A Tale of Two Lions Pt.1

A Tale Of Two Lions
Young Na’fi was only four when one day he ventured out of the village. His mother, father and older sister had all assumed purhaps that some one else was watching young Na’fi. Each busy about their daily tasks, young Ni’era, Na’fi’s older sister was twelve and it was her job to see the family had drinking water. So she was down in the center of town where there was an old lever pump that missionaries had put in long before she was born. She pumped and pumped that old lever pump filling up the five gallon bucket that she would carry on her head on the return walk home. Sa’bel, Na’fi’s mother was behind the house tending to the laundry. Hunched and squatted over a large metal bowl, she scrubbed the laundry by hand with her bar of lie soap. Galbo, Na’fi’s father had been in the jungle for two days. He and five other men from the village had gone out to the jungle when the roar of the lion had begun. Sa’bel had told both her children not to fear the night before, but both Na’fi and Ni’era could see the fear in their mother’s eyes.
The roar of the Lion the night before was a tell tale sign that a man-eater was somewhere lurking in the not so distant tree line. Their father was out there too. The danger was very, very real for both the villagers and especially to the men on the hunt.
Other than the men of the village being gone this day had begun like most others. There where chores that needed to be done, the work that was at hand. Amongst the busyness of the day Na’fi was not being watched. As the day progressed Na’fi adventured farther and farther from the village. Before long the adventures brought him to the tree line and Na’fi was a hunter as his father was. With a broken tree branch for a spear he cleared the other side of the tree line into an open savannah. It was so vast, so big, a whole new world on the other side of the tree line. There was a path cutting through the center of the savannah reaching to the distant mountains. The mountains where so large and looming gray in contrast to the warm brown of the savannah, their peaks reaching to the clouds.
There Na’fi stood between the jungle and savannah with the mountains as the backdrop. A thunderous roar came from the high grass just thirty or forty yards away. The roar was so loud it caused Na’fi to jump uncontrollably, then freeze, unable to move as the shadowy figure began moving toward him.