Months passed since the decline of Scar and his regime, and Simba’s had risen in its place, fulfilling every promise that his uncle had made and bettering them.
The lions had food and to spare, with the return of prosperity bringing back the smaller tribes that had been the first to flee from his uncle’s tyranny. Those that came back fed and multiplied, and all those above them fed upon them in turn.
The Pride Lands had grown fruitful and plentiful, and its people knew that he was the one responsible.
Simba lay as lions did, his paws stretched forward as he looked over the kingdom as best he could from the tip of Pride Rock. The plains and savannah spread out before him like a great pelt, a massive beast of a land that he ruled with a firm but gentle grip. From here, he could see the herds of zebra and antelope, the wandering hunters that were his pride, and everything else that called the Pride Lands home.
It was his, and he had been the one to save it.
He felt pride, and he allowed himself a moment or two to savor it. After all, he had done good things for the people. He was allowed to feel pretty amazing about it.
However, there was always the question of what to do next, what he could do to make it better, and that, unfortunately, left Simba a bit at a loss.
What can we do to make it better? he wondered as he looked upon his kingdom. Everything is as good as it was under my father, but…
But there should be more. He shouldn’t be settling for making it just as good as it once was. Like his father, he should strive to make it better than it once was, to make it into something that his pride and his people could be proud of.
But how?
No answers came to him, and he sighed, rolling onto his side as he looked up at the sunset sky. The light of the stars had yet to come out, though the sun itself had mostly set. He could see the edges of its light sticking out from the horizon, lighting the grass as if it had been set aflame. The shadows of the antelopes in the distance danced across it, and he smiled, despite himself.
For all that he had no idea what to do next, he knew that it would come to him. At least, for now, the world was better than it had been.
The lion king pulled his paws under him, starting to get up when a streak of light shot out from the top of the setting sun. It streaked across the orange sky, cracking the reddened heavens before releasing a rain of…something. It was gold rather than the blue of the rain, and it dropped for so short a time that he wasn’t sure that one could even call it rain. Yet, it fell, and he felt it upon his fur no less than he would have done a proper rain shower.
It faded, and the sun disappeared, the moon rising slowly behind him. Its silvery light replaced the fiery gold of the late night, and under that silvery gleam, things began to change.
It started with Pride Rock itself, the stone beneath him changing. Simba stood up straight, his eyes widening as the rock flattened beneath his paws. It stretched out behind him and up, the narrow top of the rock becoming flatter, while still having one spire that pushed out of the back and center, forming some sort of lifted section of stone.
A throne, came the word from the back of his mind. A throne for a king.
He had never heard the word before, but it was there, nonetheless. As the ‘throne’ rose from the rock, the stone itself changed shape, cracking and shifting along the path that led from the lower parts of Pride Rock up to the top. The half-flat, half-rough stone chipped away, shifting from a path only a lion could climb to a strange set of straight lines and sudden drops.
Steps, the shape defined itself as. It’s a set of steps. Stairs.
He didn’t know where the words were coming from, but they were not normal. They weren’t supposed to be happening.
The lion king rushed down the stairs, trying to outrun them towards the bottom of Pride Rock but barely managing to keep pace with it. The lions had already come out of the cavern, turning to look up. Simba roared for them to get out of the way, and they did as they were told, darting this way and that to clear a pathway for him.
As he darted between them, he saw the change rise from the rock to them. The two lionesses that had come to see what was happening gasped, rearing back on their hind legs, but rather than coming back down, they stayed that way.
Simba’s eyes widened as he watched them change, their forelegs pushing out, their paws becoming more…slender, the toes turning into something longer, finer.
Fingers, the word came.
They transformed quickly, but elegantly. Their long spines shortened and their hindlegs grew longer, pushing out a bit more fluidly, giving them more to stand on. Their tails became more elegant, too, longer and finer with the tuft of fur on the tip seeming more a badge of honor than anything else.
Simba could not look away as they continued to shift and change, a light coming into their eyes that hadn’t been there before, a glimmer of intelligence that made them seem all the brighter. They looked at their hands, turning them this way and that as their arms became finer, more slender, yet still retained the sense of power that they’d always had.
As they lost more and more of their feral traits, they gained other things. A grace as they moved, a dance-like sense of motion as they walked. They wobbled for a moment or two, then found their balance as their faces lost some of their bestial fierceness and became more kindly, more warm, though no less lion.
