Lionesses 1 (Patreon)

Updated.

Oh, hooray! I wrote this story as fanfic for the amazing LotusSasha on Twitter. They have some beautiful lioness characters for a comic called RoyalGuard.

This scene is SFW, but the following links are NSFW:

First two pages of RoyalGuard 

Some more sketchy stuff of Sara and Thena 

I had posted this earlier with the names changed since I didn't know if LotusSasha would approve, but I've changed them back since apparently the fanfic is acceptable.

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Sara knelt in front of the tent with her spear just in front of her, always within easy reach. To her left, a wispy cloth woven from gold and black thread drifted lazily back and forth in the breeze. Her left ear flicked as a fly buzzed too close.

From the corner of her eye, she caught movement—not a threat, but the rhythmic play of light and dark from just within the tent’s entrance. Allowing herself a quick glance, Sara spotted her ward’s tail—the tip flicking in irritation.

“You know why my father selected you to watch over me, don’t you Sara?” asked the princess, her voice gentle and feminine. If the voice were a real thing, something tangible that Sara could grab, it would be spider silk—something so delicate that it would hardly exist at all.

Nothing in Sara’s world was that soft—not the tawny fur covering her back, nor the leather scabbard tied around her waist, nor the burlap bandages that wrapped her arm and thigh. For the briefest of moments, the warrior wondered what it must be like to live in a world of softness, a world of comfort. With irritation, her mind batted the thought away as her ear had batted away the fly. She would do her duty. She would guard the princess. She wouldn’t be distracted by daydreams.

“Can you hear me, Sara?” Princess Thena asked when she didn’t get a response.

“Yes, I can hear you, Princess,” said the warrior. She allowed herself a tiny smile. “Both of my ears still work.” She glanced over once more as the breeze blew the cloth over the tent’s doorway. Big, caramel eyes were watching her—eyes framed in cream fur, eyes that Sara suspected knew their share of sadness.

“Do you know why my father selected you?” the princess asked again. “Why he wanted you to look after me?”

Sara had wondered that as well. Sure, she was a fine warrior who’d shown great courage in battle, but that hardly made her unique. She could think of a half-dozen other soldiers who had been at least her equal back before she’d been wounded. Sara was still just as skilled and fierce as she’d ever been, but now … any of them would have seemed a safer choice.

She glanced to the side once more and had to pull herself away from those caramel eyes. She cleared her throat. “Because your father loves you very much,” she said at last, “and he wants you kept safe from harm.”

That was enough to make Princess Thena scoot closer, to peek her smiling muzzle past the curtain that separated them. “Well, well, Sara!” she said with surprise. “You’re far more politically savvy than I expected a soldier to be. Perhaps, when the prince of Maswa comes of age, my father should marry you off to him to forge an alliance between our kingdoms.”

Sara allowed herself a tiny chuckle. “I pray our king is wiser than that, Princess,” she said quietly. “My training is with the knife and spear. I’m sure you’ve been taught far more diplomacy than I could ever learn. Besides…”—Sara drew a deep breath and held it a moment—“I think that offering me to a prince would be more apt to start a war than an alliance.”

Sara touched a finger to the rough scars that crisscrossed the right side of her face. She’d seen her reflection in the pond when the dark waters were their stillest. It was not the face a prince could love—perhaps not a face that anyone could love.

“I think you overestimate my role, my personal role in this alliance he’s trying to broker,” said the silken voice. Thena smiled wider, this time showing some of her pearly white fangs. “He doesn’t expect me to forge the alliance with my savvy.”

Trying to change the subject, Sara asked, “So, why do you think your father selected me as your personal guard?”

“Because he knows so little about me,” Thena sighed. “The king isn’t worried about me being killed before I can marry the prince. He’s worried that there will be no blood on the prince’s bed sheets after our wedding night.”

Sara’s eye flicked to the princess before returning to stare straight forward. She could feel some of the fur on the back of her neck threatening to stick up, and she willed it back down.

She had never fretted about saving her virginity for marriage, but then again, she’d only ever wanted to be a soldier. Warriors seldom married, and they certainly didn’t concern themselves with staying unspoiled, with keeping themselves pure in case they ever married!

How pure could anyone truly be after killing enemies in battle? No. A soldier’s death comes quickly and without warning. They had reason to live every day as if it might be their last.

But the princess lived a very different life than Sara did. Even if Thena didn’t care about her virginity, Sara wasn’t shocked to hear that the king did.

“I don’t—” the soldier began to say.

“I saw the list,” Princess Thena said, “the list of candidates to watch over me. The general gave my father six names, and all five of the others had something that you do not. Do you know what that was?”

For the first time since the conversation had begun, the soldier turned her head to face Thena. Sara frowned. “Two eyes?” she offered.

To her surprise, the princess didn’t look away. Most others would. Market vendors would intensely study their change, their fish for sale, their feet—anything but Sara’s face—when she shopped for her dinner. “No, silly,” Thena said with her silky voice, “all the other candidates had a penis.”

“Ah,” said Sara. She turned her head forward once more, staring, unblinking, watching for danger. The silence stretched. A fly buzzed around her ear once again and she flicked it away. “But … you felt the king’s concerns were … unwarranted?”

When the princess didn’t respond, Sara glanced back. Thena had pulled the gold and black cloth aside, and now she was reclining in the doorway, resting her chin on her palm, her caramel eyes studying Sara, scrutinizing her.

“You said your father knows nothing about you?” Sara asked.

Princess Thena smiled. “Well, not nothing,” she said. “He’s right that I’m a sucker for muscles, for a soldier’s fierceness.”

Sara allowed herself a chuckle. “Trust me, Princess, warriors may look appealing from a distance when they’re marching in formation or endlessly practicing their drills, but you get up close…”—she shook her head—“and they’re not so pretty: sweat, grime, chipped teeth, notched ears, scars from ears to toes.”

“I like scars, actually,” Thena said. “Scars … tell a story of survival, of adventure.”

Sara allowed herself a smile for only a moment before forcing her face back into a more neutral set.

“But what my father can’t understand,” the princess explained, “is how much I want to lay a soldier down in my bed, trace all of their scars with my fingertips, and listen to the stories of how she got each one.”

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wMDaKWwByoAixhXTc-PfFU8LnXMZAw45dtG0DRWFERg/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?