The Lion King 4 - Tarew's Story

The night that the moon was full

Tarew leaned out of his tower window, his paws perched neatly on the edge of the stone and the wind blowing in his face. He had decided to look at the stars and watch the setting sun one last time before his life would change forever. The sun had just dipped past the horizon and its last light was fading away fast, leaving its shadows behind and making everything appear larger than they were only a few minutes beforehand. He watched as a mother elephant stomped, hand in hand with her daughter, back to the elephant caves for the night, all the time wondering what it would be like to have parents who cared about you. He realised he was drifting off and shook himself awake again, tightening his grip on the stony ledge to stop himself from tumbling out of the hole in the wall.

He heard a mouse make its way across his floor and he turned around in time to see it run to hide underneath his bed. He scowled and trotted over to it, making sure he wasn't seen by the tiny critters eyes. After crouching behind a big pile of straw, he leaped at the mouse and cupped it in his paws. Only its long tail was visible as Tarew had the rest of its body trapped.  His scowl switched to a grin as he released the little mouse and watched as it scampered across the stones and down the stairs. He enjoyed the thought of Simba yelling as he saw it the following morning and decided to let him deal with it.

Picking himself up off the floor, he padded over to the pile of straw that he slept on and rummaged through the rough hay in order to find his pile of belongings that he had gathered the night before. The tips of his claws brushed the top of the pile, which happened to be a bone from last nights dinner with the meat still clinging to the bottom of it. On the left of the dinner bone, a small chunk of wood lay on the floor. It had been carved to look somewhat like a lion and had been made by the Pridelands' fortune-teller and soothsayer, Rafifki. The mere thought of the magical monkey was enough to send shivers down Tarew's spine. He had never quite got to like the monkey, but only the great kings know why. Switching his thoughts back to the pile, he shifted his gaze to the right of the bone, where a small, black chord lay. He had found this chord at the very edge of the Pridelands a very long time ago when he had been a baby. He had shown no one, told no one and so it had never been confiscated or examined more closely. 

He sighed as he looked at his small pile of three items. The meat was only meant to last the night, but what if he found nothing to eat the next day? Water would be an issue too, after all, watering holes weren't exactly common in dry savannahs. For the next few moments he thought about the transport of these items, maybe he could wrap them up in some sort of cloth? He scrounged around his stone cage for a while and came up with nothing, so instead, he spent a couple of hours attempting to weave a flat surface out of his sleeping straw. By the time he'd finished, the moon was high in the sky but the basket still didn't look that great, with bits sticking out of the side and gaps everywhere. The good thing was that it held together when he placed the items in its strawy confinement. 

Breathing a sigh of relief that he'd finally finished, he looked again out the window and watched as the moon rose up, higher and higher. It was a silver pearl, hanging loosely in the dark sky, waiting as if it wanted someone to reach out and touch it. Tarew had tried, many times beforehand, but every time he had been unsuccessful, leaving his paws to have never touched its surface. At this current moment, a wispy cloud was consuming the sphere, blocking its light from reaching the Pridelands. The time had come, it was time to move.