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Kovu walked alone through the dark overhanging boughs of the forest. He was sexually frustrated and frustrated at Mipa as well for clinging to her old rationales and phobias. He was frustrated at himself for being unable to woo her. "I thought I could just ride in here and swoop her off her paws," Kondo scoffed at himself. "I thought I could be a hero..."

He wondered desperately what Mipa thought of him. What had his last desperate, impulsive, self-gratifying ploy bought him? She had relented at last, saying she believed that he was really attracted to her, but the tone of her voice...had she sounded frightened? He shook his head as he tore heedlessly through the brush, even scratching himself on thorns - he wanted, no, needed the pain - she'd told him often enough about the lusty rogue males who had dogged her back home. Now had he proven himself to be no better?

The forest was lively at night. The smells were welling up from the ground as the turf shed moisture. Most of the birds were sleeping but the trees were alive with monkeys foraging high in the branches along with the things that hunted them. The earthy loam and the living creatures surrounding him calmed the lion currently frazzled with issues deeper than the air, the soil and the tall trees that grew in it.

Descending into his instincts was one way Kovu knew to leave more complicated problems and worries behind. However, soon he found himself deep in the oasis, treading through ankle deep slime and not at all sure where exactly he was. Becoming more lucid, Kovu was relieved to find the tension had left his body - for now - however, he did not relish finding his way back through the marsh. Especially since it was dark and he did not remember where very many of Mipa's traps were.

He was so busy looking above and around him that he didn't look straight down. His paw struck something solid and heavy and he tripped, landing in the muck face first. "Phaw!" he spat and cough out the fould tasting slime, but soon had greater worries than a bad taste in his mouth. The thing that he had tripped over began to move.

Coils rose out of the water with surprising speed, great scaly muscular coils. Kovu jumped with all of the speed and strength that he could muster. The water thrashed all around. It seemed everywhere he looked, he saw more snake. "Everywhere but up!" He thought desperately.

He leaped onto the ripped trunk of a large tree and clawed himself up. It'd been almost a year since he last climbed a tree... throwing a paw over a low branch, he struggled to pull himself up. Below the large snake let out a reptilian hiss. It struck out with its heavy tail and whacked Kovu good on the flank, but it was already too late, his grip was secure. On his perch, Kovu looked down at the snake trying to rise out of the water and flexed his jaw before letting loose a deafening roar at it.

Bending its relatively slender neck in at least seven places, the snake withdrew from Kovu's outrage. The lion sniffed and rubbed his snout with a paw, his tail waving below him. "Better luck next time." he said.

"And swift speed to you." said the massive constrictor in the traditional reply to lost prey.

Kovu watched the large snake shift its heavy coils in the shallow water, rearanging itself section by section to sink just below the surface of the water. It was fascinating to watch... until Kovu realized that it was settling down at the base of his tree!

"Hey! Hey, snake!" Kovu called down.

The snake lazily lifted its head, small in proportion to its extremely large body, but still nearly as large as Kovu's. "Yesss, young warm-blood?" It asked.

"So... you're not gonna go look for food somewhere else?" Kovu asked, hoping the convince the snake to leave.

There came an irregular hiss from the snake who may have weighed half a ton or more. It took Kovu a moment to realize the old reptile was laughing. "Ssssss, I don't think so, furry one. There is food right here, after all. I've learned to be patient in my years."

Kovu shifted his weight on his branch, his claws extending into the bark. "It hasn't been decided yet who will be who's dinner. I might just decide to make a meal out of you!"

Again, there came that choked hissing laughter, slightly more spiteful this time, "Arrogent lion cub! I am much too big a meal for you, methinks."

Kovu shrugged, "Maybe, but I know someone who I could share you with. And she has a plenty big appetite!" the lion waved his tail in the air for emphasis.

The snake slifted its head higher out of the water, its green neck emerging like a scaled water plant. "Are you speaking of Her by any chance? She who puts herself above all other creatures here? The Fat One?"

Kove flexed his shoulders ambivalently. "Perhaps... What do you know of her, Mighty Scaled One?"

Flattery usually worked with reptiles, but this one was cannier than most and didn't lose its head. "Ah, a question for a question, young King." said the snake. "And as your senior, I claim right of first question..." Kovu sneered that's not fair, reptiles live longer than mammals. Pompous snake... The snake asked, "Whence do you hail from, lion cub?"

