Nohereka

Daughter of the lion

°☆•○~ "A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth."~○•☆°

For the first time in what felt like forever, I had awoken to soft kisses being showered across my face and the warmth of being in Makhosi's arms.

"Must you wake me from my deep slumber before the rooster even dares to crow, my king?" I asked, my eyes fluttering from the tempting darkness to the dull rays of the rising sun.

"Life is a gift, my queen. We must learn to embrace it, every moment and that includes the simple pleasures such as these." His deep baritone voice gently whispered before assaulting me with tender kisses.

"Mmm... do those include not allowing your wife sufficient rest for her big day?"

"My wife must treasure these tender moments with her husband, it could possibly be her last." He casually spoke as if it were normal to bring up his death.

His statement caused me to finally awake from my drunken sleep state. "My last? Is there another war you are to fight? Are you to leave me to the ever growing resentment from the council? Where is it that you must go again? Must I suffer once more the pain of being alone?" My mouth began to ramble the thought of his absence made me feel nothing but the hollownes of the never ending torture — I felt empty.

"My queen, did Mazimele not inform you of the ceremony?"

"She didn't elaborate much on the details but seeing as that the life of my husband is once again hanging on the edge of death like a loose branch on a tree, I can see why." I answered him, my eyes boring into his.

"I am to kill and bring home both a leopard and a young elephant bull. The leopard skin as a gift to my heir and the bull for the ceremony." He explained before he began nibbling on his bottom lip and I knew he wasnt telling me everything, even the way his eyes were shifting from the thatched ceiling to the window; the was something else to it.

"What is it that you are not telling me?" Worry was dripping from each word I spoke what could cause him so much uncertainty and make him nervous.

"For the ritual to work...I have to kill the leopard without the aid of any weapons."

I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion, had I heard him right or were my sleepy senses to blame. "You have to what?"

"—Kill the leopard with my bare hands." His voice was small, filled with fear.

"Call it off. Tell them that we're not doing it. You did not escape the jaws of death in the battle for you to die by the hand of your own totem for a stupid tradition. Makhosi call it off." It was a demand, I wasn't asking him, I was telling him and that was because I would not risk his life again, my child deserves both parents.

"Nohereka, what will that say of me? They will think I am a coward, that I'm fearful and I'm not worthy to be king."

"And so what? Your life is way more important than your reputation, I will not sit and watch you walk to your death because those old hags who sit on their bottoms and do nothing but drink calabash after calabash and are incapable of even thinking of useful solutions for anything." I was practically fuming by now, he was willing to die for this tradition, to sacrifice his life and he called me irrational.

"It's tradition, Nohereka."

"Tradition? What good will that tradition do me if you're dead? What am I to tell our child? Your father died because of a tradition; because he was recovering the leopard skin for you as a gift? Makhosi you should take your own advice and think. I've had enough of your council throwing you into the hands of death, and should you die," my voice had been replaced by the dark anger the was once dormant. "I swear to the ancestors they will follow not long after."