A/N: This is my first Lion King fanfiction that includes a human that isn't trying to sell cubs on the black market. Anyway, I have read some brilliant stories of a similar classification,
and if I can, I will make it as original as possible. Some stories begin with a car/plane crash or take place in a far-set year. However, I will put my own ingredients into this recipe for what nearly always ends up being a terrific story. Enough of my words, let us get on with the story, which starts in the point of view of the main character.

Update: I keep getting ideas to make the story better. Sorry if these updates annoy you, but you're welcome if they please you in the end.

Like larceny of my slumber, my somewhat muscular body was negligibly jolted as an electronic, droning sound of my alarm clock extracted me from my eight-hour sleep. As I glanced at the date on my Samsung Galaxy S7 smartphone, my weariness was contradicted by my excitement.

11 November 2016

It was on this day that I would be meeting with my girlfriend, whose name was Abigal Amahle Williams. She lived in the city of Johannesburg in South Africa. Our relationship had lasted for several years, having met at the University of Worcester, where we both participated in a Politics course from 2013 until the summer of this year. Abigail returned to her country of birth, on the condition that I would visit her before the year ended. Alas, it took longer than I had intended, but I had finally arranged to meet with her.

But before I say anymore, I suppose I should tell you about me, the unlikely protagonist of this most unlikely story. My name is Alexander Richard Maximilian, but I am referred to as 'Alex' only. I was born in London on St George's Day in 1995. While I was brought up in a middle-class family, that did not protect me from the cruelty that life can deliver.

In 2005, I was caught up in the 7th July bombings in London. This heralded several years of P.T.S.D. and a self-inflicted attempt on my own life. And as soon as I thought I was regaining some control, a sense of normality in my life, I was excited at the prospect of becoming an older brother, along with my twin brother Lewis, but one morning, I woke up, performed my morning routine, and saw my brother crying on the stairs.

Our mother had suffered from eclampsia and died later that day.

I was looking at a small, framed picture of our family, a professionally captured photograph of my father, mother and twin brother kneeling in front of an unalloyed white background.

My father, Christian Robert Maximilian, was to the left of the family and had dark brown hair, which I inherited. He had the eyes of a merry, compassionate and loving gentleman, with a broad smile that said nothing but compliments to those he held dear but would defend their honour from those who would besmirch them. He had a slight hump in his nose, but as he had always persevered to fall outside social conflict, no matter how petty or violent, I knew that it was inherited. But now, his temple was peppered with grey and thinning hairs. His formerly firm, vivacious, cheerful face was now stoic, aged, bleached and distended and sunken by grief and depression.

To the right of the back row, was my mother, whose name was Laura. She had light blue eyes, long blonde hair and a toothy grin. Her facial features were delicate, radiant and flawless. Her face was etched with the lines of a semi-permanent smile, and her feminine face was something you couldn't help but stare at. It was satisfyingly symmetrical, and her features were proportioned almost perfectly. Her smooth eyebrows arching with a slight edge over her round, bright blue eyes that were carried by elegant cheeks with no clear bags beneath her eyes, her petite mouth with marginally thin lips. But hers wasn't a face I found attractive, but one that had brought warmth to my heart and a warm embrace of safety that brought peace to my mind. But that was no longer the case, not for the last eight years.

I missed her for every second of the long days without her. It was a pain that I now didn't know what it would be like to live without, as much as it weighed on my heart. The moment when she would have been void from my life for longer than she had been within it was fast approaching. I wiped a tear from my cheek as I finished packing for my visit to Johannesburg.

"Morning, Alex," Lewis called from outside the door with a voice, empty with weariness and strained while he yawned, stretching his right arm and his left arm bent. He must have woke up a few minutes before me. His short blonde hair was unkempt from his movement in bed. Like me, he had a face that was somewhere between the gauntness of a teenager emerging from the forest of puberty and the completed frame of an adult. His skin was firm with youth, his face arranged

"Hey," I replied with a slight smile. Even as adults, seeing each other would automatically improve our mood.

Lewis leaned against the door to my room. "What time's your flight?" he asked.

"Eight this evening," I responded, to which Lewis replied with a nod.