"A wasteland." said Kovu with a slight sigh. This was the only way to get any answers. Any information to keep from bungling again with Mipa was valuable. "Just outside a place I'm sure you've never heard of, the Pridelands."

"Hmmm..." hummed the snake noncommittally. "And your question?"

"What do you know about Mipa?"

The snake curled its neck around. "I know some things, you merely have to ask the right quessstion."

Kovu wanted to jump down and try his luck throttling the legless freak. But he knew better than to take on the giant constrictor directly. Seceding to the reptiles game, he just asked the first thing that came to mind, "Well, how did she get here? Can you tell me that?"

The snake's tail rose above the water and splashed the surface several times. "Such insolence!" it complained, "I've grown too large to leave the buoyant marshy waters, even when the rains come to the desert beyond. I know only that the Fat One came in from over the mountains..."

"That doesn't help me at all!" Kovu snarled, "I want another question!"

"Then maybe you should think more about what you asssk before you open your mouth, lion cub." the snake hissed, "I can only tell you that she came to the oasis, nigh ten moons ago, from over yonder cliffs."

"What? Ten moons ago? That's less than a year!" Kovu exclaimed, "Are you telling me Mipa hasn't even been here for one year?"

The snake hissed in response, recoiling. Kovu dug his claws into the bark. That was an important bit of information... with a lot of implications; the least of which being the rate that Mipa has been putting on weight even before Kovu arrived... "For my next quessstion..." started the snake.

But Kovu rose and turned on his branch. He was already trying to see how he might get to the other side of the tree in a hurry. "I'm sorry, Oh Great Leggless One, but I'm done playing your game. I've got a girlfriend I need to see..."

The snake hissed angrily at the breaking of their contract, or more probably at not winding up with more questions answered at the end. It began to move, shifting its coils lazily in the water. Kovu wasn't fooled though to mistake lack of speed for lack of intention. It called up spitefully, "You are a fool to court her, hot, ambitious male!"

"Yeah, I've heard it before. She's cursed and whatnot." rattled off Kovu, still looking for a branch to jump to that would take his weight, even briefly.

Below, the snake sputtered hissed laughter. "You do not know as much as you think, Lion Cub. She is not cursed, but her affection will still be your doom. Her mate will not be happy to find her scent all over you."

That froze Kovu to the branch. "Mate?" he asked, turning.

He looked to see the snake's head just a few feet below his own; it was bracing its bulk against the tree trunk. "Yesss," said the snake, it's lidless eyes seeming to be gaping chasms now, "and he is a jealous lover from what I hear..."

Kovu looked, fascinated into the bottomless depths of the snake's eyes, even as it struggled inch by inch, higher and higher towards his perch. By chance, it slipped against the tree where its thick body was leaning. The resulting jerk of the snake's head broke the trance. Kovu's eyes darted and the snake reacted quickly, jutting its head forward, open mouthed.

The snake grazed his left paw with its hundreds of needlelike teeth, but Kovu pulled away. Hardly sparing a moment to look, he leaped from the branch. He collided with a new perch a quarter of the way around the tree, but it immediately began to fold under his weight. Kovu was lowered to the ground, the snake busily arranging itself to get at him. Kovu wasted no time and ran. He let his paws lead him to dryer ground and somewhere behind him, the snake gave up the chase where the water ended.

Some time later, Kovu was licking his paw clean of muck, two fairly deep cuts would add a couple of parallel scars to his repertoire. He thought about what the snake had told him, wondering how much of it was true. He knew only one thing for sure, he wanted to go back to Mipa, he wanted to squeeze her luscious softness and never let go.

* * *

Mipa hugged her belly after Kovu stomped off down the the mountain. She was glad to have him and his pungently male scent leave, but at the same time, she felt terrible. I drove him away, she thought. With my recalcitrance and thick-headedness, I drove him away... She pressed her forepaws hard into her soft tummy which bulged just below her rib cage now, even on an empty stomach.

Looking down at herself, how her waist bowed out gratuitously and her torso was round, smooth and barrel shaped like a sausage, the lioness was filled with anger, hurt and confusion. She brought her closed paw down on the curved surface of her belly, hitting it and shouting. She hit her belly again and again, each time the fatty surface absorbing the shock and rebounding with a wave she felt over her whole body. When a bruise formed on the skin, Mipa whimpered with the pain of it and had to stop. Then she huddled herself into the tightest ball her flabby body would allow and cried so much that she began to stain the fur at the corners of her eyes. She felt horribly alone.

