His Guardian's presence was generally a calming thing. No surprise there, though - it was the role he had been raised to fill. Both of them, really; Nissim had been taught how to relax him, brought up alongside the young prince in order to learn his mannerisms. Just the same had Jirani been raised with the starry lion, that he might grow accustomed to his personality. As close as brothers. Except not at all, because a mere Guardian would never stand on the same footing as the Crown Prince. That was something that neither of them had ever been made to forget. Such was simply the way of the Onyo-nke-Chi, for generations far beyond Jirani's father, and his father's father, and so on. No doubt they had expected the line and their customs to continue on unto eternity.
Nissim had been different, however. Normally, a Guardian to royalty was chosen most carefully of all. Paw-selected by his parents at an age too young to remember his own, the other male should have been carefully molded into one who would lead the young royal to ascension. Jirani'mauti wasn't sure what went wrong with his Guardian, but he wasn't one to complain. Half the time, the young prince hadn't known where Nissim was leading him - but their conversations were intriguing, and the foreboding giant had never hurt him, so Jirani always followed.
They talked, most often, about blasphemy. There was no other way to put it. Whatever instruction his Guardian was supposed to be passing on had somehow become neatly subverted in the behemoth's mind. Instead, he asked the prince pointed questions about his parents' rule. They walked the pride's borders, observing his subjects and inquiring about their way of life. Where there was good, Nissim acknowledged it. More often, however, there was apathy, or ignorance, and Jirani's starry partner was quick to condemn both.
From their talks, the prince found it ever easier to discard that pridal faith that the gods would provide for them. He began questioning why his people did not do more to provide for themselves. He even went to his parents, and asked them why they insisted on leading the Onyo this way. A recently-widowed mother had not been able to hunt for her newborn cubs, and both had been lost. Why had the King and Queen done nothing for her?
On another occasion, a sickness had risen among one of the gazelle herds to the south. The pride commonly preyed upon this herd, and their hunters had long since reported the illness. Despite obvious symptoms in the animals - foaming at the lips, engorged tongues, clear stumbling when attempting to run - they continued to go after the gazelle. Why would they not have lessened their forces in order to send scouts out in search of alternate prey? Or perhaps focused a larger quantity of their hunters on pursuing stronger and larger members of the herd, more difficult to take down but to all appearances healthy?
Once. He asked them once.
The resulting tirade had been enough to scald Jirani's ears red with shame and, in light of his newfound views, embarrassment. His parents' answers revolved mainly around the gods' ensuring their safety in spite of clear evidence of the tainted flesh making some of their number sick. Those that remained well? Said to have the gods' favor. Those who began emulating the gazelles' symptoms, however, were shunned - "quarantined", his parents claimed, on the edges of the pride. Left for the gods alone to heal. The prince was sick at heart to know that those who fell ill were not helped by their own number.
The lioness who lost her cubs was also ignored. The King and Queen gravely revealed to their son that the father of those ill-begotten cubs had been her own Guardian. By the Royals' logic, had their union been blessed, he would not have died. Had the cubs been meant to flourish, their birth would not have left her so weak. That they had gone so far in that ludicrous belief to bar anyone from assisting her made Jirani'mauti choke with fury.
Nissim had laughed. The Prince and his Guardian talked long into the night afterwards.
The pair's patrols changed a bit after that. Jirani's violet mane became a common sight amidst the pride, mingling with member and Guardian alike. His russet pelt could be found in all corners, scarcely without the starry one close behind, but always asking after details, after experiences, after the day-to-day lives of all those who were not born to royalty. The Prince learned to schmooze, to smile in all the right places, to be charming and kind and occasionally honest. He learned, at times, to rely on the latent threat that Nissim's presence seemed to command. He learned, too, that at times he did not need Nissim; Jirani grew capable of conveying a kind of ice in his gaze, or a certain implication in the set of his brow, that intimidated all on its own.
For Jirani had learned to look for certain signs among his people, and they had nothing to do with the gods. In fact, the Prince grew certain that these were purely mortal conceits, and wondered if the divinity his parents claimed to desire would understand them, much less experience them. One dealt with unspoken fear and a bone-deep weariness, and looked a lot like the despair of a widow worked to death. He found another in smiles that didn't reach the eyes, and a hopelessness set so far back in the pupils that it couldn't be touched by anyone. These reminded him too much of those sick and left to rot, and Jirani couldn't do anything but reach out to them.
He was careful about it, always careful; plying the diplomacy he had learned in order to be a better prince in order to strip that aspect of himself away from his subjects. For those willing to embrace him as something other than the Crown Prince, Scion of the Gods and eventual Voice in Their Shadow, Jirani'mauti became something thousands of times more important: he became a way out. The Prince became skilled in deception, in the faking of deaths and denouncing of banishment, in convincing his royal parents that exile was a fate worse than death for this particular interloper.
Although he claimed not to understand why, Nissim was always willing to help, and the bond between Prince and Guardian grew.
The King and Queen praised their son for embracing his devotion to their line, approved of his newfound dedication to destiny, and failed to see how the ties that bound them to their only son soured.
And some few members of the Onyo-nke-Chi ran free, embracing the danger of the unknown over the finality of their former fates. Jirani had no idea what happened to them, most of them - outside of his Guardian's assurance that they made it to the pride's limits, he was forced to content himself with the knowledge that he might never know. They certainly weren't going to come back and tell him. But Jirani hoped, fervently, that at least a few found the escape they were looking for. In fact, the Prince realized with a start - it was one of the few things he had ever truly prayed for.
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