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Albion had occasionally seen a sunrise before, when his trailer - which had had three solid walls and just one wall of bars - had been parked in the right direction the night before. Even then, the view had been partly obscured by buildings and walls, or the big top, or a nearby line of trees. Sunrises and sunsets had always held a fascination for him with their strange stillness and the slow yet constant blending of rich blues, purples, deep oranges and golden yellows across the sky, the darker colours scattered with stars.

Ever since he had truly noticed the beauty of a sunrise for the first time he had wanted to see a whole one. He had wanted to see the sun just begin to peek up over the horizon, to watch the clouds catch the different nuances of light against their silver underbellies, to be immersed in its magic.

Now he finally had the chance. After many months of longing, and of a single night of carelessness from one of the circus workers who had failed to properly secure the door to his trailer, he had escaped in the pitch-black of night.

The white lion's first surprise had been the sensation of dry coolness beneath his paws. After freezing with uncertainty and sniffing at it he had decided it was fresh grass.

It had felt so different from sand or hay or wooden boards or sawdust.

After that he had relied on the moon's rays to light his path, and he had picked his way to the edge of the town, and through a thin forest. Wild animals had looked at him, their eyes reflecting light, but they had avoided him, turning and bounding away and rustling the dry grass as they went.

He had wandered on, not knowing where he was going, only wanting to put as much distance between himself and the circus as possible. At long last he had found himself so far away from civilisation that for the first time in his life, he couldn't hear or smell humans.

Tired and uncertain what else to do, Albion had lain down and waited for the sun to come up.

That had been a few hours ago. Now Albion noticed that the deep blue of the sky on the horizon was starting to tinge with a lighter blue, and he recognised it for what it was! The loneliness and fear of the past few hours were melted away with the sweeter taste of anticipation, and he watched with rapt interest.

The sight surpassed his expectations! Albion watched in wonder as the blue turned to purple, and the purple to oranges and reds, highlighting the land and throwing trees and rocks into silhouette, reflecting in pools of water and off the backs and horns of indifferent grazing herds. Shadows faded into existence from nowhere; stretched ghosts of the night, shortening even as their darkness became more marked.

In time the riot of fiery colours gave way to a palette of milder colours: the reassuring broad blue of a daytime sky, and the green of grass.

Albion took a final moment to absorb the wonder of all that he had seen, and arose from his spot on the grass.

That startled a herd of... some kind of antelope that Albion didn't recognise. Impossibly long limbs scampered into action and a tattoo of dainty hooves thumped the ground. White tails bounced, nostrils snorted, and then everything became still as around a dozen pairs of eyes watched him warily from a distance, ears pointed towards him.

"Erm... hello?" Albion tried, unsure of what to make of this display.

None of them answered him directly, but his words did at least prompt a reaction of a sort. The antelope turned away with a strange kind of reluctance before bounding off in a rather more dignified and graceful manner until they were too far away to converse with.

Confused and with his feelings a little hurt, Albion wandered in another direction to explore the wide new world.

Herds were everywhere, and of so many different kinds. Albion had shared the circus ring with a few different animals, and he recognised some of them here. Elephants and zebra he was familiar with. What he didn't recognise were the brown-and-yellow ones with the impossibly tall necks, the antelopes with the black stripes across their bodies, or the fat ones.

He hmm'ed to himself as he looked at the elephants and zebra. Would they be easier to speak to than the antelope? If not, then he was sure the elephants would be. He trotted in the direction of the mixed herd.

He had halved the distance between himself and the herd when he noticed movement. Plumes of dust were kicked up by some of the zebra. The poor zebra seemed to be in such a panic - was everything so skittish out here? Albion was still trying to decide how best to react to this when he did a double-take: the zebra weren't the only ones kicking up dust. Shapes - round, sandy-coloured shapes moved with purpose within the cloud, but at first he couldn't see enough detail.

He leaned forward and squinted, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

Then, with a burst of speed that made Albion's breath catch in his throat, a lioness sprinted out of the dust.

