Vanilla

Yesterday I saw a Lion Kiss a Deer

That did not quite interest Leroy. Survival was, to him, basic. Whether or not he'd end up being placed at the top of the food chain did not matter very much. At times, he'd catch his growing mane in the surface of a puddle and register the passing of time—entertaining the dreaded inevitability of death for a brief, transient moment before returning to the great bane of his existence: lion's boredom.

At present, the juvenile had been staring at his reflection in a vernal pond after an hour of light showers, presence concealed by tufts of tall grass surrounding the water source, waiting for an unsuspecting prey to cross his path. The sun, low over the horizon, hit the water at an angle, crimson flames and sapphire waves of the sunset meeting at the center of the sky, mirrored in the surface of the still, silent pond.

He wasn't hungry. That much, Leroy knew. The entire purpose of sitting in the grass by some harmless water source had to do with the rock of boredom in his head and the juvenile's lazy attempt to rid of it. The least he could do was to hunt; but as predators like him often found themselves enjoying, toying with prey had become a certain hobby of his as of recent. Just something he'd found sufficiently amusing to pass time.

Waiting. Animals had not a sense of time that deviated far from 'an instant' or a time to feed, time to wake, time to sleep. At present, he was at 'time to play' but as he'd come to understand, most prey were not as active as he was at night. Now, sundown, was the perfect time for a harmless thing to cross his path, gracing him with fresh entertainment in the form of a quiet trod.

And there it was.

He picked it up at once—the sound of a lithe, nimble prey making its way to what they thought was a harmless source of water. Through the undergrowth, the lion caught a glimpse of what he could instantly dub as the most stunning coat he'd ever seen. It belonged to a male fallow deer.

The stag's coat was a pristine shade between whipped cream and fresh snow; spotless from what he could observe, and a juvenile like himself with single spike antlers in their third stage of growth rising gracefully above his ears in the shape of a 'V'. Several other small tines branched out from his main beam, topped by a tiny crown on each side.

This prey was no albino. A single glance at his eyes made them out to be shade of deep, dark water of the sea at night. Needless to say, Leroy had never seen a coat so flawlessly pale, let alone a leucistic deer.

He was alone. That itself was enough to spark some decent curiosity.

The lion observed an elegant, lowered neck and a small tongue lapping at the fresh rainwater—serene and unguarded—a somewhat perfect opportunity to strike and yet, perhaps just to toy with him a little longer or some other reason he did not wish to acknowledge, kept his instincts at bay.

Further, the deer was on the opposite side of the vernal pool, which meant that he as the predator, would have close the distance without attracting the attention of his prey. A juvenile. No mother. No herd.

Then, all of a sudden, his instincts were on fire. The burst of flames in alert was a reaction to the territory's herd of lionesses out on a hunt, nearing at a speed he knew was no leisure walk in a park. He could make out two or three, all headed in the direction of the vernal pond, closing in on the fallow stag. Unlike male lions who preferred to hunt alone, females tended to hunt cooperatively; and the ones closing the distance belonged to the pride he and Raul had had their eyes on.

While Leroy had indeed found it a fair pity to be bidding a deer as beautiful and stunning as the one he'd had his eyes on an early goodbye, he felt it did make sense to prioritize analyzing a rival pride's hunting techniques and at the same time, assess the strength of their females. Just in case he were to end up claiming their pride. And so he waited.