Week 2 Story: The Girl who Loved the Lion

The Girl who Loved the Lion

“Mother, Father, why do you laugh so cruelly with each other?” asked young Ariana.

“Oh, precious daughter, we have just bade the lion that watches you so fondly to rid himself of his teeth and claws so that he may have you as his bride. But if he does what we ask, he will be hideous and not much danger at all. He will no longer be able to protect you so we will deny him the object of his desire and teach him a lesson in the process!” Her father chortled.

“Father! How could you? That noble beast was kind and good. He always watched out for me when I played in the garden. I can tell he loves me and would do nothing to hurt me!”

But still her parent’s just laughed. They shoved her in her room and threw away the key so that she would stay with them till a proper suitor came along and made them rich.

Ariana was not having that. She quickly searched her room for ways to escape. There was a loose brick in the wall behind her bookshelf that she slowly managed to free. Once that brick was out, others followed and soon there was a hole big enough for her to crawl out of.

But she was too late.

From the front of the house she heard jeering.

It was nighttime and, as she peaked around the side of her house, she could see her beloved Lion, his head hanging low in the torchlight. Fireflies flitted around his face and allowed her to catch glimpses of his sunken, mushy jowls. The earth was stained at his feet with the blood that gushed from the pits where his claws had been.

Ariana’s parents turned the once proud beast away and he slunk out of the firelight, his tail dragging pitifully behind him, his blood the only proof he had been there at all.

The cruel couple went back inside and drank to their cruel craftiness long into the night. Their daughter, however, waited till they were both asleep and then stole a torch and traced the blood spots down the road into the woods.

The woods were dark and ominous and she was afraid, but she feared losing her brave Lion even more. Soon she encountered a giant snake in her path. She pointed the torch at it and willed it to let her pass but it was hungry and instead wrapped her in its coils.

In desperation, Ariana called out for her Lion to come save her. Then she blacked out.

When Ariana opened her eyes, the giant snake was gone.

“Did I dream such a harrowing incident?” She mused aloud.

“No, my love, I heard you call for me and so I rescued you.” 

It was the Lion!

“But how? You have no claws and no teeth to fight with anymore.”

“I used my roar. I would give up anything for you but I would also find any way to save you. My love for you allows me to do things that seem impossible” the lion rumbled. 

At this moment, the great snake slithered back into the circle of torchlight. Before Ariana or the Lion could react, the snake transformed into a beautiful goddess. She told them she’d never heard a declaration of love so pure and wanted to grant the couple one wish.

“We want to be happily together forever,” they decided. 

And, though the Lion remained nail and toothless, it was so.

Author's Note: 

I got the idea for this story from The Lion in Love. In it, a lion falls in love with a young girl and asks her parents for her hand in marriage. Fearing for their daughter’s life, the couple asks the lion to remove his teeth and claws so there’s less of a chance for him to hurt her. The lion is so smitten with the young girl that he does what he’s asked. When he comes back, however, the couple laughs at him and refuses to give him their daughter.

I didn’t particularly like the story as it was. I felt like I could add more to it so I wrote a continuation of the story in which the daughter finds out how cruel her parents are being and refuses to live with them anymore and, instead, goes out to find the Lion she loves. I eventually gave the story a happy ending but I did not make everything perfect. The Lion never gets his teeth or claws back but he and the girl get to live together happily forever. I was hoping to convey that you can do just about anything for love, but if the person that you love loves you, you don’t have to change at all.

Bibliography: “The Lion in Love” from Aesop’s Fables: The Lion by Joseph Jacobs. Web Source.

Image information: The Lion and the Girl: Google Images