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It had been the younger lions who had gone out to hunt, and they made a distinctive noise as they returned under the cover of night. Naturally they were excited to have hunted, and their pawsteps would normally be light and fast but occasionally go out of rhythm or otherwise suggest that they were in high spirits.

The same was true this time, except that on this night they whooped, laughed, and chatted. That was unbecoming of the royal pride and Sarabi wondered whether she should bring them up on this, but when she saw the party come into sight - five pairs of glowing eyes: four yellow and one almost white - she put the idea to the back of he mind. Perhaps she would, perhaps she wouldn't.

Albion virtually glowed under the starlight, his coat picking it up in a way that the sandier lions' didn't. He seemed giddy, his footsteps staccato and his head turning this way and that to keep track of the lionesses around him.

Strange,_she thought, _I'd have expected him to have blood on his chin.

She stood grandly, making eye contact with him and smiling an indulgent smile. The other lionesses noticed swiftly enough and their excitability calmed down a little. They didn't sober up completely but it dampened enough that she was able to communicate.

She took a few stately steps towards Albion. "Welcome back. Did you eat?"

"Yeah, I did!" he said.

She tilted her head, although she still had the smile on her face. "You don't have blood on you." She pitched her tone to imply that this was at odds with the fact that he said he had eaten. Complicit, she raised her eyebrows at him.

He looked bashful for a moment, and Wawindaji bumped his shoulder with her own. "I cleaned him up."

"Ah," she said, giving Albion an indulgent glance even as he looked all the more bashful. For the moment he seemed too consumed with his own self-consciousness to return to their initial topic of conversation, so Sarabi turned and led the group back inside the cave.

~*~

The wild depth of night gave way to the glory of morning. Sarabi hadn't slept much, for much had been on her mind and the first, russet tendrils of morning light had roused her. Blinking as her mind surfaced rapidly from sleep, she looked around at the others.

The other lionesses were still asleep, legs stretched out and paws and ears relaxed, eyelids and brows smooth with relaxation and ribs moving up and down.

Albion, on the other hand, was already wide awake and looked like he had been for some time. He noticed her looking and caught her eye.

Silently she stood, although she refrained from stretching until she was outside of the cave. He followed, stretching first, his teeth flashing in the deep shadows.

"Last night was amazing!" he said, skipping around her like a cub. At least he had the presence of mind to keep his voice low.

Sarabi kept her pace measured and regal, and discretely swallowed a yawn.

"Did you catch anything yourself?" she asked conversationally.

"No," he said, still skipping, his generous mane bouncing and catching the still-golden light. Despite this tinge of borrowed colour he would never look like a normal lion, but maybe that was no bad thing. "The ladies did. Zamani spotted a herd of antelope and Kipepeo told me what they were going to do to catch it. I wasn't sure what they were going to do at first but then all of them went their own ways and hid, and Mkali, Wawindaji and Kipepeo chased this one antelope. They caught it."

His recounting of the hunt slowed down then, as if he had just realised what he was saying.

"How was it?" she asked more gently, sensing his discomfiture.

He thought for a moment, and even his bouncing calmed. "I should have thought more about it. I've always eaten meat, all my life, but I never thought about it coming from another animal. It kicked a few times and then... and I wasn't sure what to do when it went still but then Zamani bit its stomach and tore it open and I realised just how hungry I was. Is that meant to happen?"

He gave her such an earnest look that all she could do was meet it for a few breaths. In those moments she held his gaze but her mind ran. Are you really so little of a lion that you have never killed?_It seemed unthinkable that an adult lion might never have made a kill. _What did the humans do to you?

It was natural that sometimes a lion didn't want to hunt. Sarabi had occasionally felt that herself. Sometimes she hadn't had the enthusiasm to stalk and chase down a prey animal. Sometimes she had been sick or had a sore paw or ankle. Sometimes she had simply not been in the mood, despite being hungry. At those times she had envied any creature that didn't have to work hard to eat.

But this? This was something else completely. The humans had robbed Albion of his very lion-hood.

"You're a lion," she answered him. "You were born to hunt. Yes, it was meant to be."

This relaxed him enough that he looked ahead, down the elephant-path they were walking, although he remained quiet for a short time, as if considering this.

As he retreated into his own thoughts she assessed his gait. He may not have been bouncing around any more but his walk still wasn't regal. He didn't walk like a king.

