"Psst. Hey, are you awake?"
Kitwana closed his eyes shut and tried to hide further in his good wing, grumbling.
"Wake up, kiddo!"
Finally, the ibis fledgling started opening his eyes, only to shield them immediately when he was met by blinding light. It took him a few seconds to get adjusted to it, but most of all, he wanted to see who was talking to him. "W-Where... where am I?"
"You're in the Serengeti National Park. More specifically, you're in the rehabilitation area."
Kitwana tried to move, but his wing broken wing was completely stiff and he couldn't move it. When he looked at it, he saw there was a sort of wooden stick tied to it. He started pecking at it.
"No, no! Don't take it off, it'll help heal your wing!"
This time, Kitwana did turn around to see who was talking, and he saw a black shape just outside this... place. It reminded him of a cheetah, but much more smaller with black fur, except on the tip of its tail and its chest, which were white. Its green eyes were curiously staring at him.
"Who are you...?" Kitwana asked, still dizzy.
"My name is Jiji, kiddo, and I'll be your companion and guide during your stay." The feline said cheerfully.
"Are you a cheetah?"
Jiji laughed heartily. "No, kiddo, I'm not a cheetah, but you could say I'm distantly related to them. I'm a cat."
Kitwana's head hurt, but he started remembering what happened before he woke up. He had tried to walk back to the Pride Lands, but the exhaustion and thirst made him collapse, and he fainted. "Hey, is this heaven?"
"Nop. You're pretty much alive, and you're lucky for that! If the rangers hadn't found you, you'd be in a vulture's stomach!"
"R-Rangers...? What? What are you talking about...?"
Wait a minute.... Once his vision adjusted, he realized he was inside one of those strange prisons he had seen the animals, the thing Dalila had been put into.
The black cat jumped back in surprise when suddenly the ibis started to yell in fright, and banged against the bars of the cage, trying desperately to get out of it. "Whoa, calm down, kiddo! You're going to hurt your wing even more!"
"GET ME OUT OF HERE! THEY'LL BE BACK AT ANY MINUTE!"
"Who?!"
"THE TWO LEGS! THEY WILL KILL ME!"
Jiji knew what was going on without even asking. This guy had probably seen the poachers in action, and now thought they were all evil. "Kiddo-!"
Kitwana was too frightened to listen. "PLEASE HELP ME!"
"Boy-!"
"LET ME OUT!"
Finally, Jiji lost his patience and gave the chick a smack in the head, but with his claws still sheathed. He didn't want to hurt him, he wanted him to calm down. "Listen to me, kid! You're not in danger! I'll explain everything to you, but I need you to calm down!"
Kitwana was momentarily stricken with shock by what just transpired, but he didn't want to receive another hit, so he rubbed his head with a whimper, nodding, though he did retreat further into the prison's corner.
"Okay." Jiji said, more calmly this time, and lay down. "First of all, the 'two-legs' are called men."
"M-Men?" Kitwana repeated.
"Yeah, or 'humans' if you prefer. They're creatures that live all over the world, and they rule most of it. Like you've probably seen, they walk on two legs, their backs are completely erect, and they have a uncanny resemblance to... primates, but they aren't covered completely in fur."
"All over the world? What do you mean? There are more of those creatures?"
"Millions of them distributed over the world. And like animals, there are different human types, or 'species' if you wish to call it that."
Kitwana was still terrified. "Why do they come to the Pride Lands to kill innocent animals for no reason at all? Or put them in small prisons and take them away?"
Jiji sighed sadly. "That's one type of men: the ones who don't care about animals at all. They're poachers, and they do that to earn money."
"What's money?"
"It's a sort of green paper Men use to obtain new stuff. It's what moves most of them; in a way they need it to survive. I can't really understand the concept either. Anyway, poachers sell those animals, or whatever body part they obtained from an animal corpse, to other men who wish for exotic pets, or to expose them in places called zoos, or for trophies."
There were lots of words the cat was using that made no sense for Kitwana. "What does 'pet' mean?"
"Animals who willingly live alongside humans as companions."
"Are you kidding? Which animal would want to live with those monsters?!"
Jiji raised an eyebrow, annoyed. "Me."
Oops. "S-Sorry, I didn't mean...! But... you're a pet?"
"Actually, you could say cats are in-between being a pet and being wild. There are other animals, like dogs, parrots, hamsters who are completely in the pet area."
"That doesn't explain what is this place."
"Like I said, this is the rehabilitation area. Injured wild animals are brought here to recover and heal, and when they're better they're released back into the wild, or put in a sanctuary if they cannot survive in the wild without human assistance."
"I thought you said poachers sold animals to other humans."
