The Amazing Tale of a Giraffe

Ronaldo was wandering slower now, pacing himself like he was in an endurance run. But more of an endurance walk, really.

The total consuming excitement of earlier had died down a lot with the darkness of the night. Although it wasn't total darkness, there were a lot of stars visible everywhere Ronaldo went, and then there was that moon still hanging. It was always there. Sometimes Ronaldo saw the moon hanging around in the sky during the day, a shadow-a faint ghost of what the moon was at its own time to shine in the night. Now the sun wasn't mean like that, trying to steal away the spotlight from the moon when it was nighttime, it stayed invisible like a polite sun should.

Ronaldo was well into the night, to the fact that he noticed that there was a difference in the area where the moon was at the moment and where it had started out. This was when Ronaldo decided to stop.

The odd thing about the place that Ronaldo lived in was the fact that wherever you went, you wouldn't be able to tell differences in territories at nighttime. Everything looked the same. Same cactus, same prickly things, same sands, same dirt, same grass, same long, very very distant, alomost invisible gray wall.

Though, the elder gir Tony had told Ronaldo that if he was in any place and could still see the gray wall, then he was still in the lion's territory. So...Ronaldo did know where he was after all. Oh well.

So Ronaldo kept trodding over the cracked dirt to find a spot where it looked comfortable to rest, and he ended up settling down in a cozy looking, hole-in-the-gray-wall-sized bush.

Ronaldo had a dream about a strange human that night. He wasn't sure why though that the human kept shifting back and forth from a human to the lion standing on its two back legs. In any way, when the human looked like a human, the human was a strange color. It wasn't black or brown or that weird red color as humans were usually, it was sand colored.

With a deep sigh, Ronaldo woke up in a happy mood, and he got up on his feet, a little wobbly. Well, actually very wobbly, from all the things he did yesterday, like stand when he talked, sit when he talked, walked a lot, and managed games of hide-and-seek, among other things. He knew he did other things, they just couldn't come up from the pond of Ronaldo's thoughts.

In an anyway, Ronaldo stretched his neck up high and chomped on a group of fairly green leaves on the top of a fairly tall tree. There were more green tall trees the farther away from the gray wall he was. Ronaldo wondered why not many girs happened to go this way for food.

"Hello, giraffe," said a rolling voice (The kind of rolling that was almost like sticking out your tongue and blowing air at someone. If you try it and a weird bubbly comes out you're probably doing it right.) behind Ronaldo.

Ronaldo swished his head around, his teeth struggling to hold all the leaves in his mouth. Some of them went flying when he turned his head to the lion.

"P-p-p-pardon me, for interrupt-pting your meal," the lion said mockingly.

Ronaldo's eyes widened. He remembered why everyone stayed close to the gray wall. The lion didn't go close to the gray wall that often.

The giant sand-colored lion flung his tail to the other side of his body and sat down, staring at Ronaldo chew his first meal of the day. What a polite lion he was. Even so, Ronaldo rushed his chewing like crazy, in fear for his life. The lion was here.

A few more seconds later, and Ronaldo was still chewing really hard. It made a squishing sound that for the first time in his life, made Ronaldo wince every time he heard it, and made his heart beat faster. He glanced every so often at the great lion, but every time looked away quickly because he saw the lion staring back.

The lion would tilt his head in the other direction while he observed Ronaldo chew up his meal.

Ronaldo really wanted to close his eyes and just wake up in his family's strange hole in the different gray wall.

He didn't want to be in the spot he was, chewing leaves for an amount of time that shouldn't have taken as long as it did.

Especially in front of a lion.

This was wrong.

So very wrong.

Ronaldo gave a look to the background behind the sand-colored lion. There was the long expanse of land that was everywhere, with repeating green and gray stone and brown plants and dirt, but no gray wall. It went on as far as his eyes could see, in every direction. Ronaldo felt that he could see so much more than he ever did. There was so much more to see, places to examine, trees to experiment with climbing (To figure out how in the world George had gotten up one of them)...