He glanced at her and caught her watching him, and for a moment he looked confused. In return, Sarabi looked sympathetically at him. She may not have been considering his existential crisis but she did understand it. Reasonably so.

"Do you think they can teach me?"

"You want to learn how to hunt?" she asked.

He paused as he committed himself. "Yes."

"Hmm," she said, smiling indulgently as she stalled for time.

Albion took the bait and smiled shyly at her.

Perhaps this was the leverage she needed. If she permitted him to learn how to hunt for himself then perhaps she could convince him to stand in.

"I can allow that," she said slowly. "But I need something in return."

He looked at her, not understanding. Then he did. "You want me to be king."

She inclined her head.

He looked away again. "I can't," he said, his tone making it clear he felt uncomfortable.

They walked along in silence for a short while. The sunlight had begun to warm up the air and the gold colouring everything was becoming brighter and brighter, turning the tree trunks from red-bronze to brown, highlighting rocks and herds in the semi-distance so they started to find light, shade and a semblance of colour, and all the while their shadows contracted towards their feet. The birds had been singing as the sun had started its ascent but now, now they were going about their business.

Eventually Sarabi spoke again. "You'd be surprised."

He looked across at her. "Surprised about what?"

"How easy it is."

He gave her a you-must-be-joking look.

"Much of it is in how you carry yourself. How you speak and how you look. Much can be achieved that way. And, Albion..." She paused mid-sentence to emphasise how much she wanted him to listen to her in this moment.

He glanced at her, clearly troubled but eager to obey.

She sped up and came around in front of him, turning smartly. They both stood still as she held his gaze. "You are an adult lion in the Savannah," she said, slowly and deliberately. "Convincing the birds and animals that you are the king is one thing. Convincing them that you are a lion and not a cub is something far more basic."

He blinked at her as if she had cuffed him, and if he had had any other personality perhaps he would have been offended. "A cub?"

"Yes."

For a moment he seemed unable to find a way to answer this. "I'm an adult!"

"I know you are," she said. "But you have never had to command respect."

When she said this, the tension broke and he laughed, apparently relieved that she had said this. "Oh, I was never about respect! I was taught," he said, talking fast as he warmed to his subject, "to jump from one pillar to another, to open my mouth when the ringmaster cracked his whip, to let him straddle my back, to roll over - all of those things. I prided myself on being able to follow instructions. _He_was the one... who commanded... respect."

Sarabi said nothing but knew that her expression said it all.

"Is... is something wrong?"

Sarabi tried to keep her tone level, but inside she was furious! "The humans taught you to roll over whenever they told you to?"

Albion looked like a chastised cub. "Yes?" he tried.

"And what if you had to defend yourself? What skills did they teach you for that?"

The white lion looked uncomfortable with her rage, restrained though it was. "I... well, I never had to."

Sarabi made sure she didn't blurt out, "Well, now you do." She managed to say it calmly and with her voice in check. The muscles in her shoulders and back were tense and she breathed deeply for a few moments before continuing. "Or it will only be a matter of time until you do. Albion, listen to me. You need to know how to look like you belong here."

He looked wounded once again so Sarabi corrected herself. "And you do. You are welcome in our pride. But every lion in the Savannah has to be able to convince the others that he belongs here, and that his territory is his and nobody else's. If you do nothing else, then you need to learn how to do that."

Albion waited a moment before answering and Sarabi guessed that he was gauging her anger. "What for, though? I don't want a territory."

Sarabi couldn't believe she was hearing this but by now she expected to feel infuriated and channelled her anger. Without breaking eye contact with him she leaned in to emphasise her words. "A territory means rights," she told him. "For hunting."

"Well-" Albion blustered, "the hunt was great, but I don't see how-"

"You were borrowing hunting rights from Simba," she interrupted him, and kept eye contact while that sank in. When she was sure he had digested this, she continued. "A territory means the right to shelter."

The white lion looked concerned, perhaps pensive, for a moment.

"And it means the right to mate."

That changed the atmosphere again. Albion often looked bashful, but this went a level beyond. For a long moment, he couldn't even meet her gaze. He mumbled something she didn't hear.

She dipped her head closer to his. "What was that?" she asked quietly and a little more gently.

"I... I've never. Done that."

She straightened up and appraised him. "There were no lionesses there?"

With great difficulty he met her eyes for a fraction of a second. "Not even female tigers. We were all males."

What's a tiger? She wondered, but this wasn't the time to ask. "No wonder you were so spellbound when you found us," she said, the fury gone from her voice.

