Lioness

At first, we were surprised to see buck nearby, unperturbed, sipping from the vlei while you lay just a hundred metres away. You were so still under the tree, we thought perhaps you’d just eaten – sleeping the long leonine sleep of carnivorous digestion – but how could they know? Through binoculars, we saw your age: your face grisly and roughly whiskered, mangey fur on your neck and flank. Then you turned your head, and we winced to see the long porcupine quill puncturing your right cheek, skewering the pinched flesh, exiting just below the eye. Reduced to hunting porcupine? Had the pride turned its back on you? Were you wandering, waiting to starve quietly, on your own? The wound was infected, made your eye glisten with pus. We mourned to see you weep – our memento mori – the mighty fallen, crawling under a thorn tree to die.

 

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