Wait. Ronaldo should be concentrating on the lion.

It felt like Ronaldo was swallowing a rock, a boulder maybe, instead of a mush of leaves. Ronaldo coughed in his throat a little when he was done, looking down at the dirt and the lion's paws.

The lion stood up and came closer to Ronaldo, putting himself in Ronaldo's view again.

"So? How was your break-a-fast?" the lion asked curiously, twitching his nose.

"Oh, um...Good, fine. Just fine," Ronaldo said quickly looking up.

"That's one-derful, giraffe," the lion grinned. "So why are you all the way over here, without anybody else here with you?"

"I'm going to a New Land."

"Yes...I am aware that you giraffes are going to a new land again. But this is not the way that any other giraffes came through, so why are you coming in this direction?" the great lion asked again. Ronaldo was a little less scared though, but the truth was that he could still be dead in any number of seconds.

"I'm going to a different New Land. Without anybody else. Just by myself."

"Why?" the lion rolled.

The giraffe in the particular situation blinked a few times and looked down at the lion, staring expectantly to be answered, since he was the lion.

"I want to go exploring," Ronaldo told him the the half-truth.

"A gira-ffe? Ex-pl-loring? Doesn't that seem a little strange to you? Gira-ffes don't ex-pl-lore. They play hide-and-seek."

"Well I'm going exploring," Ronaldo said defiantly, getting annoyed by the lion but not wanted to get on its bad side. "Exploring is what I do. I explore hiding places, so there."

"I see, I guess I cannot interfere with the goings on right now, giraffe...So what is your name?" the lion said curiously. His eyes were getting wider every time Ronaldo spoke, his mane fluttering softly in the wind.

"My name is...My name is..."

"Now, now, don't be afraid, I won't go running back to your other giraffe friends and tell them that you came over here, you can tell me your name..." the lion persuaded.

Ronaldo couldn't possibly tell the lion his real name. He didn't trust the lion at all. Although the lion didn't eat him so far...But he should probably lie. If the chance came, Ronaldo wouldn't be able to get away from the lion and all craziness would ensue. Bringing lots of blood.

"Uhm...May name is...George Jeoffrey Gregory...(?)"

"Well I'm sorry I wasn't able to greet you properly, George-"

"-No, it's George Jeoffrey Gregory, all at once," Ronaldo said panicky.

"Ah, I see, all at once, like how you tall neck-ed ones eat...All at once. So, George Jeoffrey Gregory, I, am the lion. I will not give you my name. I don't see that you will ever really need to call me by my name, but you ought to know, I am the lion."

George Jeoffrey Gregory backed up a few steps, trying to imply respect, and he bowed his neck in the smooth curve that was taught to him. "It's quite the pleasure to meet you, lion," he greeted.

"And the same to you, George Jeoffrey Gregory. So, do you know why I have come and just sat down next to you?"

"No, lion, I don't."

The lion growled a laugh in his throat. "You see, you look like a young giraffe, if any of the others wanted to know where you've gone, they might've come looking for you. You've spent quite a time here, it's about lunch time, and maybe the other giraffes want you back home from exploring. So if any of them started coming in this direction, maybe you could go back and meet them half way, you see?"

"But I'm not done exploring yet," George Jeoffrey Gregory explained to the lion.

"But I was just messing with you. I don't care whether or not your giraffes find you. I am a lion. I am the lion. My real reason to come over here was to eat you."

This was when Ronaldo backed away as fast as he could while still seeming polite in a way. He kept turning his head around to see if he would come into any obstacles.

Ronaldo's heart beat. His heart beat fast. And then faster. And then he couldn't even tell if it was beating, because then his breathing got louder and louder.

The lion slowly brushed his paws over the dirt in the direction to George Jeoffrey Gregory with a smirk, adding distance in between the two animals. Dust blew off behind the sand-colored tail that whipped the ground every so often. There was no more shine in the lion's eyes, no more fake friendliness available for a giraffe.

Ronaldo should've known that this still would've happened.