"I hate to admit it, but I'm going to miss you. Your time at Worcester," Lewis began, referring to my education at the University of Worcester. "It made me realise how much I take you for granted. I.. when you tried to..." Lewis pursed his lips as he tried to restrain his sudden emotional episode.

I promptly rose to my feet and walked over to my brother and wrapped my arms around his neck.

"I'm so sorry!" he wailed. "I'm sorry I haven't been the brother you needed," he lamented.

I caressed the back of his head and kissed his cheek. "You've done the best you could do... and more," I assured him before we pushed away from each other slowly.

"Don't go," Lewis shook his head.

"I can't not go. This has been a thing for half a year. I love her. You can't make me choose," I replied.

"Then you must promise me this," he demanded as he grasped both of my hands. "Come back," he said softly.

I nodded. I kissed the hands with which he held mine before I put a warm palm to his cheek, and his response was to keep it there, as if memorising the texture, the warmth. My face.

"Something's going to happen. Something that will keep us apart for far longer than ever before," Lewis declared. "I had a dream, and in it, there was fire... there were stars... and lions," he added.

I looked down slightly, before looking to the door, on which there was affixed to it a nameplate that read my full name: Alexander Richard Maximilian. Above it was the family's coat of arms, a golden lion rampant, grasping in its right paw, a naked oak tree of seven branches, on a sea divided by red and blue.

"I no longer fear the future. We entered this world together. I believe we shall depart it together also," I said. "If I lived in fear of the future, that would be no life at all. If I lived in fear of the past, there would be no future for me," I added.

Lewis insisted that he accompany to the airport. We took the Tube to the terminal. Borough to Bank on the Northern Line, then the Central Line to Lancaster Gate, making our way on foot to London Paddington, taking the Heathrow Express to the station at Heathrow.

"Lewis, I'm twenty-one years old, I have a university degree, I'm pretty sure I can look after myself," I sighed as our bodies shook and swayed on the rattling, rumbling train.

"I just.. want to make the most of the last few minutes we have together... until you come back, of course," Lewis chuckled. I looked at him with a smirk.

"Really? When I left for Worcester, you weren't like this," I commented.

"C'mon, Alex. I'm trying," he sighed.

I nodded reluctantly. I was being harsh. I put a hand on his shoulder.

"I love you, and there is nothing I take for granted less than you looking out for me, but you have to let me go. Attachment can actually harm the progress I've made," I said.

Lewis looked down to opposite pairs of feet on the patterned floor.

"Alright."

Our conversation ended shortly before the train's arrival at Bank tube station, and as the train was decelerating, my attention was earned by a group of female passengers who could have been not much older or younger than me and Lewis. I could not discern what they were saying over the rumbling and the squeaking, but it brought them amusement. And by a happy chance, when the woman sitting nearest to me but on the opposite side of the carriage turned her line of sight to how it was by default, it encompassed me looking at her, and instead of looking away out of awkwardness, when she looked at me, there was no reaction from either of us. For me, it was as if there was a temporary, physical barrier that prevented me from looking forwards at my own reflection in the black windows. And for her, I could see in her eyes a knowing that this would be far from the last time she would see my face. The proportions of her face and her slightly almond-shaped eyes suggested that she had very near East Asian ancestry. As an honest man, I would admit that her skin looked faultless and was pleasant to look at, but as an honourable man, I forced myself to look forward for the rest of the time we shared the train.

After the journey, Lewis and I went our separate ways outside the entrance to the Tube station at Heathrow Airport.

"I sincerely hope you enjoy your time over there. Tell Abbie I said 'hello,'" Lewis said before we pulled each other into an embrace that lasted for a few moments.

I looked into his eyes. I saw the same look of the child afraid of losing his brother. The look I saw when I lost consciousness after I attempted to end my own life. Each time he would shout my name, even in innocent situations, I couldn't help but remember his shriek of horror and helplessness.

"I love you," I smiled.

"I love you too," he replied as a tear formed in his eye.

I then walked towards the departures desk, glancing once behind me to see my brother waving at me, to which I replied by raising a hand in return.

I dragged behind me my black and grey suitcase to the desk and placed it on the scales. It was safely within the weight limit. The young female till attendant who had slightly tanned skin due to her make-up, blonde hair and blue eyes asked for my passport and travel documents, and I duly handed them over the desk. She checked them over with an unconcerned expression before looking up to me and smiling.