"Kovu..." she cried. His name was both sweet and sour on her tongue. She could scarcely believe what he had done less than an hour before, pressing himself against her so she would feel his...

She shuddered and shut her eyes tight. A dozen unwanted memories pushed into the darkest corners of her psyche emerged, unwanted, pressing against the edges of her sheltered consciousness and threatening to spill out their blackened contents. Mipa knew about her past experiences with the rogue males, in a vague sort of way; the memories welling up, however threatened to sink her raft of willful forgetfulness.

Paws groped her brutally, a heavy, heaving weight on her back and the power contained therein. Her knees ground into the dirt as she was forced to the ground when he finally caught her. The hot stiff thing he shoved rudely between her thighs...

Mipa cried out, holding her head in her paws. She yelped and rose, trying to banish unwanted memories back into abyss of her subconscious. She walked, or rather paced around the roughly circular glade in which she made her home. She took deep even breaths and tried to keep her eyes open. She was afraid of what she would see when she closed them.

As she walked, she could feel the weight of her body pulling at her; it was unavoidable. Her gut wobbled left and right as she moved, waddling for the girth of her torso. Every step sent a small shiver up her blubbery flanks as they shook with the shock. Her chest also shook, as well as her neck...even her thick thunder thighs shivered with her steps. Mipa could feel the discomfort in her hips, knees and elbows as her joints were called on to support her mounting weight. The subtle sensation grew inexorably with time as her weight had risen and continued to rise. Her weight had been worming its way into her life in a way that it hadn't out on the savanna. Since coming here to the oasis, her weight had sky-rocketed and she'd become more sedentary in response, little by little so that she hardly even noticed it. "It seemed so harmless..."

And there were other issues as well...dark motivations wriggling through her thoughts, unglimpsed before, but now visible, if only in outline and texture. Mipa shook her head, feeling like she didn't even know herself. Her waistline had begun to grow with successful catch after successful catch. She'd been a proud huntress and there was no one here to deride her anymore...but still, those others were never far from her thoughts. Her frame went from pudgy to overweight, and more lately clearly obese, all so quickly! It was only three or four more moons before her first anniversary of freedom. Something told Mipa, as she struggled with her own thoughts, that there was more to the story than a simple abundance of food... It had to do with her constant cravings...

Mipa slumped in mental exhaustion. She just wanted all the figments and phantoms to leave her alone. She wanted to go back to her daily routine, the careful weaving, the diligent setting of traps, the simple pleasure of food and a full tummy... But that was not all, there was more now, there was...

"Kovu..." said Mipa, raising her head. She said the word with longing now as the shroud veiling the world before her eyes abated. The shadows lifted from around her, removing their claws from her mind and sinking down below where they belonged. Mipa thought that she must be insane, living on a blissful little island of ignorance above a dark ocean of her own thoughts and feelings. But she knew that she would be even more insane if she dared to look.

"And things are different now." she thought. "Kovu is here now, for better or for worse, and he's not going to leave." The black maned lion had stormed off, but she knew he would be back. And she knew, in her heart of hearts, that he was different. He'd upset something deep inside her just now, throwing her buried assumptions and premeditations into unease, but...

"Kovu would never do that to me. He's different." she said aloud. "...Maybe he can fix me..." she added, moving her mouth around the words without speaking.

On shaking knees, she stood with some effort, battling gravity to lift her expanded bulk. She felt her belly against her knees where she stood, new evidence of her ever-growing size. Her increasing weight, however, seemed a small issue at the moment. "I've got to find Kovu." she said. and waddled down the slope out of her glade and into the jungle below.

* * *

Kovu limped through the dense growth which surrounded him as if attempting to entangle him. He had an image in his mind of a giant carnivorous plant slowly manoeuvring him into some acidic vat of stomach acid with the patience of seasons.

It surprised him that he still had not found his way out of the tangle of overgrowth, given that the oasis was of a finite size, after all. But then again, he'd zigzagged a lot during his flight from the giant snake. Only on dry land had he seemed safe, the lack of water speeding his paws while hindering the snake with its great weight. Only just as quickly as he'd found his way out of the marsh, he became trapped in this explosion of life.

Kovu pushed leaved as broad as his shoulders away from his face, spluttering. He forced his paws through dozens of stems to make a single step. They pulled at him like hundreds of ropes of lilliputian settlers below. "This is bad..." he thought, suddenly uneasy. "This isn't right..."