A World With No Name

Chapter 16: The War of Lions

Memories of my life flash through my mind as I claw at my fur, begging for the pain to stop. In my mind I hear my mother's voice yelling at my father and threatening to take me away. I see her thinking of me as nothing more than a puppet to be used. I see my Second Mother shouting at me about my uselessness, about how I'm not good enough, about how I'll never fill my father's pawprint. I think about how much I needed my father, and how he always seemed to come around when it was too late to stop them. Any of them. I felt like that little cub, scared in his room with no way out. Nowhere to run but away. I wanted to run but my body wouldn't let me move. That's when I started to hear a different voice in the distance.

"Et.....aw..."

I focused on the voice a little more. "Qui....Paw..."

"QuietPaw!" I heard the voice repeat. My vision starts to come back, or rather, I start to open my eyes to see Sewatti and J'Rasha looking at me with both concern and confusion.

"Quiet...Paw?" asked J'Rasha.

I nodded. "Y-yeah..." I noticed how much deeper my voice sounded before I looked down at my body and my surroundings. I was back in my room, on my bed, sitting on it as the Prince of All Lions. I felt down in my Nafsi and felt how it moved and jolted chaotically. I calmed it down and looked for that other energy, that comforting Nafsi within me and my body slowly changed back to the form I had found myself accustomed and comfortable in. "Yeah.... It's me..." I answered. A very loaded answer to many questions. But an answer that naturally prompted a few more.

"I was right. The smells.... Your scent was so similar to the prince's because.... You ARE the prince..." J'Rasha gasped.

"I used to be..." I sighed.

"I had my suspicions but... How the hells?" Sewatti asked.

"You know how most people only have 1 Nafsi, one core energy that they pull from?" I started. J'Rasha and Sewatti responded with a nod. "Well I have 2. I've always had two. This body always felt more natural and correct then the other but.... Well you know who my parents are..."

"The 'Prince of All Lions' couldn't be a monster," J'Rasha said.

I nodded. "Amongst other hells I went through both in these walls and in Adanna lands. I couldn't take the pain anymore so I ran. I ran and never looked back. Until..."

"Until suddenly we dragged you right back in..." Sewatti concluded.

"Great Sky...." J'Rasha muttered, covering his mouth and starting to cry.

"And that mistake started all of this," I continued. "This madness in the Desert. The pride's in turmoil, my dad rotting in a dungeon, it's all my fault! Now I've dragged you all along with me." Tears started to flood my face as J'Rasha sat next to me and hugged me. Sewatti knelt down in front of me. "And what's worse is I had it in my hands! The Tear. It was in my hands and I hid it underneath the bed and when I looked it wasn't there. I know the queen has it! I sent us in here to die..."

"No you didn't. QuietPaw look at me." Sewatti tilted my head so my eyes met his. "Look at me. This is not your fault. There was nothing you could've done, ok. You were a child."

"I should've been stronger..." I added.

"It wasn't your job to be stronger. You had to grow up before you were ready and you threw yourself out into the wilderness because you thought the daemons and monsters on the outside of these walls were safer than the ones you faced everyday in them. Ok, this isn't your fault," Sewatti said, holding my paw.

J'Rasha squeezed me tight as I cried. I looked down at him and asked, "Why are you crying?"

"Because I know what it's like for your entire pack to look at you as though you've served your purpose. Or like you're less than anything. No one deserves that..." he said, squeezing me.