"Here's your ticket," she reached over the desk to hand over my pass to board the plane and returning my other documents.

"Enjoy your flight," she said, and I responded with a smile and a nod, before gratefully taking the items from her hands.

After successfully passing the security checks and purchasing food from the duty-free store, I strolled down the temporary corridor that connected the plane to the terminal, and after a long wait due to unfavourable weather conditions, the BA11216 flight was cleared for take-off, and I decided to rest my eyes not long after take-off.

My sleep was peaceful enough, save for a concerning vision that woke me up, in which I saw the face of a lion. I thought about the apparent dream that Lewis experienced, and even though I attempted to fall asleep again, the task was made no easier by the fact that a whispering voice within my head said: "Your coming to us is as the coming of our victory and suffering."

I was sitting on the left column facing towards the front of the plain, on the seat further away from the window. After I scanned my surroundings to reacquaint myself with my surrounding environment, my eyes fell on a boy who stood a few yards from me down the aisle. He looked to be barely under ten years of age. His brown hair grew in a neat spiral from his crown, forming a natural parting on his left side of his head. His face still had the slight corpulence and rotundity of a child, but could still be warranted with adjectives such as cute. And then it occurred to me that instead of a quick scan of a stranger's features and turning away in slight embarrasment, we were now staring at each other. I could even see in his eyes that he had known much misery, suffering and tragedy in his short life and that this adventure was a mere respite. He was alone, isolated. I knew those eyes. They had been mine not long ago.

Without warning, I was almost launched from my seat as my attention shifted to the seats in front of me, shivering as I would after emerging from an icy body of water. My body shook more violently than I would have liked and the signal for an announcement was played. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are about to experience some major turbulence, please remain calm and strap yourselves in," the reassuring male voice said. I did as I was instructed, so did everyone else.

Unanticipatedly, a resplendent flash of lightning deprived me of my sense of sight momentarily, and for the moments following, I could see the plane as if I was peering through an invisible plane window following a blink. It also replaced the sound of panicked passengers with a droning, ringing sound that brought agonising discomfort, but such was my body's petrification, I could only respond to the grief caused by the sound by gritting my teeth and clenching my eyes.

Mercifully, the noise faded away like a receding flood. But what unnerved and disconcerted me the most was an intense light that hovered outside the plane, like a celestial avian. I didn't notice that nobody else regarded the light. Through the windows, it formed spotlights like dappled moonlight. I was caught in its light, and it bathed me in what made dust look like diamonds. It radiated my frightened body, it enveloped my soul with courage and security. For a brief moment, I had forgotten what it was to be afraid and remembered what it was like to be held in my mother's arms.

I'm not sure if it was the realisation that my mother remained dead, unable to carry me from this situation, but my body seemed to increase in mass, as grief wrapped around my chest and penetrated my mind as a sudden depression weighed down on my shoulders like a pair of hands pulling from behind me. I could only fall into the chair, having been perched on the edge of it when I was showered with light. Suddenly, a shadow crept into my line of sight, and mental darkness bloomed in my mind like a poisonous flower of some sort of deep-rooted weed. And almost as swiftly as the darkness developing, a mass of untainted blackness caught my sight before it crashed into the engine and seemed to seep into the wing, like a symbiote.

About a minute after the announcement, the carpet of white cloud seemed to rise. The sky was growing into the colour of a Pacific blue, with the sun cresting the white floor of the blue room. A seriously concerning event then happened. The engine grew an endless tail of black smoke, and as the smoke thickened, a great flash and bang deprived me of hearing and seeing the panic that now ensued.

When my sense of sight returned to my eyes like a tide receding from a bay, the first thing I laid my eyes on was the child, who was now crying tears of fear and confusion and was being comforted by his mother. The ringing in my ear was replaced with the equally torturing and volumous screaming of terrified passengers.

I remained surprisingly calm. I didn't even think about the unknown afterwards. It would be nice that this was but a dream of all of my fears and suspicions of planes coming true, but I wouldn't be disappointed if that wasn't the case. It didn't feel like a conclusion, like an ending. Not because things were left unfairly untied, but because I knew that when this feeling was thrust upon me, and even when I have induced this feeling of finality, it has not yet prevailed. Am I to know an end?