They turned about, and as they did, their torsos and hips were covered, a shimmer of gold and silver burning before his eyes before taking the form of long beads and leathers, something to cover the bulge of their breasts and other things below the waist.
As their paws touched down, longer yet still paws, Simba turned to run, following the changes on the ground, trying to outrun what was undoing what they had always been.
He broke out through the bottom of Pride Rock, rushing onto the savannah, but the changes followed him. The grass twisted up, becoming clay huts and small houses, things that had never been and he had never seen before, yet had the words for. They came to him, filled him with knowledge of his people living in them rather than in caves, of the world being explored on two legs rather than on all fours.
He pushed the thoughts out of his head, shaking his head as he pushed himself to run further, faster, to try and get ahead of the changes and warn those that were outside to get away.
The lion king chanced upon a zebra herd, but they were already caught. He paused, his eyes widening as he stared at their changes.
They rose up as the lionesses did, their arms and legs changing, still spindly but growing thicker in just the right places to hold them up, to allow them to stand and walk with their large, muscular bodies.
As the zebras spun and turned, their front hooves split, cracking along the darkness of their hooves to form fingers. They lengthened and cracked and curled, becoming thick and strong and dark, striped as the rest of them but dark along the palm.
They gained clothing as the lionesses has as their bodies adjusted to being upright, their heads throwing back again and again in their whinnies of shock and surprise, and as they neighed and brayed, other things began to come through.
Words. Intelligent words.
“What in the –”
“So strange, I could have sworn…”
“I thought we…”
“No, that’s too silly…”
The zebras continued to change, speaking in tongues that had never been heard on the savannah, yet, to the mind of the king, had always been spoken.
He shook his head in denial, springing forward, fleeing from the changes once more and leaving the two-legged equines behind, allowing them to reach for things that had not been there but they remembered dropping nonetheless.
Further and further afield he went, seeing those that were in the process of changing, and those that had already changed. The world about Pride Rock continued to transform, becoming something that was less the domain of lions and more the domain of two-leggers. The rivers had boats upon it, and upon them were his pride, changed to pilot them and guide them across the currents to catch fish for food. The heights of the hills had small towers, built of clay and sun-dried bricks to see what was out in the distance.
Everything was changing. Nothing was staying the same.
Simba was panicking, trying to flee, but he could no longer stay ahead of the changes. It seized him about the hind legs, and he fell as they began to change.
Throwing himself to the side, he watched as his legs started to shift, pulling backwards rather than staying beneath his belly. They extended behind him, some of the curls and bulges of muscle remaining, but the legs themselves extended outwards, getting longer, more stable, more meant to hold him rather than merely propel him.
As his paws lengthened, the toes growing thicker to form a broader base, he felt his spine collapsing, pulling down, taking away some of the length of his body. His arms were pulled up a bit closer to his head, his neck a bit shorter, though his mane no less long.
He didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that there was no way to stop it. No way to slow it down.
He grunted as he was made to change. No pain came, no reason for it, but it was constantly shifting how his body was arranged, how it felt. There was no easy way to adjust to that, so he made sounds, complaining and shaking his head as he felt his hands come into being, his fingers pushing out where paw toes had been only moments ago. He watched as they lengthened, as they became thinner and more articulated, able to move and grasp in ways that no lion had ever been able to do before.
He held one up before his face, staring at it, turning it up and down, around and around, finding the ease of movement fascinating and so…so different than before.
His face changed, just as the lionesses did. He felt it push and pull, stretching and changing to become less terrifying and more warm, more personable, more kindly. He felt his teeth pressing down against his gums for a moment before they pulled up, no longer the hunter’s teeth. Fangs, but fangs that had been adapted to a longer lifetime of less hunting.
Simba struggled to get to his feet, feeling something falling over him, something soft and smooth. He gripped at where it hung over his shoulder, pulling the cloth that had settled on him forward.
It was like a blue cloak, something that had been dyed, somehow, and had been laid over him as a cloak of office.
A cloak of kingship, he realized.
He wobbled as he got to his feet, the final bits of transformation taking him, adjusting everything. His tail swished and cracked the air like a whip, and his ears twitched atop his head, fuzzy and softly rounded rather than the pointed tips that a cat’s would be on all fours.
What happened? he wondered, slowly turning in place. What’s happened to me? What’s happened to my kingdom?
Elephants, hyenas, antelope, lions, and other species wandered about him, all of them moving with purpose in some direction or another. Some moved towards the rivers, carrying nets, while others pulled wagons, yet more things that he had never seen. They talked, completely oblivious to what had just happened to them by the sound of it.
