Fearless

Chapter 2

After Artful had quenched his thirst, it was time to hunt. He had managed to stalk down a hartebeest herd and his eyes were scanning it for calfs- and there! A flurry of four tiny, thin legs caught his eyes. So his muscles coiled and he sprang. The hartebeests gave a large shriek, but then paused, and started laughing. "Hey!" Artful growled. "What are you laughing at?" The hartebeests kept laughing. "You!" the leader howled. "A lone lion cub! Think about it!" Fearless crouched. He wasn't going to get teased by a bunch of grass-eaters without them getting consequences. His eyes set on the calf, which was sniggering. He pounced. It took the hartebeests a second to realise what was going on, and they shrieked again and fled. Of course the calf was the slowest one, and Artful caught up easily and tore at its throat. Haha, he thought. Revenge, hartebeests!  Carrying the prey under a tree, he ate every last bit of it and left the bones for the herd to find and sob over. "Grahhh. It's sooo boring without being alone!" he growled to himself. So he decided to explore the rainforest which covered up about- to Artful's calculations- thirty percent of the savannah. He'd never went there before, so he'd have to be extra cautious. It was the home of the baboons, monkeys, and some other animals and it was also rumoured to have spiders the size of eagles and poisonous and bone-crushing snakes longer than a giraffe's neck. As he wandered to the side of the rainforest, he heard angry howls of monkeys, pained screeches of parrots and groans of whatever was in their hiding. Suddenly, the large palm leaves beside him started to move.