Contest Piece – Zaidi and Tendaji

Away from her son and desperate to get back to him, Zaidi’s mind was a whirlwind of confusion and pain. Every day her fellow guard and watcher is pleaded with for some reason to send Zaidi back home. She claims of pains, sickness and hallucinations in her desperate attempts to be returned to her family or cause them to bring her son to her. Her companion bares their teeth or just tells her that she will only hurt Tendaji’s chances in the future. This guard is one of Zaidi’s oldest friends and had been in a similar situation before when after giving birth to her child she had turned on it violently and rejected it. She can see the danger she posed to her own cub within Zaidi and does her best to calm her down and keep her away. Being close friends Zaidi is able to get through the initial weeks with tough love and a guarantee that her son was safe!

Eventually Zaidi begins to calm down and focus on her work, her friend convinces her that keeping guard duty efficient will make sure that no one dares to come in and cause danger for her son. Zaidi is excited to know that she IS helping her son in this way and often she reminds herself of the reason her mate was lost and why he had died for their safety. With time Zaidi becomes absorbed in her work and alongside her friend they become the most appreciated guards in their section; tough on rogues who want trouble and other problematic beasts. But not every guard for the Woodlands is as dutiful as Zaidi and her companions and a band of rowdy young adults from the Cursed Lands sneak in and do their best to cause chaos.

Zaidi is unaware of the situation until her father seeks her out and tells her that her son has been kidnapped along with a few other youngsters and taken to the Cursed Lands. Amongst the kidnapped is her friend’s daughter and the two mothers cannot help themselves but leave their posts to rescue the children. Even though it could mean exile for them, they’d be entering the right area and nothing was more important then getting their kids back….


Tendaji meanwhile has accepted this attack as part of his gloomy fate. He believes his removal from home means the struggles of his family will end, that his mother can return and no one will suffer. But Tendaji is confused by the young lions that have taken them. Although Tendaji is not old enough to be away from his family, these lions that are taking them away are only just starting to look like adults and he doesn’t understand why they’ve been taken. As they are marched into the wastelands and kept healthy and well-fed, Tendaji finds one of the young females amongst the kidnappers to talk to. It is only as he talks to her, originally ignoring her blinded eye, that he realises that a lot of these teens look scarred or just odd… one that had appeared to be a lioness was actually male, just without a mane. The half-blind lioness explained it to him.

“We’re runaways from different prides around… the adults either were hurting us or not helping us when we needed them. So we left the prides and set up a small group out in the exiled lands where the adults just won’t go. Our leader’s a really scarred up guy who’s only just grown his full mane now. He wanted us to go out and rescue other cubs in danger because of their parents.”

“Oh… I didn’t realise it was so common.” Somehow, being told the individual stories of some of the cubs taking them on starts to open Tendaji’s eyes and he starts to think differently. He starts to understand that what he thought was so bad was not actually as bad as it could be. Some of the other cubs with him who were also miserable for different reasons – sick parents, cheating parents or even widowed ones, also began to open up about their situations. Tendaji and these cubs all began to realise that they weren’t actually cubs in the most need of help and so Tendaji plans to solve the situation and get back home with his new friends.

When he meets the leader he’s startled by the number of scars on the animal and learns that this guy gained them after a pride takeover attempted to wipe out the rest of the cubs in the pride – he alone had survived. He was a kind and good-natured individual but he was not trusting about adults and that upset Tendaji. He tries to convince them all that the Empire is not like the lands they came from, that they’d be protected there. The other cubs with him explain their situations and how really they weren’t bad off because everyone looked after them. The older male is not so sure of their words until two adult lionesses appear to rescue the cubs.


Zaidi and her friend follow the tracks and are thankful not to find any dead cubs on the way. When they meet the group they embrace their children and expect to fight for them. Tendaji is in tears and apologises to his mother over and over, which she also does to reassure him that it was just her fear of loosing him. Zaidi and her friend are not threatened by the young adults who actually seem quite shocked by the admission of guilt and the fact the mothers came after them. No other prides had made an effort to rescue their ‘unwanted’ cubs. Tendaji then uses this opportunity to introduce the leader to his mother and get the adults to talk about the empire.

After a long series of deliberations on the matter, the young group of about twenty odd individuals questions whether they would be able to come to the Empire. Zaidi and her friend assure them a chance of meeting the Emperor and discussing the situation, realising that these cubs are not bad, just a little misguided. The group head back to the Woodlands and through there all but the missing cubs are brought to the Governor to be dealt with. The young cubs are sent to meet the Emperor and see what use he might have for them whilst the two renegade guards are dealt with.

It is decided that the Zaidi and her companion must return to guard duty for one more season before they are allowed to come back to their cubs. The two females do so dutifully and when Zaidi returns to her family and Tendaji, there are a lot of changes to deal with and the pair have to get to know each other again, but they are content and now Tendaji has thoughts on his own future and how he wants to help others.