Giraffes and Lionesses   :  Russell Albert





There once lived a giraffe and a lioness that fell in love.  Most times giraffes and lionesses don’t get along, are completely indifferent to each other; lionesses don’t like giraffe meat, and giraffes eat leaves, so the union of these creatures is the most unlikely of things…  
There are exceptions to every rule; even the rules that bind like glue the circle of life.  

One day, a giraffe, panting with thirst, came to a small watering hole.  The giraffe angled its sanguine neck to dip a purple-blue tongue deep in stilled water.  Lick, lick; ripples ringed ‘round the giraffe’s tongue – it should be noted, for it is unknown, that giraffes are deftly afraid of water, have ever-humble respect for sparkling pools of any size.  (Rivers, lakes and oceans turn a giraffe’s coat stark white – picture a mutated zebra, with a long, long neck.)  
Dip.  Sip.
Presently, a young, supine lioness stalked a mewling caribou.  This youngling had lost its way when it did not wake the moment its heard tramped onward; this calf did not know it was being hunted.
Sensing malicious intent, the giraffe raised its great neck with limber agility to view the area outlining the water hole.  The giraffe did not know what it felt; for the giraffe only became fully aware of the lioness as her golden, stealth form crashed with a spray of blood.  
A hunter must eat to survive; the visitor merely looked on, for a moment the giraffe thought something new was about to happen…  Life as usual:  death as the birth of space, of the experiential soul.  

The lioness had not noticed the giraffe’s presence, was breaking connexions of bone and sinew, gulping the caribou’s life force.  With a start, the lioness crouched into a low growl.  Her throat vibrated, her purr resonated as a warning for other would-be intruders.
Chew.  Swish.  
Dip.  Sip.  
The giraffe nibbled the leaves of a local mimosa (having said a hearty prayer beforehand).  In the atmosphere of a giraffe, the haze of pressure mutes reality; the giraffe knew no immediate dangers, knew that the lioness’ threat meant no thing.  

It was then when the gaze of a lioness caught the eye of a giraffe:  it was love.

Tentatively the duo paced, at length, the wading pool’s shore, a moist, sandy bank.  Moving with intuitive fluidity, the primal pull of the mating dance perpetuated this forbidden pairing.  Such winds had not stirred until this moment, this now.  
Their mother would not approve, but the giraffe and lioness had long forgotten their mother, only knew of one and one – jungle love.

Man’s science would render the offspring, the genetic potential, of an lioness and giraffe as pure impossibility.  But progeny they bore:  beautiful bi-pedal beings, ruffled with sun-lit manes, one short and jagged, one a river of flitting locks possessed with wind spirits.  
Their children played with the natural order as chimpanzees pick ticks and fleas, as the adder plays the part of death, as the Sahara keeps its secrets.
Sand and sunshine licked tufts of adolescent fur; the children were molting – a horrifying trial for concerned parents…  Where there had been down and perfection; there now shone pink gold.  The son retained a fuzzed halo of jagged, matted – hair; the daughter’s silken ringlets sang in echo, coiling to chamber and resound the wind’s language.  
The young grow old, this is how it is – the lioness and giraffe felt infinity had tricked them:  their children were not just growing; they were changing.
Grief swelled as parent and child faded into memory and time:  the lioness and giraffe were barren of life, would bear no more anima unto the world, would love each other as flesh, as nitrate, sulphur, and calcium; the son would spark life in the womb of his sister, the children, as one, would nurture a zygote of unknown hope – the beginning of an end.

The giraffe sighed with the pain of memory – a sudden spasm, a flood –, his lip then curled to rapture as memory layered to a deepened shade of joy:  falling rain, seeds sprouting, leaves budding to provide a home-cooked meal, the joy of parenthood.  The giraffe understood all things happen to happen again – he would love now, for evermore.
The lioness splayed a yawning tongue, claws unsheathed, now sheathed, eyes weary with depression, glazed with love:  once naïve of the hunt and hunger, once a mother, now sated in eternity.  The lioness curled into the loop of her ancestry, a prayer of forgiveness reverberating off the walls of her skull chamber – she had not committed taboo, she had committed beauty to a universe devoid of truth.

There once lived a giraffe and a lioness that fell in love.  This is their story.





Finis.