"Every flower must grow through the dirt." 

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Name: Shanasa

Meaning: small light

Gender: Female

Appearance: small built lioness with pale cream coat, lighter undercoat, a scattering of freckles across her face and ears. She has hazel eyes and a lighter nose tip.

Parents: Suki and Nefelhein

Siblings: Nida, Sinan, and Hemsa

Mate(s): Askari

Cubs: Sarafina and Aneesa

Personality: Shanasa is a very loving and gentle lioness. The most well mannered and docile of all of her siblings- she is a romantic who adores peace and living in harmony. Despite her childhood traumas, Shanasa is a strict believer that everyone has some good inside them. She tends to see the best in all lions despite their flaws. She is sometimes seen as spineless and a pushover because she does not often go out of her way to inconvenience any lion, but she is resolute when she needs to be. She is also very persistent in the things she does. Above all though, she adores her cubs, and wishes nothing but to give them the love and care that she herself never really received from her own parents.

History: Shanasa was born to a pair of extremely strict and unhappy parents. Throughout her childhood she was looked down upon for not having been a lion. Her father was especially tough on her and her siblings, allowing them little to no time for playing and living, but instead filling their time with training. Despite her small size, due to her father’s constant training, Shanasa grew to be fairly strong for her size. While her mother did not do too much for her, Shanasa’s oldest sister Hemsa, who had been in a separate litter prior to Shanasa and Nida, became the closest thing the other two sisters had to a mother. She bathed them, made sure they were fed, and whenever she got the chance would sneak them away to play and explore. Shanasa grew to absolutely adore her older sister and always looked to her for guidance. When Shanasa was old enough to venture off on her own for hunting and patrolling, she ran into a rogue male lion named Askari. The two immediately hit it off. Despite the newfound happiness, the two had to do much sneaking around, because Shanasa knew that her father would never approve. To combat the issue, Shanasa and Askari planned to run away together. Shanasa consulted Hemsa about the plan after her sister met the young lioness’s lover. Hemsa was extremely supportive of the idea, encouraging her sister to pursue happiness beyond the borders of their father’s realm. One night however, Shanasa and Askari were being careless and out in the open flower fields when they were spotted by Shanasa’s father. He forced Askari to leave, claiming that he wanted to speak to his daughter alone. On their walk to the place where he wanted to speak to her, Shanasa tried to tell her father that she was not abandoning him, but only that she wanted to start a new life and her own family. Being the unreasonable and cruel lion that he had always been, Nefelhein lunged at his youngest daughter. Shanasa thought that she was done for, until her older sister Hemsa sprung out before them and threw their father off the cliffside into the raging rapids. Despite her initial shock, Shanasa was extremely grateful to Hemsa for her intervention. She thanked her sister before fleeing the lands to meet up with Askari. The two went on to travel through several lands. They only decided to settle down after they had their two daughters: Sarafina and Aneesa. The family’s trek to the pridelands was riddled with danger, and Askari perished before his family could get there safely. When Shanasa managed to make it to the pridelands with her younger daughter Aneesa, she found out that the king’s second son, Vikai, had saved her eldest daughter Sarafina from the same danger that had taken her mate. For that she was grateful, but she could not thank him as he had apparently left home to wander. Shanasa grieved for the loss of her mate but made do with her adoration for her daughters. She spent all of her time nurturing them in some way or another. Her younger daughter Aneesa became entangled with the crown prince’s youngest brother Taka, whom Shanasa was not too fond of. Still, she held no true dislike for the young lion after he saved her daughters from a hyena attack. When news that the second prince had finally returned from his roaming, Shanasa went to thank him in person for the good he did for her Sarafina. It was then that she found out where the second prince had been with and with whom. News of her oldest sister’s passing did much damage to the young lioness’s heart. Of all her family, she had loved Hemsa the most. Shanasa became very sickly after the fact and did not live long enough to see Taka’s rise to power.

Relation to TLK: Sarafina’s mother and Askari’s mate. Nala's grandmother.