The Day of Trouble

If I told anyone this now, they would laugh in my face, but I was a very small cub.
  My half-brothers and sisters were all between two or three weeks older than me, but still I was the smallest cub.
  This made my mother very attentive towards me. She hid me away from the pride. Honestly mother trusted no one. Especially the lionesses.
  “They are not my pride-sisters.” My mother growled to my father in one of his attempts to see me. It was traditional for a lioness to chase her cubs father for the first weeks after birth. He soon got to see me when I was a month old.Though, I was small and couldn’t speak the tongue, I could understand all that was said.
  “You should get to know them. Then they might listen to you.” Father said, during one of his visits. “They should listen to me because I am the Queen. But they spite me! I know what they say about me.” Mother hissed at him. Her claws were unsheathed when she got angry. It scared me, and if father wasn’t so big, It would scare him, too.
  “They say that I have not introduced my cub to the pride because I have no cubs. That I am barren, unfertile. I also bet they are all throwing themselves at you to renounce me and send me back, and give one of your sons the Ndona lands!”
  Father looked at me. He muttered something, I didn’t hear, but mother did. She grabbed me up and took deeper into the den.
  It would be another month before I left the Pride. Mother led from the den. It was called M’goma Hill. The hill was near Five Stones, a good hunting territory.
  As she led me from the darkness of underground and shade, I recognized things she told me about. The Sun. The dirt.  
  And the animals. There were so many of them. I tried counting but I got confused. “Uru, keep up.” Mother called. I didn’t see any danger. This was my land. No one would dare hurt me.
   But mother proved me wrong. She had sniffed something on the breeze. It made her  grab me by the nape of my neck. I looked to herd of Grants Gazelle. They started to run. I then noticed the black spots on a greyish-brown creature. Leopard. I thought. No, those are golden.
  More of the creature showed up. They cut off a small part of the antelope from the main herd. What came next was so gruesome. Mother shield me from it, for all I heard was the yapping and whoops of the creatures. When my mother allowed me to see. I saw the blood of the antelope. They were savaged.
 “Those are hyenas. And they are why you must never lag behind.” For the rest of the journey, I stayed right by my mother’s side, for I saw two small hyenas playing with the skin of a baby.
  After what felt like hours of walking, my mother led me to a thicket. The green bushes hid us. “Is this where the Pride is?” I asked, trying to figure how so many lions could hide in bushes.
 “Oh, we will see the Pride soon my cub. But first we must sleep.” Mother laid down, but I was still jumping and asking questions. “How many cubs are in the Pride?” I asked. “To many.” My mother responded. By now, she was in that middle place between sleep and awake.
 “Do you know their names.” “I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.” Akase growled to her cub, getting irritated. “Do you think they will like me?” “They will have to if you are to rule.” Akase said. “Go to sleep, Uru.” And as soon as she said the words, Akase was out like a light.
  But Uru wasn’t. She was still up. But she knew better than that. Akase would smack the cub with her claws sheathed. Uru tried to sleep but it didn’t work. She then saw a small little white mouse run across her. The little cub tried to reach it. She pounced on it, but by the time she reached the ground, it left. By the time she left the ground, it was already out. She became so caught up in chasing it, she did not noticed it led out her out of the den and right into the hands of trouble...