roar

He closed his fingers over the lion in his palm. He pushed it quickly into his pocket before the older boys could see it. The smiling tourist snapped his picture and climbed back into the bus. That night he gifted it to his sister, telling her about the Atlas lions that once lived in their mountains. Long, long ago, they would roar like this and he whispered a soft roar into her ear. She slept running lions in her dreams. Elsewhere the tourist downloaded photographs while CNN flashed a story about an American shooting a lion lured from a park.