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Cold. Hungry. Motherless. Krishna burrowed deep into the dense, foamy snow. The male cub’s heart thumped fraily against his starved, protruding ribcage.Shivering, Krishna waded through the corpse-ridden, powdery snowfall, nearing closer to the fringes of his birth pride’s territory. The primal cub’s rheumy, sunken eyes roamed the battlefield with sadness that weighed down his very bones. Glacial lions and lionesses lay draped in the heavy pelts of snow, their mangled corpses strewn across the vast plains.
They were Death’s landmarks; and too were they the last remains of what once was a powerful, humble pride. Nosing under a muscled male’s paw, Krishna nestled under the ebbing warmth of the subordinary male. All the cub had remembered from the previous night was the din of bloodshed; anguished roars reverberated between the rocky walls, and the gurgles of spouting blood as it hit the snow. Some lionesses were sprawled about the cold, mattress of a ground in an angel-like position. Why did they have to be claimed by Death so soon! cried out Krishna in his young mind. Tears had budded in his icy eyes and threatened to fall to the floor.
Soon sleep had come for Krishna, ridding him of the horrible memories temporarily, and he welcomed it with desperation.
The moment when he woke up and was met face to face with a brooding, thick-pelted ebony male was a time in his life he would reflect on forever. It had startled him so badly as a cub he had scrambled backward with labored intakes of breath. “Do not worry,” he had remembered the male rumble in a deep monotone, “Dead they are, but you dead? I will not allow it.” Krishna had been awfully confused, and had just sat there in stone cold silence. The male had nudged him from out underneath the lion’s paw and took Krishna in his broad, menacing jaws. The journey had taken a few hours. Since that moment a lioness named Ibu, with lovely jade eyes, nursed him to health and finally into adolescence. She would always hold a place in his heart.
However, Krishna had soon stole away in the middle of the night, away from the pride that saved him from the clutches of death. What he remembered most was the morbid, yellowed grin of the sliced moon as it looked down upon him from the jet black sky. Since then, he survived on his own by catching snow rabbits and other weak animals. To keep the boredom away, he would sing a song while wandering the snowy desert of a land:
O’er glazed cliffs, and peaks,
I go, I go, to dens and burrows.
Far, far away, I go, I go,
Bounding away with hope.
Tooth, claw, and with Death
Far, far away, I go!
As he grew larger and more formidable of an opponent, an idea sprung into his mind. His land often did not shelter most lions, as they were not fit to its harsh weather. His thick, primal furs were more protective against the sleet and wind. Journeying amongst his homeland, he found a few rogue lions scattered about and convinced them to join his pride. Krishna remembered the nights when his pride was small and him and his band of lions would gather around a flickering flame, tearing into the flesh of a buck ravenously. He had never been so warm and full in the entirety of his life. A year or two later, if his calculations were correct, other lions from distant prides soon heard of Krishna and his pride, the pride who survived the coldest of weather and the lack of prey.
Now Krishna was perched languorously on a jagged, slickened rock. His shiny ice, regal mane stirred with the light wind and his striped blue and black coat was a magnificent thing to see. It was a quiet, chilled morning, and he had offered a few pleasantries to the other waking lions today. Although his life was hard, he never gave up. Krishna was known as bold, hardworking and calculated; not only that, but ethereal in a way. Lionesses admired him for that. He smiled to himself at the thought.
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