I peered over my brown mug warily, through the thin smog rising from my freshly brewed cocoa, blinking slowly as I surveyed my breakfast companion. We had agreed to meet at a neutral location, so I had suggested a coffee house. He wanted to talk things over, I supposed, though in my mind, there was nothing to say.

He was quite the character, to be sure: the long, slightly tangled–or was it dreaded?–dark hair; the big brown eyes, wide-set and sparsely lashed; his face was fleshy and soft, and I could make out the faintest beginnings of sagging jowls.

I sat on the edge of my chair and took another sip, not comfortable with setting it on the table between us yet. I wondered if he was as curious to study my profile as I was his. As it was, he had generally only seen my backside. Unconsciously, my fingers twiddled with the mug handle as I continued to study him in silence.

He was youthful, yet markedly old, for even as he sat restlessly facing me, he held himself with a matured grandeur. I could not spy a grey hair to telltale his age, but then again, the hairiness of his physique made it nigh impossible to find one out of thousands.

It was a wonder no one else was staring.

I was the one that had instigated the change in our relationship, he the meeting. Who knew how the conversation would end, but I wondered if this was his last-chance attempt at salvaging our burning-house-of-a-relationship. I was done. Completely done. I was entirely satisfied to watch the house that he’d built burn to ashes. In fact, I had plans to dance on those ashes. Gleefully.

He flicked his tail, nervously smoothed back his whiskers, and put both lion paws on the table, pads up. Opening his mouth to speak, his teeth glinted in the overhead lights.

I used to be afraid of those razored jaws.

“So…is this the end?” His voice was low and blunt, perhaps as raspy as a lion‘s voice should sound. Uncertainty flinched in those big brown eyes, eyes that pleaded with me. I found the switch ironic.

“I guess you could say that.” I set my mug down.

Swallowing hard, he looked away; the whiskers on his right cheek twitched.

“You don’t…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t like the life I built for you?”

Anger surged upward from my toes and I gripped the table. “You mean, the suffocating cage?!” Inhaling to calm myself, I continued. “You did not build me a life–you stole it from me!” My eyes narrowed, and the old scars on my thighs, hiding beneath my jeans, started to burn.

“But you were safe!”

My heart thundered in my chest, but I knew now the lie for the untruth that it was.

“You’d like me to believe that, wouldn’t you?” I crossed my legs, folding my arms, subconsciously parrying his familiar blows. “No…I wasn’t safe at all. I was a slave, a pitiful, measly peon that you kicked around.”

Ever so slightly, the lion nodded, eyes locked on the mug in the center of the table.

“Only One is my safety, and He declared me free a long time ago.” Take some truth, you beast. I uncrossed my arms and leaned on the edge of the table, voice low, but sure. “You kept me from my inheritance, and for that, you will pay.”

I couldn’t tell for sure because of his hair, but he looked a shade paler. Neither of us said anything for a few moments, but the ironic reality of the situation caused me to speak.

I couldn’t help the snicker that accompanied my question, much less ever apologize for it.

“Have you…spoken with my Abba?”

The lion’s spine must’ve been gripped in some sort of invisible vice, for he jerked painfully upright, eyes round, almost bulging. My Father’s Name was powerful.

I took his agony as a no. I didn’t blame him–who knew how an enemy would meet his fate in the King’s presence? But I would be avenged. Abba had promised.

“You’re DONE chasing me.”

Fear wrenched himself upward from the table with a growl, tail slashing the coffee-tinted air. I had seen the fire of rage reawaken in his eyes, but that no longer made me cower. In response, my hand flashed to my right hip, where a sword that I was learning to successfully wield, hung.

Run, FEAR, RUN. I’m after you, now.