“Mbwene,” she echoes, lowering her dark nose to meet the little one.  A strange thing, to see one so small, but the familiarity causes Tsavo’s heart to lurch uncomfortably in her chest as she meets the little one’s soft trunk.  Tembovu had introduced the little one as his sister, which drew her thoughts to her own blood siblings, still back in Dorobo, likely lost to her forever.  She stepped back from the Mbwene slowly, even though her own thoughts had taken a dark turn, and raised her head again, turning back to her brother-bonded.  
 
She watched his reactions carefully, though his reaction and the tension that had settled in the air between them, did not lead her to soften her approach.  She needed this.  She needed the answers.  She needed to find away to bury the shadows that followed her.  In her mind, this was the only way forward.  Not that the stubborn mare knew any other way. 
 
“He knew, Tembovu,” she said, simply, for she suspected that the elephant general already knew what she had to say.  Why else would she be here?  Why else would she confront him so?
 
“About the arrangement.  About us. About everything. And he cast me aside.  He could have killed me. You know how justice on the plateau works as well as I do.  I don’t know what stopped him. Maybe it was some lingering affection that saved me or maybe he just didn’t care enough to waste the effort and get his hooves dirty.  Though there were many days I wished he had.” Her voice never breaks.  The stone and composure holds.
 
However, her statement was the first indication to elephant king that not was all as it seemed.  There was a darkness in the lioness, one she struggled to control day in and day out.  A darkness that had followed her here.  One she knew she needed to purge if she was to find a way to live…
 
“I had no choice but to return to Makutano. I didn’t know what I was walking in to.  The rumors arrived before I did. I lost everything, even my family.”  She knew that she didn’t need to elaborate.  If anyone could understand the destructive power of whispers, it was Tembovu.  He knew how the diseased capital worked, and even the fall of the Council had not been enough to purge the sickness from Makutano.  She just needed him to understand that in the end, she had become yet another casualty.  She had paid a hefty price for Dorobo’s freedom. 
 
That is what led her here.
She too had fled from burdens that had become unbearable.
And her demons were still very much alive.
 
“How did he know, Tembovu?” she asked.  There was no pleading in her voice, but it was there in her eyes.  “I hate that I have to ask, but…” She cracked then.  Turning away and squeezing her blue eyes shut against the onslaught.  For the first time the composure of the lioness falters.  The stone walls that she’s so carefully built shift and begin to crumble. 
 
What she really means – what she finds so difficult to say – is that she hates that she cares so damn much.  She hates that the unknown is eating away at her like a poison feasting on healthy flesh, leaving her necrotic and dying inside.  The implication is evident in every curve of her body, in every strained muscle, in every pained line of her face.  The cool composure had contorted into something much more primal and something much more unfamiliar to the lioness.
 
She hated it; hated the weakness, the confusion, the overwhelming memories that flooded her mind.  But it was a feeling, so at least for the time being the emptiness that had plagued her for months was gone.  Finally turning back to him she set her eyes upon his, her gaze wrapped in hurt and in anger and in steely determination.  

T S A V O