More than anything, Simba wanted to reach out and tell them what had happened, what was going on, but he knew that they would refuse to believe him. If none saw what had happened, then why would they believe him when he said it had?
The lion king turned to Pride Rock, and his jaw dropped.
What had been the greatest thing in the kingdom had become something greater still. The great structure of standing and leaning rock had changed, becoming a great tower of stone with a staircase that spiraled around it, with a series of steps that led up to it. It was no palace, but rather a throne that looked out across the entirety of the kingdom.
Simba could not help himself. He fell to his knees, shaking his head, his hands held before him in confusion.
“How…how…”
“Simba!”
Nala. He turned, hoping to see one face that was still on all fours, but no. She had been changed as much as the others, pale-furred and wearing a blue cloth that wrapped about her waist and over her breasts. She approached him as bare-pawed as the others, kneeling down with an arm around his shoulder.
“Are you okay?”
“Nala…do you…remember?”
“Remember what?”
That was his answer, and it was as cutting as he had expected it to be. He grimaced, shaking his head as he looked at Pride Rock once more.
What happened to you?
“Stand up, Simba. You’re the king; people will ask questions if you’re on your knees,” Nala muttered, pulling him up.
He allowed it, of course. He was still too deep in shock to be quite able to fight her off, not that he was sure that he wanted to. He allowed himself to be led off to the side, and he and Nala sat down on some of the rocks that overlooked the river that ran beside the throne tower.
Simba looked up at it again, shaking his head.
If my father could see this…
Except…his father had.
Simba stared at the great rock tower, remembering something that could never have happened. He remembered Mufasa, wrapped in the same cloak that he now wore, sitting upon the throne and gazing out at the entirety of the Pride Lands. He remembered his father telling him that he would rule all of this land, and even remembered part of the speech.
“From the river-fishers to the watchers in the towers, from the plains-runners to the grass-weavers, your rule will guide everyone that you see.”
It was not the same speech that he had gotten as a child, yet it was no less memorable than the one that his father had given him as they walked across the savannah.
“Simba.”
“Nala,” he muttered. “Sorry. I’m just…”
“Are you remembering him?” she asked.
There was no question which ‘him’ she meant. He would never have fallen to his knees at thoughts of Scar, nor of any of the other males that had passed through the lands. There was only one ‘him’ that would bring Simba to grief.
He nodded, letting her think that his confusion was entirely due to grief. In a way, it was. He had been changed, his world transformed, and he had no idea how it had happened or how to turn it back.
Or even if he should.
The more he saw, the more he ‘remembered,’ the more he realized that things were better. No more did the lions hunt the smaller tribes; there was fish aplenty for the people of the kingdom, for the meat-eaters to consume, and the plant-eaters had gained much through the diversions of the river and the watering of the savannah.
Nobody went hungry any longer, and nobody had to die so that others would live. Nobody had to feed the pride.
They all fed each other.
He looked over his shoulders, looking at the towers that his father had built and he had expanded. They guarded the borders of the Pride Lands, giving them security that wandering patrols of lionesses never would have been able to accomplish.
And there, on the river before them, he could see that the two-leggers that had once been his four-legged subjects were happy.
More than that, they were peaceful. The hyenas, so long the hated enemies of everyone for their role in the coup, had been accepted once more. The predators and prey talked together on the banks and hunted together in the rivers, the former for their food, the latter to have something to trade.
They had come so far by pure accident. Did he really want to take that away from them?
“Simba.”
Nala shook his shoulder, and he looked back at her. She smiled at him, leaning forward to rest her chin on his shoulder.
“He’d be proud of you,” she said, looking up at the stone tower and the throne atop it. “He wanted you to be better than him, to have a better land. And you do.”
“Yeah…”
He hadn’t been the one to make it. Not this Simba, anyway. The one that had been here, the one that he had replaced, or become, or whatever had happened. That Simba had accomplished this. That Simba had managed to bring everyone together, to create a paradise on earth, a kingdom that would stretch across the savannah and bring a peace to the others that it encountered.
It was something that he could be content with, at least for a time. It was something that was not as bad as he thought, no matter how alien it was compared to the world that he had come from.
If he could never find a way to change it back…if he could never find a way to become what he once was…
Well, then he could live with this. Perhaps, one day, he would even consider it better.
Another story from the one that likes the uplift, feral to anthro stories, and no, it doesn't continue. It's just the change from one to the other.
Commissioned by ehh123
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