Breaking Season

The sun rises across brittle baked crazy paving trails of salt and the night’s shadow-imprints fly away in the harsh light of day. The lioness lies dazed in the burgeoning heat, exhausted from the effort of her long journey. She stares, mesmerised by the hypnotic flicker of heat haze on the horizon horizon, watching shadows of her past self. This had been a wide river bed many years before, she was sure of it. She had frolicked here on the beach as a cub, chasing the egrets into flight, lapping delicately at the water in line with her cousins. Her life had been carelessly carefree; responsibilities were the concern of others. She had not understood then the fierce protection that had surrounded her, the sacrifices a pride made for their members. She had taken it for granted. Things were different now.  

The cub kicks at her distended belly making her ribs twitch.  She is responsible for more than her own life now, she must find a way to survive, for both of them, even if it takes her last breath.  She must find water.  Stretching carefully, she tests her stiff muscles and  then stands on uncertain limbs. She must find shade before long, the heat is merciless. Her sponge-wrung tongue rasps against the roof of her mouth . Water; water must come first.

She pads slowly a few steps to the North, muzzle raised, tasting the air, then turns South-West.  She sucks hungrily at the air’s perspiration only to find it dry, salty, and she lays down again ribs heaving, feeling each inhale burn deep in her throat. 

A breath of wind stirs her coat, brushing her hair the wrong way and as she looks East to it’s source she sees a distant mountain; a mountain on the move, hunting her down.  She has no heart to run but watches transfixed as it marches inexorably closer.  The mountain morphs as it moves, rolling and reforming. 

Clouds. Her mind whispers the hope of it and suddenly she knows it to be true; the rains are coming. The accumulated mountain of air gallops forward, billows rolling over each other like breaking waves, white horses on grey, tripping and tumbling, one over the other in their eagerness to reach the plain.  

The shadow reaches her first, enveloping her in its cool relief, but as the clouds stand over her, a predator over its prey, fat drops begin to fall and the parched earth finally clears its throat.