“A day came when something happened to the Grand Lion’s pride. It is never said exactly what it was that happened. There might have been a battle. Or a ghost. Maybe they went to the sky. Or twolegs came. Some say they were led to a bad place by a wind demon. Some say they became birds made of the sound of wind in grasses.

There are strange things in the veldt. I have heard of tiny fires that roar like lions in the darkness. Of trees on which marks appear, yet where no creature is seen to pass. Deadly dreamfingers sometimes emerge without warning from the shadows of the moon — and they can swallow animals or whole places with little more than a distracted gesture. Even histories.

There is even a tiny beetle that is known to inhabit a strange stone. These stones have been seen to mesmerize lions so that they slowly become too small to see. When the beetle later emerges from the stone, there is a light like thunder and a sound like lightning.

Something became of the Grand Lion’s pride.

Something mysterious.”

— The Grand Lion of Infinite Blossoms