Keep Trying
"If they were going to attack, they'd have done it already..." You assure yourself, starting to creep forward again. They growl faintly, but when you stop and lay at their fringes, no one moves.
You test their limitations, hearing a growl if you came towards the meat, but as you creep closer to the lion furthest to the food, they seem unbothered by your unannounced joining. You lay down, checking their expressions for anger or intent to attack, but they only eat, ignoring you.
"So, am I in?"
*******
Days later, the pride still hadn't killed you. In fact, they seem to have accepted you being there. Then, all a sudden, all the females rise with their necks ruffling, alert. One glances at you sharply before they take off.
"Oh! We're going!" you realized, with a jolt, they were hunting and you'd just been invited in. You join them in the synchronized hunt. You taste the rush of moving within their ranks, the speed of their feet. You feel the rumble of the ground beneath you, the give of flesh beneath your claws. You fall in love with the hunt. The rush. The blood.
Each night, you sleep full. You sleep sated beneath a pale moon in the warm air. Each few days, when a hunt begins, you throw yourself mindlessly into it. You don't think. You only feel it rushing all around you. The thirst for it. The hunger.
Hunger.
All other emotions: sadness, loneliness, anger... it fades. You lack this complexity. There's only the hunger. Or there's the pleasant fullness after a hunt.
You think back to your days of journals, sharing your feelings, pondering, wondering about the universe and chuffle out an animal laugh. You image a lion's diary. Your diary now.
March 8
"We ate today. We killed."
March 12
"We ate again. We killed a zebra."
March 30
"We ate today. We killed TWO gazelles. Fed."
Each entry the same. The euphoria. The delight of being fed.
You can't remember ever wanting to feel anything more.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 03 March 2016
The end (for now)