She was... different from him. Sandy, almost to the point of being brown, with amber eyes, a light scar or three across her nose, and an expression so serious it kicked Albion into touch before he knew what was what, she tore after a zebra as if-

As if what? The poor thing seemed to want very badly to get away. Albion took a few steps back to give it more space to escape before the mood of the scene changed again.

The lioness had stopped abruptly, her forelegs braced against the ground and her eyes on him, oblivious to the cloud of dust that still billowed around her. Her businesslike expression of a moment ago had been replaced with wide eyes and a dropped jaw. Then, her eyes still locked onto him, she turned her head slightly. "Sarabi? I think you should see this."

A second lioness trotted out of the dust. She was... not old, but no longer young either, with a certain sense of strength or stability about her that he couldn't put his paw on. It was strange then, that his first impression of her was one that placed her as an unflappable matriarch because the first thing he saw her do was widen her eyes in a similar state of shock to her companion.

The two lionesses gave each other a look - wary perhaps, but there was something else in that shared communication. Something warmer. The first lioness came forward.

Albion smiled. "Good morning. My name is Albion and I'm delighted to meet you." He finished this introduction with a bow of his head.

The first lioness paused with one paw lifted tentatively off the ground, her face wry. "You're certainly a polite one," she commented. She came closer, and her body language was one of relaxed yet tentative curiosity.

He kept still and allowed her to examine him, and simply watched her as she padded around him in a wide oval. She looked fascinated, as if he was a mythical creature, or perhaps like one of the animals back at the circus that were sometimes dressed up in sequins and tassels and the public got to see them. But I'm not wearing anything special,_he mused. _Why does she look so impressed?

More lionesses had appeared, although they hung back a little more. One murmured to another, and Albion caught some of the sentence: "...never seen a white lion before."

"Oh! Hah, is that why you're so fascinated?" he asked, lifting a paw as if to look at it. The truth was, he suddenly felt self-conscious. It wasn't exactly a bad feeling, it was just that he felt... exposed.

"You could say that," said the lioness that was circling him.

He looked over his shoulder to track her progress. They fell into silence as each observed the other.

It was Albion who broke the silence first. "You're so much darker than I am. You look like you came out of the dust." Then he realised how much like an insult this sounded and back-tracked. "I mean- not in a bad way. I mean... I mean you look..."

Like you were fashioned out of the very earth itself,_he wanted to say. _Like a goddess.

"...you just seemed to come out of the dust cloud. It's like you were made to do that."

"Dust clouds have their uses," the lioness said, coming around so that she was face to face with him again. Their conversation seemed so stilted, and yet she seemed to possess a self-assuredness that he found so intoxicating it was almost alien.

They both simply looked into each others' eyes for a moment. The lioness seemed comfortable with this, but as the seconds passed by Albion felt himself getting more and more tense. She really did seem like a goddess, unafraid of danger or awkwardness, and simply watching him with a smile on her face that felt like an unspoken benediction, if such a thing could exist.

Albion was struck with the notion that she could understand his thoughts._No, that's impossible!_He admonished himself, but nevertheless it upped the tension enough that he coughed and ducked his head, saying, "I'm surprised I couldn't see your eyes in that dust cloud. They're so green." Once he'd said this he included the other lionesses. "You all have such beautiful eyes. So many greens and ambers." Maybe if this conversation wasn't one-on-one it wouldn't feel so painfully intense?

One of the younger lionesses laughed with delight and did a little skip on the spot. "We need to keep him around!" This prompted a chorus of good-natured laughs as if her words were true despite having been made in jest.

In fact, even Albion and the boldest lioness shared a complicit glance. As ever, she seemed to take this in stride but Albion himself felt another attack of self-consciousness. He once again distracted himself from the withering yet wonderful attention by looking again over all of the lionesses.

All of them - younger and older - had powerful muscles. Their shoulders especially looked made for running. He took pride in his own strength when he had tricks to perform but this? This was something else. It had that earthy quality again, as if...

