Solar Song, Frozen Fate ✓ | lion girl, frenemies, frost curse

Chapter 1: Sun Child (Part 2)

Sunrise and sunset, moonrise and moonfall, the days went on and Sovanna-Kiya Praenglutha, daughter of Ogalutha, Princess of the Sun, grew from babyhood to childhood. She was curious about everything and stuck her nose in, or her paw, or chewed on whatever she could find. Ogalutha cared for Sovanna with the help of an old female carer. It was the same meda for Rathana when she was a baby.

But unlike Rathana who was a calm, quiet child, Sovanna could not sit still, rushing to learn this or that, never stopping, always getting into trouble. She would fight older children twice her size. Ogalutha thought perhaps she would mellow out after puberty, but it hit like a storm.

From curious to cunning, she pulled pranks on every male close her age and fought them, winning despite her being a head shorter than them. They would claim they let her win, but Sovanna was strong. Every day, she swung through the trees like primates. She walked the tree branches like the thorntails did when they hunted rodents in the night.

From dawn to dusk, even sneaking out a night, Sovanna would threaten older males into coming with her on her expeditions to prove stories. That was the only thing that made her sit still. Stories passed down through generations. Stories of ancient battles fought. Stories of Guardians of the planet Elgana. Stories that told of a powerful gem that could give knowledge to the Kaunlutha if they were worthy. For Kaunlutha, stories were almost as powerful as gems. Knowledge was a weapon and a gift.

So, on her sixteenth birthday, Sovanna-Kiya marched out of Rukkatukin, the stone castle and ruins that her family made their pride. Three towers, four stories high, surrounded her. One of them was her own private tower which used to be Rathana's. Rathana moved out to seek a suitor in Tumattamaku, the main region where all the other Kaunlutha lived.

"Sovanna!"

From the window, two stories up, her meda called waving a piece of linen in the air.

"Sovanna, come back here," she said, "Must wear the klipp around your chest. You, no longer child, gri?"

"Don't make me," Sovanna groaned. No other young Kaunlutha female wore a klipp, and she wasn't about to set the first example. Klipps were only for old females that were sagging in the front and wanted to hide out of shame. Besides, Sovanna's chest was invisible behind her fur still. Only if she would ever become pregnant, she might consider wearing those constricting things.

"Meda, I had a runner tell Trita to pull out the old stories and know how she's impatient make her wait, yeah?" Sovanna huffed and stalked away.

"Least put your oogs on," came another call, but Sovanna liked to feel the earth beneath her feet. Besides, her pawpads were as tough as if she had oogs on all the time.

With a roll of her eyes, she wondered if meda would ever stop being a meda. Medas whole purpose in life was to care for the youngest ones in the enclosure, but now with Kaunlutha dying out, Sovanna was the youngest. It was a miracle even back then that her mother became pregnant. Her father speculated the sun they worshipped answered their prayers. But the Kaunlutha who didn't pray or didn't believe in the good of the sun saw iceblood instead of a baby. It damaged their bodies.

Not everyone showed the symptoms of dry cough, blood eyes, and white tongue. Some lions didn't even know they were sick until one day their bodies would go rigid and they would fall to the ground shivering. A week later, they were dead.

Humans doing nothing. Human, Huamanoa. Sovanna sneered at the nickname for them. "Noa" was a kind of stinky bug that were nuisances during the hottest time of the year. Two moon cycles ago, she stepped on one and was stuck with the scent for a week.

Ahead, the spire on the sun shrine peeked above the conifer trees where tiny yellow berries grew in clusters on top. Sovanna felt her stomach growl and decided to take a detour. Surely, Trita was still struggling organizing the books on the highest shelf, picking out some good ones for Sovanna. But a birthday story was a special one, especially a sixteen-year-old birthday story. Sovanna was going to ask for the story relating to her grandfather, the last Kaunlutha to have the Ater. It was the magick gifted from the sun and taken by the frost, as she had been taught.