Username: Clementine Cloud
Lion name: Steadfast
Lion gender: Male
Pride:
The Forgotten ValePride status: Resident and Defender of the Vale
Prompt: [726/750]
Steadfast’s old pride was one of competition. Everyone fought and sparred and trained to become the best. The strongest. The males would battle it out almost every day in the training fields, often with the lionesses and younger members of the pride watching on in awe. If they weren’t training they were boasting, each telling stories of how they defeated each other in the most outrageous manners. Or they were tending to their antlers, you see in this pride, both the lions and lionesses grew antlers, but the lion’s antlers typically grew larger and were viewed as a status symbol. In this pride how big and impressive your antlers were, and how strong and good you were at sparring were the only things that really mattered. It was all vanity. Vanity among the fighters, the lionesses who fawned over them, and the cubs who idolized them. Even those with regular jobs within the pride couldn’t stop thinking and talking about when the next big sparring matches were and who they rooted for. That was their culture. Even the lions far beyond their youthful strength would share stories and mentor their favored “champions” in order to extend their legacy.
Steadfast was once like these, he fought and he trained to become the strongest and best fighter he could. It’s what he was told he would do since he was a cub, it’s what all of his “friends” did, it’s what everyone wanted for him. And so he did. But, he was no champion. In his pride, Steadfast was middle-of-the-road in every single aspect. He wasn’t ridiculed like the weakest, and he was strong enough to remain part of the fighter’s groups, but among them, he was little more than a training dummy. Steadfast often grew tired of the monotony that was his life there, every day was all the same. When you’re not particularly good at the one thing people cared about, but not bad enough to be excluded completely, you’re just stuck. Stuck in the middle of the road.
The strangest part about this culture of fighting and training, at least, In Steadfast’s mind, was that they only ever fought each-other. Even in the tales of old that the elder lions would tell, all of their great victories and defeats, were among other lions just like themselves. Sometimes they were from other groups or subgroups, but their cultures were nearly identical between them, the only difference was in location. And of all of these stories of great battles, the only thing that ever started the fight was one side boasting or challenging the other because they thought themselves the strongest. It was just the same as the one-on-one sparring they did within his pride, just slightly larger scale. The only thing they ever seemed to defend was their own ego. Steadfast was disappointed in the overwhelming vanity of his entire pride, but looked for the best in them, perhaps they had just been lucky in that they’d never really had to defend their pride against an actual threat. But that luck soon ran out.
It was chaos. When they attacked it was sudden, but not so sudden that his pride was completely scattered. Or at least, that's not what should have happened. The rival pride was organized, they worked together in their attack, but they weren’t so great that Steadfast’s pride couldn’t defend against them. But all Steadfast’s pride did was run. Of all the fighters, the strongest members of the pride, their “Champions,” not a single one of them stood their ground and fought. They all fled, leaving the weak and slow in their dust, they only cared about themselves. All of that training, all of that preparation, and what was it for? Steadfast tried to stand up against the invaders, but he was alone. He was outnumbered. If even just a few of the other fighters had stood with him, they could have been strong and defended the pride. But he was alone. He had no choice but to flee as well, he couldn’t protect everyone by himself, and as he ran, he thought about his pride and just how sad their fate was, and he made a promise to himself that from then on he would be strong not just for himself, but for others. Because true strength is when you stand together.
