He could feel warm water brushing gently on his side. Everything feels so... much better. He doesn't even feel the pain anymore. What... pain? He brushes the thought aside and embraces the soft water.
Then he heard a startling sound. He shot his eyes open and looks around, just in time to see a weird flash of some sort, flying off from just in front of his face, a flash that had a long neck and white feathers.
He jumps, clearly startled, and looks the way it flew. Slowly as his eyes adjusted to the initial harsh light, he realized that it was a bird of some sort. He'd never seen that kind of bird before. Strange.
Upon looking around, it dawns on him that this feels unfamiliar. It's much warmer than what he last remembered, dying in the winter cold...
Dying?
Just like that, the thought is gone, his head throbbing. He shakes his head, not feeling very well.
He stands in the water, part of his forearm submerged underneath the shallow water, surveying his surroundings. The stream was in a vast, open plain as far as the eye could see.
But this was not his home.
The lion walked in the shallow water, until it made way into marshy grass. He then dries off, marching into the unknown land with weariness. As he walks, the grass gradually becomes drier, and despite his minor fatigue and sleepiness, the lion makes note of animals roaming the land, looking down at the shallowing water in the consistent pain. But moments later, he realized that something felt very off. The lion stops dead in his tracks with a startling discovery, his eyes returning to the plains, the pained head clearing a bit.
The animals. They looked off.
To his left, what looked like horses but with black-and-white stripes roamed the plain, alongside some smaller deer of sort he couldn't name. Large, grey, mammoth-like creatures towered over them in a small herd.
*Those aren't mammoths.*
Black bovines with mean-looking horns that glinted menacingly in the yellow sunlight, roamed the distance to his right. They were.. what? They were smaller than bison, but looked *scary*. Mean, dark, hostile.
He shivered, despite the heat.
The lion then returns his focus to his left, and what he could only describe as animals which had amazingly long necks — tall camels? — and bodies decorated with beautiful patterns were apparently feeding near a large tree... he had not noticed them before. The lion studied them in particular awe for dozens of heartbeats. Where **was** he?
He continues on his way to nowhere, the grass gradually giving way to tan sand, his large paws pugging the plain soil. This certainly did not feel like the sand he was used to.
By the time he decided to sniff the air, it wasn't too late, but he had frozen.
All of a sudden, he hears roaring. In the first half-heartbeat, in perhaps a stupid moment, relief fills his head, finally realising he would hear one normal thing in this unfamiliar land. Then he realises he did not recognise those roars, immediately filling with dread.
He quickly scans the area, but could make out no lions, nor... what else was he looking for? What else could roar? A sudden pain jolts his head, as if his brain was reacting to some memory. He growled in discomfort. It lasted a heartbeat but quickly subsided. He again scans the area, to no avail. No lions.
"How many times do I have to tell the youngsters that this is not their hang-out!" suddenly he hears a voice, coming from somewheres in front of him. "I'll make this the last time they come here!"
