard a sound ahead of her. It was the distinct mewling of a cub, and a young one at that. Suddenly, her fear vanished, and she picked up her wobbly pace, making a bee-line for the source of the cry. When she found him, she thought at first he was a dark colored cheetah cub, but when she got close enough to see passed the ever-growing shadows, she saw it was a beautifully marked lion cub. Glancing around, she neither saw nor scented any adults nearby.
"How did you get all the way out here?" She nudged the young male with her nose, and he tipped his head curiously. He was just a couple months old, certainly not old enough to leave his mother, especially not long enough to have strayed this far. She scooped him in her jaws and kept walking, figuring she could find water, and then use 'saving their cub' as a way to leave without being killed.

She was found by the Healer's Apprentice, Naomi, who took her in instantly and protected her from the evil king. When Kaldr-Sverđ passed and Forfax, the spotted cub who had led her to the Pride, took over, everything changed. She became a superb hunter in the marshy forests, and when Forfax granted her a protective blessing to defend her against the Shades, her own pelt became peppered with lovely spots identical to the new king's own.


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