His thoughts stuttered. The powerful shoulders, the scars, the narrow bodies, the serious demeanour, even the simple and welcoming approach to a novelty like him, which they took joy in, in a way so different from the crowds of humans who he entertained on a daily basis. They sometimes looked bored or jaded. Not so these ladies.

"It's living out here that makes you like this!"

Somehow this sentence encouraged the other lionesses to come forward and inspect him for themselves. He counted them: there were seven in all.

"Made us like what?" asked one of them, taller than the others. She seemed as fascinated by the others and not offended by his words.

"You look-" he dropped his head so that he could stare at the ground and gather his thoughts for a moment. When he knew what he wanted to say he looked her in the eye. "You look like you can survive."

She looked flattered yet confused. It was another lioness who voiced the question, however.

"Survive? I suppose so. Can't you?"

A loose ring of confused faces awaited his answer.

"I'm from a circus," he explained.

"A circus? What's that?"

"It's a place where people go to see animals. We travel, and we do tricks."

"Oh," said the youngest, her head cocked to one side. Then she seemed to forget about it and returned to inspecting him.

One of the younger lionesses leaned in to sniff, widening her nostrils and breathing deeply in. It was a tentative act at first but once she'd started she seemed to take pleasure in it and took in the rest of the breath with gusto. "You smell healthy!" she commented approvingly.

"Healthy?" asked Albion, nonplussed. "Erm, thanks, but I'm not sure I understand."

The young lioness looked like she was weighing up how to explain. Either that or she was busy rolling the scent across her senses again as if savouring it. "You smell like you eat well."

"Oh! Well, as a matter of fact, yes I do!" Albion answered readily, relieved to have the chance to revert to the safety of discussion about factual matters. "I get fed twenty five pounds of meat every day!"

The young lioness glanced at another young one next to her and muttered out of the side of her mouth, "What's a pound?"

The other lioness shrugged.

Unsure of what to expect next, Albion looked ahead to the sandy goddess before him once again.

She took the younger lioness' lead by taking a deep draught of his scent herself. "Mmm. Wawindaji is right. You do smell interesting." She seemed to enjoy the scent too.

That spurred the other lionesses to close in on him and inspect him in their own ways.

Albion's first instinct was to try to back away, but that was impossible. He was surrounded. Once he realised the futility of escape he looked at the one in front of him and they smiled at each other in mutual recognition of the absurdity of his situation.

Wawindaji rubbed her cheek against his mane. "Ah!" she said, and the sound was one of surprised ecstasy. Are all these females goddesses?"Your mane is so soft. And deep." She buried her muzzle into the depths of his mane as if to enjoy it all the more. She began purring, a deep sound he hadn't heard from another lion in years.

It was a strange experience, allowing somebody to bury their nose into his mane and trying not to succumb to the sensation of being tickled - even if it was probably unintentional. That strangeness ramped up somewhat when another nose touched him at the other end of his body.

The touch came shockingly close to his sheath. With Wawindaji tucked into the crook of his neck he wasn't in a position to look around and see what was going on back there, so instead he had to feel, and infer, what was happening. A lioness' nose had brushed against the skin just above his sheath, just once. He suspected she had backed off deliberately after his surprised flinch, and he wondered what she was going to do next.

Then he felt a blast of warm air against his sheath. Warm, moist air from a pair of nostrils.

Albion realised that he had been holding his breath and let it go carefully. He said nothing and did nothing except pay attention and breathe, but he wondered what he should do. What was it proper to do?

"What is it?" asked his goddess in a whisper, a communion just for the pair of them. Her green eyes widened a moment in an empathetic mirror of his excitement.

"I... I think-" he whispered back, then gulped. "Somebody just touched my...."

What should he call it? Sheath? Member? Private parts? What was polite? What might get him laughed at? He wasn't sure. What he did know was that he felt warm all over as if his body was suddenly trying to get rid of extra heat, the way he did after a routine in one of the circus' performances.

She stretched closer to keep their conversation (or at least, pretend to keep it) confidential. "Touched your what?"

