Havaska I Prompts

The cub leaps into the air, landing on a leaf. Throwing her head back, she roars in victory.

"I've got you now, traitor!" she declares, shredding her leaf with her tiny claws.

"That's no way for a princess to behave!"

She turns to look at her horrified caretaker and shurgs.

"Of course it is! I'm behaving like this and I'm a princess so it is."

Her caretaker refuses to listen to reason though.

"Come inside right now Havaska. Your fur is absolutely filthy and you must attend court this afternoon."

Havaska rolls her eyes. "Whyyyy though? Dad's the only one talking, or mom. They never ask me to solve their problems anyway. So why would I need to even go?"

Her caretaker sighs. "Come along. Eventually you'll learn how a princess behaves."

Havaska obeys, though she still holds onto her prior logic. However she behaves is how a princess behaves and that's that.

-

She's larger now, almost 10 years old. And her caretakers (yes, she has more than one now) have begun to drill in harsher lessons. Don't attack things, don't get your white paws and head dirty, don't get any part of your body dirty. Don't this, don't that. And always, act like a princess.

Havaska does as they say and they proudly speak of how they've tamed the wild princess. But she laughs at them privately. She's become a good actress. Because during those times where she takes an extra long time at the bathroom (really, what do they think she's doing in there for hours?) or takes leave to do some private princess activity like try on outfits, Havaska does all the things she's not supposed to do. And while she does them, she hums and dances, twirling around the yard and punching hedges or splashing through mud. Her caretakers would be appalled but she manages to not leave a trace of the affronts, always returning to them as clean as can be.

But then one day they caught her. She had been doing this for years now and right before entering her teenage years too, she was caught. She had been out in the garden, redirecting a fountain pipe to purposely make the grass paths between hedges slick and muddy. Havaska took a few steps back, then ran and leaped on to the slippery path. Her stomach got caked in mud as she slid, and every so often she'd steer herself toward a bush so she'd have something to push off of. When she finally slid to a stop at the end of the water soaked dirt, she turned around and begun to dance through the garden, paws getting increasingly covered with mud.

And by the time she returned to the front of the garden path, her caretakers had been waiting for several minutes. Havaska tries to reason with them, then deny what she had done, but eventually she decided to own up to it because gosh dang it, it was clever alright! Her caretakers would hear none of it, and so she was punished.

-

For the next several years, Havaska is forbidden to leave the castle for anything but her princess duties, during which she is to be followed around by at least two guards or caretakers. And as the same with all extreme punishments for young lions, Havaska finds ways around them.

At night is the only time she is able to escape. She climbs out her window and heads out through the woods to some less than royal event. Sometimes it is the village, sometimes a local campfire with other lions. But she finds a group of lions out past dark and parties with them. It isn't much of a party really, except for the fact that the princess dances. Her movements are fluid and graceful, honed from the correct posture a princess is taught and her secret sneaky escapades from her childhood. The moonlight bounces off her snow capped head and reflects from the blue moon of her own. The other lions are always impressed at the princess. In the morning, she returns just before the sun rises, back in bed before anyone knows she's gone. Sure, her sleep suffers from her nightly excursions, but that's what she figures the price of freedom is worth. And the price in her eyes has slowly risen since the days of her cubhood.