"Oh, right!" Jiji laughed embarrassed. "Indeed, but the men here are not the poachers. They are the opposite: rangers."
"Rangers?"
"Instead of hunting animals for sport or money, they make sure the poachers don't go around hunting and save any injured animals they find, whether they were injured by poachers or not."
Kitwana would have kept asking questions, but he felt his stomach growling. He was starving. "Hey, do you have some food?"
"There's food in there for you, in that plate." Jiji said, signaling to a round, silver object with strange brown pellets. "I must tell you, though, you'll probably not like it the first time, but it's special food for injured birds."
Kitwana approached the plate tentatively, took one of the pellets in his beak and swallowed it. He immediately spat it back out, sticking out his tongue. "It tastes like dirt!"
Jiji couldn't contain a chuckle. "You'll get used to it eventually. When you get even better, they'll feed you real food. But you won't get better if you don't eat."
Reluctantly, Kitwana ate a few more of the brown pellets, doing his best not to taste them. They did sate his hunger, though.
Jiji perked his ears when he heard the door opening, and saw his human coming in. He quickly turned to the chick. "Kiddo, my mistress is here. Trust her, she will help you."
Unfortunately for Jiji, Kitwana's unpleasant previous encounters with 'men' were still fresh, and he tried to step further into the corner of his cage. Jiji moved aside and made way for the she-human, whose hand stroked the cat's head and ran down his back, which he leaned into with a purr.
Soon, the human peeked into the cage. Unlike the male 'men', the female had a more delicate-looking face, gentler green eyes and no fur on her face. Instead, all of it grew solely on her head, cascading down into dark brown locks of hair. Her skin was also pale. She offered the fledgling a gentle smile.
Kitwana thought his heart would stop at any minute when her hands entered his prison and grabbed him, all the while trying not to move his broken wing; he was tempted to peck at her, but Jiji had said she could be trusted, and she hadn't yet shown any hostility.
"D-Don't hurt me...!" he whispered when she took him out of his prison.
Oddly, she didn't reply to him.
Once taken out in this female's hands, Kitwana could take a better look at the place. Its walls were white, but they seemed a bit run-down, and there were strange white lights just above them. At the sides of the room there large, long metal rectangles with either more prisons (most of which were empty) or other strange objects he had never seen before.
The female human (or she-man as Jiji referred to the females of this species) placed him on top of a slippery surface. His trembling legs caused him to fall on his rear when he lost his balance. Jiji jumped down into the floor, and then up onto the same surface, but he didn't seem to have the same problem.
Much to Kitwana's confusion, Jiji didn't speak with words when he talked to her, but instead spoke out a loud meow sound. However, she seemed to understand it, and turned around.
"What did you tell her?" he asked.
"Nothing." Jiji replied. "It was a simple meow."
"How do you talk to them?"
"You can't. For some reason, we animals understand men perfectly, but they cannot understand animals. To them, any words we say are just growls, purrs, whines, or else depending on what type of animal you are."
Kitwana blinked. "That's weird."
"Tell me. I've lived with men since I was born."
Kitwana started trembling once more when the she-man turned returned, holding a small instrument in her hand.
Kitwana was still wary, but when he saw a few droplets of water running down that thing-later he would learn it was a 'feeding syringe'-he hesitatingly opened his beak. He felt the syringe's tip gently touch his tongue, and then he felt the cool, refreshing water in his mouth and going down his dry throat. Sadly, it wasn't as much water as he wanted to drink. The human gave him to drink little by little.
Once she was done with her examination, she picked him up and placed him back into his 'prison' as gently as she had taken him out of it.
He watched as the she-man took out the few animals that did occupy those prisons-mostly small birds or mammals-and paw-fed them or gave them to drink, among other things.
The shocking thing was that most of those animals didn't seem to be afraid of the she-man; on the contrary, it seemed they enjoyed her cares. He couldn't believe that this was the same species as those cruel men that so blatantly broke the Circle of Life... Poachers, Jiji said they were called.
He wondered what would be the fate of the poor animals in their power.
He couldn't believe it.
XXXXX
It was true, he hadn't seen Kiburi for a long while ever since his last failed attempt at beating him, but he never imagined those creatures would have captured him.
He looked almost the same but he was thinner to the point his ribs were slightly seen, his eyes looked tired, and that fire they used to have seemed long extinguished. Kiburi's bright green scales had turned dull and dirty.
Also there was a strange, large black ring closed around Kiburi's neck which was attached to those smaller rings stuck to the wall.
Makuu was completely speechless. "Kiburi?"
Kiburi snorted, annoyed. "Is that all you've got to say? 'Kiburi'?"
"What are you doing here?"
"Isn't it obvious?" he glanced back at the things that kept him attached to the wall. "I'm a prisoner as much as you."
