How Fickle My Heart [Mara]

It was summer when Kiara had decided to leave her parents house. It had been warm outside and it had seemed like a good idea at that time. To her, it had seemed like a big adventure, leaving her parents house behind and joining the group of people that called themselves Simba’s Pride. And in fact, it had been a big adventure. Not always in the way that Kiara had imagined, because she sure didn’t like the evenings when her stomach cringed because she didn’t get anything to eat that day, but over all, it was a lot of fun living with people her age instead of being bossed around by her parents. Of course, as always in her life, Kiara hadn’t thought about the consequences. Well, at least not about all of them. While she was good at dealing with hunger, since she never ate much anyways, she wasn’t good at all with dealing with the cold. And it did get cold that winter.

The mansion fortunately had a fireplace where a warm and cozy fire burned during the end of fall and the beginning of winter, but as the winter moved on and on (and in Kiaras eyes seemed endless), the dry fire wood diminished and the fresh but wet wood from the forest caused smoke instead of providing heat. So now the fireplace was cold most of the time and so was the house. Even the thick blankets that Kiara “borrowed” from her parent’s house weren’t enough to keep warm during the cold winter nights. During those nights, she often thought about going back home into her parent’s warm house and into her warm and cozy bed. But knowing that there would be no turning back afterwards, that there would be no coming back to the Pride, she stayed and kept on shivering. At least she had a roof over her head, a thing not everybody in District Nine had.

Kiara didn’t feel like going outside, especially because of the snow falling from the sky, but she had promised to go to her parents house and see if she could get her hands on some warm clothes or some food. Besides the fact that it was snowing outside, she never liked to go to her parent’s house. It just didn’t seem right, but for the people she now called her family, she went nonetheless.
“Don’t forget to bring food.", a voice called from behind.
Kiara rolled her eyes. As if she would forget why she left the mansion and stepped out in the freezing cold.

A movement in the corner of her eye caused Kiara to stop and look up. At first she didn’t see anything and thought that it must have been just a bird or a branch moved by the bitter cold wind. She already wanted to resume walking, when another slight movement caused her to take a closer look. She took a step towards one of the trees, squinted her eyes and tilted her head backwards.
“What are you doing here?”, she asked the boy who was trying to hide behind the branches and her voice sounded more unfriendly than she intended it to sound. But as always, she didn’t realize that because she didn't mean to be unfriendly. She just kept looking at Kovu, waiting for his answer.

It took a while until Kovu answered to her question, which gave her time to think about the little she knew about him. Kovu had left the Pride shortly after Kiara joined, but she at least knew him well enough to recognize him even though he tried to hide behind the branches. She never quite found out why he had left the pride and somehow that was something nobody really wanted to talk about. And, to be honest, Kiara had never asked anybody about it either. But now she asked herself if it was him, who wanted to leave or if Simba or one of the others had made him leave. She felt like it was somehow strange, that she never asked that question before. Kiara leaned her head backwards a little bit to be able to get a better look at Kovu, who was still hiding behind the tree’s branches.

He wasn’t what she would call good looking but he wasn’t especially bad looking either. His hair was shaggy and if she ever appeared on her parent’s doorstep with someone like Kovu, her mother would for sure get a heart attack. A smile appeared on Kiara’s face as she realized how much more attractive Kovu looked after she had had the thought of her mom freaking out. Kovu leaned forward and for the first time since she spotted him, she was able to really see him. “He does have nice eyes.” , she thought.

His compliment caught her off guard. Kiara felt her cheeks turning pink and the reason wasn’t that she just stepped out of the mansion and into the freezing cold. Now it was her, that didn’t find any words. “Uhm… thanks…” , she said and immediately wanted to smack herself in the face. She had sounded like a naïve, stupid little girl. There were like one thousand better and more sophisticated ways to answer to such a statement and she chose to answer with a shy “thanks”. Great! Kiara shook her head and tried to somehow improve the situation. Maybe he hadn’t noticed how taken aback she had been. “By the way yes: You do look a little silly sitting up there and hiding even though I have already seen you. Plus: My neck is getting stiff from looking up. So why don’t you just come down.” Kiara had to stifle a sigh of relief. This had sounded much more like the Kiara she knew.