Prompt Shop Bop

Laani - "Wondering"

from High School Musical: The Musical: The Series

"Seems like a part of me will always have to lose"

It feels like, no matter what decision Laani makes, she is always going to have to lose. Her pride believes her to be cursed because of Akilia, something she herself believed for most of her childhood before the ancestors spoke with her and told her otherwise, and it has completely changed the way her pridemates treated her; she doesn't know what things would be like for her if they had never been told that, but she knows she'd have lost a fundamental part of herself if they hadn't been fed that lie (even if she would love to live in a world where others don't think there is something dreadfully wrong with her and she currently has no way to expose the truth). Worse than that, however, is that, no matter what she does, some intrinsic part of herself will suffer. As the Learner Oracle of the Isle of Roses, she can never have cubs, and yet, she has gone and had three, two of which are literally within her pride. As a mother, she should have been there to raise her daughters and come alongside them whenever they struggled, but instead, she had to pretend that she had simply found them lost and abandoned, that they were not her own, and watch her mother raise them. Her daughters suffered not knowing who she was; it tore Jino apart, and that in turn tore Laani apart. No matter what she does, it feels like she is failing some part of herself, and she doesn't know what she can do to change that.

"Every single time I have to choose"

Every time Laani makes a decision, she is having to choose one part of herself over the other. The most prominent example of this is when she made the mistake of meeting with Diablo. It wasn't meant to be anything, and yet, to her horror, her choice to flirt with a stranger and see where the night led them had consequences that would make it very clear that she had broken one of the cardinal rules for the Isle of Roses' Oracles. She was pregnant. Diablo returned near her pregnancy, and she was able to give him one of their cubs when they were born, despite his obvious disinterest in their children. She had to trust he could raise their son, because Laani knew she wouldn't be able to properly raise a boy. However, even her two daughters, her precious cubs, could not be hers to raise. She had a choice to make as she looked at her little ones: she could give up her position as the Learner Oracle for the Isle of Roses, potentially even forfeiting her right to even be a member of the pride in the process, but raise her cubs as her own; or she could give them up, bringing them back to camp so that she could ensure someone would look after them while she could still keep an eye on them from afar to see how they grew as time progressed. No matter what, Laani would have to decide which part of her was more important: the Learner Oracle who had a duty to fulfill for the ancestors to reclaim the Isle of Roses from Akilia's mother's influence, or the mother who didn't mean to have cubs but adored them nonetheless the moment she saw them.

"Swore that it felt right but was I wrong"

Laani made her decision about her cubs, the biggest decision that she believes she ever has made (and ever will make) in her life. There was no way for the lioness to raise her cubs herself and to continue as the Learner Oracle, and she was heartbroken to have to chose one over the other. She wanted to raise her cubs; she wanted to be the mother to them that she never had growing up. However, Laani couldn't give everything up to take care of Jino and Ua. When the ancestors spoke to her, they made it very clear that she was meant to be the Oracle for the Isle of Roses; unlike Akilia, she actually had the ability to speak with the ancestors, and, as far as she knew, was currently the only one in the pride who did. If Laani forfeited her rank in the Isle of Roses to raise her cubs, not only would she have to struggle to fend for herself and her newborns cubs with no assistance, but there would also be no one within the pride that could actually commune with the ancestors to pass their messages. Granted, at the moment, Laani wasn't really in a position to do that, because no one would believe her if she said anything, instead assuming anything she might say contradicting Akilia was caused by her curse; however, when the time came, the pride would need her, as would the hero the ancestors had called for (though at the time, Laani had no way of knowing that was Cuore, who had barely even gained his rank in the pride). She could not turn her back on them, and so, as much as it hurt to do so, Laani was forced to give her cubs up. When she brought them back to the Isle of Roses, she introduced them as cubs she had found all alone, abandoned by her mother. She watched as her own mother was chosen to care for them, though the cubs never were raised to believe that Tenga was their real mother. It almost destroyed her, having to watch from afar without her cubs knowing that the mother they believed abandoned them was right there, wishing so desperately that she could love them. If it weren't for Sasa's support, the emotions probably would have overwhelmed her, especially as she had to watch Jino grow up jaded and cold to the world due to her desperation to find the mother who didn't want her. How could she ever tell them, when any confrontation they had would have her have to explain that she had to choose the pride over them? Any explanation Laani can think of would only deepen Jino's resentment, and the more she sees the outcome of her decision and how it affects her daughters (and herself), the more she wonders if she did what was right.