The signal for an announcement sounded again. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have lost two of our primary engines and are about to undergo emergency procedures. We will make an emergency landing..." the captain said but was cut off, just like the power. The frantic humming sound of the engine stopped, and the light left the LED bulbs, leaving the natural light to flood into the plane through the windows.

My racing heartbeat and shocked breathing replaced the sound of utter panic. I looked again at the child, whose tears were now shared with the mother. Maybe this really is the end of my duration in this existence.

'So... this is where it all ends,' I sighed in contemplation as I sighed in a sense of finality. I would probably never see Lewis or my father ever again. He was right, and for this, I was tremendously regretful. My lips trembled, but there was nothing to be done. I was in a cylindrical death trap, falling from a great height at an equally great speed. This was the end of my world.

I felt utterly sorry for the child. He probably had no concept of what was about to happen to him, and perhaps the only thing that actually scared him was everyone screaming in sheer panic. All that was ahead of him, all of what he could have been, it would be taken from him cruelly. It was not fair, but life was not fair. It is a competition with evolving participants, yet nearly all of them are fallible and

The light that flooded the plane like rays of sun bursting through clouds was blocked by the same clouds as our altitude dived like a falcon hunting its prey.

The oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling, but there was no use for them. I was going to die. I did not wish to die knowing fear, but I would die with regret. I would show nothing of my emotions, not that anyone would notice, for the only ones who knew this was happening were going to die, and in the morning, all that remained of my family, as well as my girlfriend, would wake up to the news of a tragic plane crash in Africa, knowing that I was on that very plane.

In a flash of light, the power returned, but I saw the ground come closer by the second until I felt a distortion in my stomach as the pilots halted the descent at the last second, but the last second was one hundred and fifty-four too late for any chance of survival. I closed my eyes as I braced for the deadly impact.
I felt my body be ejected forwards, my face making hard and sudden contact with the seat in front of me. I heard the shattering of glass, and I noticed that the screaming had come to an immediate halt, and I felt a great force strike my head, and I lost consciousness.

A strange groaning noise woke a lion cub with golden fur and orange eyes with red irises. A noise that sounded as if the source of it was in pain, and falling against the air.

The cub stretched and walked out of the cave in which he and his pride slept. In particular, he slept at a raised platform at the far end of the cave with a large, golden-pelted lion with a rich red mane that extended to his stomach. His head was resting on the neck of a mighty lioness, who had a sandy pelt.

The sky was slowly being enlightened by the sun, and this allowed the cub to see a strange-looking object that had a long, slim body and broad wings, almost like a crane. It seemed to grow an endless black tail. It moved ever closer to the ground at a tremendous speed, and it looked as if the scene would end in a crash.

As the cub glared in confusion at the falling object, he looked on with a sense of sadness, regret, helplessness represented in his unfirm expression. As he spectated the gradual descent of what looked like a great bird with a long wingspan and feathers that seemed to reflect the sunlight shining on it, the great object swerved away from the ground, but it disappeared beneath the ground, and a loud noise and great rumble of the floor woke up the other lions that slept in a tall rock formation.

"Stars above, what was that noise?" a lioness, the cub's mother asked with fright grasping her voice.

"Was that an earthquake?" a female cub with fur the colour of cream, and eyes the colour of the ocean asked.

The lions, including the one with the thick, red mane, also possessing a frame of strength and a stride of authority rushed to where the cub was sitting.

"Simba? Did you see what happened?" the large lion asked the cub at the edge of the promontory.

"Yeah, it was like a big..giant..bird-like thing and it fell from the sky," Simba attempted to describe the object. He was still shocked and surprised by the experience, having seen nothing like it before in his short life. Smoke seemed to pour from what the object was, rising as if there were a volcano in place of the crash site.

"Should we go and investigate?" Simba asked, being the curious cub he was renowned for.

The lion sighed. "When the sun rises fully, we'll go to where the...thing is," Mufasa promised. He turned back into the cave at the bottom of the towering natural monument, intending to fall back to sleep.

Simba looked towards the plume of thick, grey smoke. Somewhere, in his heart, he knew an interesting discovery would be made and it would change his life forever.

A/N: I dedicate this story to the memory of those who died in the tragic plane crash in Colombia. FORCA CHAPECOENSE!