A lifetime ago she was freed from her mistress - but had her sentence ever really ended?
Though this cage was one of her own choosing, it was no less a tether around her neck. A lioness of the Ukuhlwa'Izwe; a female who had no warden to watch her and no debt to repay, an Outlander by title, oath and conviction. A good imposter, maybe. Chau knew the stories that this land was founded on, she knew the faith that they carried close to their hearts and the ceremonies and tradition they kept alive for generations to come. Knowing was only half the battle though, believing; that was harder.
It was a dilemma that was solely her own, a duality that she bore in private. After all how could they understand? How could her mate understand? When she told him tales of snow and forests, when she recalled memories of oceans that stretched on beyond the horizon and prides that had since been disbanded. To Azzan, the Outlands were the only lands that mattered; but before the Ukuhlwa'Izwe there was the Skadi. She still remembered dancing under the moon and the songs her people sang.
Chau had seen the world through the eyes of a stranger, a travelling wraith that knew no home. Yet, she had fallen in love with a man that was so sure in his conviction that nothing would shake his foundation of faith. She envied his belief in the fates and the ancestors, the comfort that must come with knowing something in the very core of your being. It was a stability that she had never known.
Maybe one day she would, maybe one morning she would see the light and devote herself to the traditions of this land that she had come to call home. She had asked for a sign, a grain of proof that she could hold onto when her faith wavered and she found herself lost and unsure. She had asked the ancestors, the kings in the sky to guide her; so she could feel like less of an outsider amongst her own people, her own family.
Their answer came swiftly in a wave of nausea and a persistent paranoia. She had kept quiet about her symptoms since the last moonless sky; waited for the sickness to pass and for her to be proved a fool - it never did. It was a condition as old as time, a role that predated the Pride and all living memory. If she still lived in the land of her birth there would be a celebration, a party to make her tradition from girl to woman. Here; there was only silence as she came to terms with this new venture.
The sun was setting as she returned to the heart of the pride, her daily duties as a Shield behind her until the sun rose in the morning. Silver eyes were fixed on the cracks in the ground as she walked; should she tell him now? Or? Her eyes rose as their fen came into her peripheral vision, her gentle saunter coming to a complete halt as her brows knitted and air caught in her lungs. No, not yet. She needed to hear the words from a voice that was not her own; so that her suspicions might become reality, an undeniable truth.
Azzan would have to wait up for her tonight and forgive her tardiness. The shield turned tail, away from the familiarity of home as she sought out the lair of her former mistress, Katiti.