Her mind was whirring. Sexual frustration was one thing, but this male had never seen a female before yesterday. Surely he had to feel eroticism. Did he simply not know how to express it? She looked from him to Pride Rock, some distance away.

Sarafina. Was this something she would be happy to help with?

Albion hadn't noticed and was squirming. "Can we forget about this?"

Sarabi paused. "Yes," she said at last, her mind full of thoughts and her tone making that very clear. "We should go back. But I would like to ask you for one thing."

The white lion looked more embarrassed than she had thought possible.

"Relax. I want you to walk home like a lion."

He relaxed a little. "Okay. How do I do that?"

She stood steady, all four paws on the ground, subtly indicating to to him that he should do the same.

He did.

"Keep your eyes on the distance. It keeps your neck and head high. That's the most important rule. Come," she said, and began the walk.

He followed beside her. After a few steps she subtly turned her head to watch.

That was an immediate improvement! His expression was somewhat troubled, perhaps even a touch frustrated, but that was understandable. He was used to rushing around like a cub. In fact, keeping his head low so that he could slip through the grass like a meerkat had so far been his style.

But with his head high his tail naturally dropped and his shoulders rolled, and with them, his mane bunched regally around his neck.

"That's good," she said. "Keep that up."

He didn't look comfortable with this state of affairs but he maintained the regal walk regardless.

"Your consort will walk by your right shoulder," she explained. "See how I keep pace with you."

He watched her out of the corner of his eye. "I can see," he confirmed.

They continued to walk in silence, and all the time Sarabi restrained herself from instructing him in too much else. She didn't want to scare him off.

Her mind returned again and again to his admission of being a virgin. Why was he not more sexually aggressive? Perhaps it was in his nature, she thought. That was not impossible. The male of the leopardlands pride, Ujuzi,had a thoughtful and unaggressive nature of his own, and maintained his position with a wit and wisdom that put even an elephant matriarch to shame. He had to, with the his territory overlapping as they did with the leopards.

"We're never going to get home at this rate," said Albion with a sigh.

For the first time, he sounded calm. Not cub-like, not bashful, but dignified and as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. That needed tweaking, but it was close to being exactly what he needed to project.

"We will, soon enough," she said, her own voice measured and calm.

The calmness they both conveyed was thanks to the way each stretched their chests as they walked. Having their heads high meant that they could breathe more deeply, and that gave their voices a sense of power.

Encouraged by this, she half-smiled. "A king and queen walk like this most of the time when they need to leave Pride Rock."

"How do you get anything done?" he asked.

That smile tugged at one side of her mouth, but she didn't look at him as she spoke. That was part of the act, to look ahead and only be seen to be making asides to each other. "If you walk out this way, it takes less time to walk back."

And then Albion laughed. The sound was so unexpected, so apparently relaxed, and so booming and deep, that Sarabi turned her head despite herself. When he walked like this, gone was the shallow laugh she had heard from him so far. Gone was the shoulder-shaking, the arched back and the cub-like expression. It was so much like Mufasa's laugh that it made her skin feel cold for a moment.

And yet... and yet it didn't make her sad. Instead she felt proud.

She would make a king of him yet.

~*~

The sun was high and beginning to heat their backs in earnest by the time they returned to Pride Rock, and it seemed that their arrival was anticipated.

Sarabi, with her head still high, noticed Zazu in one of Pride Rock's trees. He stretched forward the better to see this strange, white lion who walked by Sarabi's side, and then he spread his wings and coasted over to them.

"Do you see the blue and white hornbill?" she asked.

Albion nearly glanced her way but then restrained himself. "I see him. A friend of yours?"

"Our loyal aide. I'll introduce you. Keep walking, he'll fly around us to keep up."

"Good morning, your highness!" Zazu announced brightly.

"Good morning Zazu!" she replied, her voice warm and crystal clear. "I think for once, I'm the one who has news for you."

"Indeed," he said, eyeing Albion politely and with a vague hint of suspicion.

"Yesterday we met Albion during a hunt. He escaped from the humans."

"To the south-east?" he asked, sculling backwards through the air and looking at Albion for confirmation.

Albion glanced uncertainly at Sarabi, who suddenly realised that Albion probably wasn't good at reading his environment for directions. "To the south-east," she confirmed.

"You know about the circus?" Albion asked, looking up at the bird.