"Well, well... Look who we got here."
Makuu glanced to the rest of the room when he heard that third voice, and noted he and Kiburi weren't the only captives there. A few steps ahead there was a cheetah in a cage, and on top of that cage was a smaller one with an aardvark inside. Next to the cheetah's jail was another, much smaller round cage with a blue cobra in it.
On the other side, there was a zebra and an impala, but only their heads could be seen, the rest of their bodies were concealed in their strange prison. It looked like a giant box, with only enough space for them to fit their heads... well, the impala's head barely reached to the door of that box. Just to the left of that prison, there was a sobbing baby elephant, whose right rear leg was also attached to the wall with another of those black rings.
"Who is it?" cried out a voice from a hanging, smaller circular cage.
"Another crocodile." The male cheetah responded with a sigh of dismay.
"Where are we?" Makuu asked.
"We're in the two-legs' lair, I think." The female zebra answered with a snort.
Their lair...? Wait, if this was the lair, then it meant... Makuu looked around frantically for a particular chick with white feathers, but the only bird he found was the drongo inside that circular cage. Perhaps he was in another part of the lair? Had the other animals seen him?
"Have any of you seen a fledgling around here?!" he asked.
"Fledgling?" the female cobra repeated in confusion.
"Could you a bit more specific?" the zebra said.
"He's small, long-legged, with white feathers! His name is Kitwana!"
The aardvark twitched his ears when he heard the name. "Kitwana?"
Makuu looked at the aardvark with a hopeful gaze. "That's right! Have you seen him around here?" He didn't notice he had leaned forward, and the collar started choking on his throat.
"He climbed unto the two-legs' beast and freed that other chick... Then he tried to release me, but the beast shook violently and sent him flying off." The aardvark lowered his ears and gave the crocodile leader an apologetic look. "I'm sorry, I don't know what became of him..."
Although partly relieved that Kitwana was not in the 'hands' of these two-legs, Makuu couldn't help but worry even further about the fledgling's whereabouts. Was he in the Outlands? What if he was found by the hyenas or jackals? Or vultures? There were so many things that could kill him in that place that it would take him a while to list them all.
Makuu heard a chuckle beside him, and he noticed Kiburi was giving him a mocking look.
"So it was true, after all?" he snickered. "You were playing mother to a bird?"
Makuu frowned. "I kept a promise, it's different. Perhaps you should try it out sometime, if you did maybe you'd be taken more seriously."
"Don't dare talk to me about keeping promises, Makuu, when you never kept any promises yourself."
"Sorry to interrupt your catching up, but the last thing we need is to find amongst each other." The female drongo said. "We need to stick together and think of a way out of here."
Kiburi snorted in reply. "Keep dreaming, bird. Those things will come back at any minute, and who knows who will be next. Perhaps you? Or the zebra? Or maybe Makuu? Thankfully it will be Makuu."
"I'm right next to you, Kiburi, and I can hear you perfectly." Makuu snarled, offended.
"Oh, really? I didn't notice." Was the sarcastic reply.
Before they could argue any further, the entrance to the lair opened and some of the two-legs came in. All the captives retreated further into their cages in fear, except Kiburi and Makuu, in part because they had nowhere to retreat further into. Kiburi merely lay down with his head resting on his forelegs.
Makuu, on the other hand...
"YOU!" he tried to run towards the animals, but the collar didn't allow him to move away from the wall, and the choking sensation intensified. This didn't stop him, though, and he wiggled violently. "WAIT UNTIL I PUT CLAWS ON YOU!"
"Knock it off!" the cheetah whispered hurriedly to him.
One of the two-legs, however, was staring at Makuu with what seemed to be amusement. He uttered no sound of any sort, but there was a dark air about him and his companion who was putting grass into the zebra and impala's stalls.
After a while, two-legs threw two big pieces of red meat towards the crocodiles. Once all the animals had their ration for the day, the two-legs left. Makuu sniffed the meat warily, but it didn't seem to have any substance... Hunger overruled caution, and he devoured one of the pieces of meat. It tasted almost like antelope, but he could tell it wasn't really antelope meat.
He noticed Kiburi hadn't touched the other piece of meat. In fact, he seemed to be ignoring it. "Are you going to eat that?"
Kiburi merely grunted and turned away.
Oh, well, it was his loss. Makuu grabbed the other piece of red meat and swallowed it whole, but again, Kiburi didn't even turn around, he merely stared at the wall, his back turned on him. He had half-expected him to at least defend his meal, but he gave it up easily...
He wondered if something was wrong with him.
No, why should he care about anything that happened to him? He had betrayed him, the float, Akina... He would never forgive him for it. He could rot in this damp place for all he cared.
But then, why was he worried about him?