Peristerá

There are some stories that, if given power, can take on flesh.

Not due to some unnatural power that's laid dormant for centuries, nor because they never really died- that was the sort of thing you told cubs in the dusk, when the sun was just begining to set and leading to that eerie time. You'd slip some beetles into one of their paws, and tell them to begin acting feral, just as you began to tell them of what happens to those hunted by the spirit sappers.

No, it was because of the sole fact that history tended to rhyme. Despite the warnings given over the moons, of never to search out the scorpion-tailed, bat-winged lion, or to stay in the plains whenever the earth shook, there was someone who would repeat the mistakes of the past.

In Peristerá's case, she had made the gravest of mistakes. She chased after these stories, seeking them out to discover that ever so elusive prey. It was stronger than an elephant, nimbler than a gazelle yet smaller than a gerbil.

The truth.

Yet, just in the way of those before her, chasing after this figment of her imagination set her on a path that no lioness ever sought out intentionally. When one knows too much, there's only one way to reduce the burden. Despite the horrors that the truth held, the stories of starry lions that should've been forgotten long, long ago, Peristerá had this...obligation.

After all, lions everywhere had the right to know of their ancestors and if the family mythos of the great chain of kings was shattered by her truths...well, she had done her job.

So, she wandered through the lands, time marching on besides her, truth serving as her guide. Nobody knew how long she padded on for, but her stories were almost common knowledge by the time she was willing to stop, and rest. Every lion seemed to at least know of the Priestess that had wandered until the pattern faded from her fur and the light dimmed from her eyes.

Peristerá's rest would be brief, perhaps a lifetime, maybe two. She wasn't aging, not since she drank from that spring, but she wasn't getting any younger. Besides, at this point, her job was done, her duty fufilled. The world knew of her truths, and now she could just watch, baring witness to the cruelty she had unintetionally wrought.