Zazu was goggling at him as if he wasn't sure what to make of him. "Why, of course. That's why I was away for so long, your highness," the hornbill continued, turning his attention back to Sarabi. "The humans had come to the edge of the Savannah. Maybe they were searching for you, master Albion."

That made Albion stop for a moment. Then, in response to a glance from Sarabi, he restarted his pace. "Maybe," he agreed. "Were they still searching?"

"They gave up," Zazu answered with a tinge of regret in his voice. The hornbill seemed to use this moment of regret as an excuse to go quiet. Perhaps it was indeed appropriate, but Sarabi suspected that Zazu wanted to talk with her in private and find out what was going on.

He wheeled above their heads as they continued towards Pride Rock but the distance was great enough that it would seem strange to be quiet for so long. "Zazu," she said pleasantly, "Aside from the circus, what is the morning report?"

~*~

As Zazu's report came to an end Sarabi asked for more information, superficially sounding curious for extra details about the bird's general news about the Pridelands but with the unspoken message to Zazu that she wanted him to stay close by. As she, Zazu and Albion approached and entered the Pride Rock cave Sarabi dismissed the younger lionesses from the cave. "Kipepeo, I won't be coming to the hunt today." She turned to look at Sarafina and made eye contact with her meaningfully.

She hoped her meaning was clear enough. To Kipepeo: You can leave the cave now, and take the others with you._To Sarafina: _Stay behind.

"Are you coming, Albion?" Kipepeo asked, trotting to the cave entrance on long, elegant legs. The rest of the lionesses, save for Sarafina, stirred into action behind her.

Albion glanced questioningly at Sarabi, who nodded her permission. He smiled, an overgrown cub once again, and joined the party to a chorus of excited whoops. Within a few breaths, they had left.

Once the hunting party was far enough away, Sarabi looked at Zazu. "We can trust him."

Zazu, true to his temperament, looked like he wanted to believe her but still had reservations.

Sarabi had expected this and lay down to talk about Albion some more. "Albion told us he had run away from the circus, and I'm glad that you saw evidence to support that, Zazu. He's like a cub in so many ways..." She looked at the ground between her front paws. "I'm not sure he would survive on his own. We've taken him in, and I'd like to teach him to play the part of the king until Simba returns."

"King?!" Zazu asked incredulously, turning to look out of the cave entrance at the now-distant hunting party.

Sarabi smiled. After Zazu's experiences with Scar, no wonder he was worried. She indulged him - for now, at least. "We don't want a rogue king coming in, and Albion's harmless enough that he won't try to take over even if we give him the role. I honestly believe he has no interest in power."

Zazu looked tired, as if he would have argued if he had felt he could but was duty-bound to comply. Instead he bowed his head and sighed, "Yes, your majesty."

Before he had time to fly away Sarabi volunteered a little more information, ostensibly to Sarafina. "He just told me what happened to him at the circus. They made him roll over and jump around at the command of a human. I didn't know it was that bad."

Zazu had stopped mid-take-off and listened, watching her with a mixture of sadness and surprise.

"But your majesty, how can _he_ever be a king?"

"You were convinced enough to be suspicious when you first saw him," she replied, a little sternly. "That was just with some royal walkabout practice. He was playing the part and that is all he's ever likely to do. And if he's going to survive life on the Savannah, he needs to learn the right skills. He doesn't even know how to hunt."

Zazu seemed to consider this, and then nodded. "A wise choice, your majesty." And with that, he spread his wings and flew away, his blue and white feathers turning bright as he emerged into the morning sunshine.

Which left only one more order of business. She turned back to Sarafina. Her friend lounged on a rock at the opposite side of the cave but looked ready to hear what she had to say.

"He told me something else this morning. He's never mated."

Sarafina's eyebrows raised and she cocked her head. "Oh!" And then, after a moment, "Why not? What kind of pride did he have at the circus - just other male lions?"

"He didn't really say," Sarabi said. "Although, he did say there were tigers."

"What's a tiger?"

Sarabi smiled companionably and shook her head. "I'll have to ask. Maybe one day soon." Then her expression shifted and she looked more serious, returning to the topic she needed to discuss. "We talked about a male lion's territorial rights and why they're worth fighting for, and he looked surprised when I mentioned mating rights."

Sarafina lowered her brow and nodded. "And what did he say when you did?" she prompted.

"He got embarrassed. He definitely feels the itch, but he doesn't know how to express it. Would you like to introduce him?"

Sarafina had a twinkle in her eye that told Sarabi her answer. "I'll take him out for a walk tonight," she purred.