No matter how much Rive had prayed and hoped, no matter how far he had wandered along the shoreline, the ocean's voice has never stirred for him again. When the voices of the muses went silent, the pride mourned. The desperate faces of his people had turned to him with doubt and worry and panic and when it had mattered most, he was powerless to help them. What kind of leader had he been? What kind of leader had any of them been? He looked to his Uncle and Aunt but they, too, had lost their own voices as leaders as surely as they had lost the voices of their muses.

For a long time he had been hopeful that it was only a temporary loss and then, as time passed, he had just become bitter at the notion that such a tragedy could not possibly have been so temporary. He had been angry at the muses for abandoning their most devout at first, then at the pride as he assumed they had tresspassed against the sacred laws his grandparents had lain down, and finally, hopelessly, at himself. In the end, it drove him away from his pride lands, a voluntary exile that he had never forgiven himself enough to lift. There had even been whispers as he travelled, news from strangers who knew naught even of what they spoke, that the muses had returned but did that not prove that there was some fault in the rule of the pride when it was under his reign? If they had returned for someone else, what right did he have to claim he was the true Story Keeper?

Deeper, too, he was afraid the voice of the ocean would not return for him even if he went home to his lands. There was a huge part of him that wasn't entirely sure he would survive the complete and absolute loss of something that had been so much a part of him a second time around.

For a long time he was aimless, chewing over his thoughts and enduring a turbulent and steadfast exile, helpess and lost in a world that he didn't understand. He felt so, so far from the ocean - and then he met Alkaid.

"You always look so lost in thought, Rive."

"Hm?"

The deep blue eyes rolled up from the tips of his ocean-marked paws and landed, instead, upon the all-white lioness that lounged on the rock next to him. It had only been weeks since she had shown up inexiplicably but already he could feel the rough sea of his guilt calmed in her presence. He didn't know why she stayed or how she'd even found him in the first place but she was gentle and kind and that was as far as he had questioned her reasoning for being here.

"I said that you always look so lost in thought." The words were punctuated with a playful butt of her shoulder into his and followed by the weight of her body as she simply leaned into him, drawing his thoughts completely to the surface of his mind and out of the fog that he so often liked to inhabit. He couldn't blame the comment, all things considered, and the feel of her warm body next to him did well to remind him that she always seemed to be watching.

"Yeah, yeah," he muttered, "I heard you the first time."

"Then you should tell me why. That's the polite thing to do."

As she spoke and her head rolled back to look at him, the braid of her mane tuft shifted and exposed those deep, entrancing golden eyes. Despite himself and his commitment to his brooding he found himself laughing at her in amazement of her bluntness. The light, carefree aura she carried with her never failed to bring a smile to his jowls and he let her do it this time, beaming down at her where she rested against his shoulder with such an expectant expression. Next to ther brightness, the emptiness left behind by the ocean didn't seem quite so dark anymore.

"I was just thinking about what my life was like before you walked into it, Alkaid. That's all. Can't a lion just enjoy his exile in peace?"

The female next to him snorted dismissively and her weight shifted, drawing away from him. The look in her eyes, he knew, would have turned to a molten storm at the mention of his exile. If he were lucky, the withdrawal of her weight would be the only reaction, if he weren't -

Suddenly, her head turned back to look at him, her eyes hardened and her jowl set tight. Immediately, he knew he wasn't lucky.

"I do wish you would reconsider. What point is there in punishing yourself when no one else will? We could return to the Kizingo lands and find a place among the new leaders. You don't have to rule, right? You could just live in peace and-"

"No," it wasn't the first time he had raised his voice at her and of a certainty, it would not be his last if she continued to push at this subject. He pushed himself up to his paws and stepped down from the flat slab of granite they had been occupying together. Behind him, he heard her sigh, and he simply began to pace as he reasoned aloud everything he'd told her over and over a million times.

"It doesn't matter if they want to punish me, it only matters that I repent for whatever sin caused them to leave in the first place. Does it not make sense to you? Who am I to condemn an entire pride because I am selfish?" He paused his pacing and stood for a long moment with his gaze boring into the ground, digging imaginary holes in the earth as his thoughts reeled. "What kind of ruler would I be if I did such a thing?"

Moments passed and she said nothing. When Rive looked back up at her, she was sitting atop the rock with every ounce of regal grace he had ever seen in her bones. There was a strange look in her eyes that he couldn't quite place, too. Was she judging him? It felt somewhat like that but not as cruel nor as hard. Nothing about her ever seemed that way, even when he knew that she was utterly disappointed in his decisions. As her gaze broke away, she sighed again, but this time it sounded more defeated than annoyed. She stood at last and stretched, long and languid and complacent, then looked down at him from where she now stood atop the rock. It put her heads and shoulders above him so that she blotted out the bright sun behind her, illuminating her silhoutte at the edges and casting her pale face into a faint shadow.

By gods, but he had never met another soul like her.

"If you don't want to go home, there's nothing I can do to change your mind." The sound of her voice broke the spell - she wasn't a goddess or an enchantress but a mortal, flesh and blood lioness that had taken a peculiar liking to him. That was all. Still, his eyes followed her all the same. "We will just have to find somewhere else that you belong, won't we?"

Without even batting an eye lid, he gently corrected: "Somewhere we belong, Alkaid."

A smile spread across her jowls and her eyes all but glimmered at his words, dancing in that unknowable way as thoughts he couldn't read zipped through her beautiful mind. It made him smile in return, small and foolish and hopeful.

"Of course, Rive, of course."

As she turned away, her tail flicked, and he felt himself compelled to follow her as easily as if she had beckoned him with it.

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