Albion's head swam. "My..." He still couldn't figure out what was the best word to use. Nether parts? Length? Willy? He didn't even know that many words for it, but he didn't want to break the spell, or worse, offend these sun-kissed ladies.

She didn't break eye contact with him for so much as a second. "Penis?" she asked, her emerald eyes on his.

His stomach did the kind of move the acrobats did every night, way over his head in the big top. "M-mm hm," he just about managed to say along with a strained nod.

"What was it like?" She seemed fascinated.

He opened his mouth to answer but found himself just as tongue tied as before. How did I feel? How_do _I feel? He fought through his daze to figure out an answer.Embarrassed? Maybe, but it wasn't a bad embarrassed, like the day he had misjudged a leap from one platform to another and crashed down to the sawdust to the chorus of hundreds of humans laughing at him. Frightened? No, and yet, yes, in a strange way, but he didn't think he would be mauled.

The tip of his penis began to feel cool and he realised that it was beginning to swell and push its way out of the end of his sheath. That put him more on the defensive.

He'd had swellings like that before and they had always felt wrong. Whenever it had happened before it had come in between circus performances, when he was in his cage, being admired by the endless procession of ever-present humans. He had rarely minded their presence, but there were occasional times when he had found himself in a particular mood where he desired touch, and softness, and perhaps company. Grooming himself had helped only to encourage the feeling, and it had escalated to the point where his penis had emerged, red and vulgar, from the soft white tuft at the end of his sheath. Its emergence had impressed within him a desire to move, and perhaps... to climb something? But there was nothing in his cage to climb.

With no idea of what had been happening to him, Albion had stood and paced, trying to work out the tension in his body until he found that the only thing he could do to still the feeling was to arch his back upwards and bring his hips as far forward as possible. Yet, however far forward he tried to push them it never quite seemed enough.

In time the sensation would calm itself. And yet, despite this he had always had a sense of dissatisfaction.

What was he supposed to do with this feeling, so unmanageable when he was alone, while in the middle of a cluster of curious lionesses? Why were they so interested in him? And why did the goddess with which he was nose to nose, look as if she understood what was happening to his body better than he did?

"I don't know," he confessed.

"You don't know?" asked another of the lionesses.

Albion looked around at her. Her voice was low and that seemed to match the darker sand colour of her fur and the deep quality of her eyes. She looked excited by him as a newcomer, but also as if excitement wasn't really her style. As if she was naturally calmer than this.

"No, I don't." He felt ashamed to say it, since her tone suggested that he should. What did she know that he did not?

"Do you like it?" she prompted.

Albion opened his mouth to answer, only to realise that he didn't know the answer to that question. He furrowed his brow.

The sensation. It was frustrating and he wondered how it would affect him if he continued to feel it as often as he did without figuring out its natural conclusion. He suspected that he would end up obsessed, in time. And yet he would not wish to be without it. There were times when it felt as if it was his only entertainment. Stimulating, warm, fast in a strange way, but ultimately only a tantalising glimpse of something greater.

The way these lionesses were looking at him suggested that they knew what it was.

"I think so."

"Well, that's a relief!" said Wawindaji. She had removed her muzzle from his mane and had instead taken to rolling over in the dust. She flopped onto her side, her legs outstretched, one crafty eye watching him. Her smile said something he couldn't interpret.

"I just can't get over how good you smell!" said another. The tall goddess.

"I'm glad I can be of service," answered Albion, trying to claw back something approaching a sense of propriety in this very strange, intense, yet pleasurable situation.

That prompted a laugh as if he'd made some kind of joke, and the tall one dipped down to smell his sheath. He would have backed away but the dark one did the same from the other side and Albion found himself doing his absolute best to remain still as two foreheads tickled his belly.

Then a tongue lashed his sheath, lifting his swollen weight slightly before letting it roll off the end of her tongue.

"Oh!" said Albion in shock, lifting one fore paw to glance beneath his body and see who had done that.

Both lionesses were grinning at him, so much so that he couldn't tell which was the culprit. Not that he would be angry at either for it, but perhaps he would like to have known.

Goddesses...