There was once a lion so mighty that the grass leaned away when he walked.

His name was Amos, and he was the biggest thing the valley had ever grown. His shoulders rolled like storm clouds. His mane caught the light like a crown nobody gave him and nobody could take. When Amos roared, the river forgot which way it was going.

Everything with legs ran. Everything with wings flew. Everything with sense hid.

And Amos told himself that was respect. He was wrong. It was fear. And fear is a cold thing to sleep next to.

Day One

One morning, on a flat gray rock warm from the sun, Amos lay with his chin on his paws, being mighty at nobody in particular.

Something landed on his nose.

The butterfly lands on Amos’s nose.

Something blue and yellow — blue as the deep part of the sky, yellow as the last hour of daylight. Wings like two little stained-glass windows nobody had to pay for.

Amos went perfectly still. Not because he was scared. Because in all his years, nothing had ever chosen to come closer.

“You’re on my nose,” he rumbled.

“I know,” said the butterfly. “It’s a very good nose. Warm. Excellent landing.”

“Do you know what I am?”

“You’re the mightiest lion around. Everyone says so. They say it while running.”

“Then why aren’t you running?”

She opened and closed her wings, slow, like someone stretching after a nap.

“Because I’ve only got a few days. And I’m not spending a single one of them being afraid.”

Amos had a roar for everything. He had no answer for that.

“What’s your name?”

“Juni,” she said. “Like the month. Sky and sun. That’s all I am.”

Day Three

Juni taught Amos how to be still. Not the still of hunting — that’s a coiled, hungry stillness, all teeth waiting on a decision. The other kind. Sit-down still. Watch-the-light-move still.

Amos and Juni watch the wind cross the valley from the high rock.

“Look,” she said from the tip of his ear. “The wind’s coming. You can see it in the grass before you feel it on your face.”

And Amos, who had crossed that valley ten thousand times, saw it for the first time. A long silver ripple running toward him like the world was waving hello.

He had been the mightiest thing in that valley his whole life. He had never once looked at it.

Day Six

Juni taught Amos how to be gentle.

There was a beetle stuck on its back in the dust, legs going nowhere. Amos raised one paw — a paw that had ended arguments with buffalo.

Amos turns a beetle right-side up.

“Easy,” Juni said. “Not all your strength. Just a little of it.”

So the mightiest lion in the valley lowered a claw the size of a dagger and, careful as a grandmother threading a needle, turned one beetle right-side up.

The beetle walked off without so much as a thank-you.

Amos sat there a long time, feeling something new and warm move through his chest.

“That’s what it feels like,” Juni said softly, “to use your power for something instead of over something. Strength that doesn’t have to prove anything — that’s the strongest kind there is.”

Day Nine

Amos asked the question he’d been carrying around like a stone in his mouth.

“How many days do you get, Juni?”

“Fourteen. Give or take. Depends on the weather and the birds.”

The roar came up out of him before he could stop it — the big one, the one that emptied hillsides. Birds burst out of the trees. Somewhere, something young started crying.

Juni didn’t move. She just waited for him to finish.

“It isn’t fair,” he said, and his voice cracked in the middle of the word, and the mightiest lion around discovered that his eyes could do that.

“No,” she agreed. “It isn’t.”

“I’ll guard you. I’ll keep the birds off. I’ll build you a place out of the wind—”

“Amos.” She said his name like a hand on a shoulder. “You can’t add days to my life. But you have been adding life to my days, every single one, since the morning I landed on your nose.”

She lifted just enough to catch the light. Blue and gold, blue and gold.

“Nobody gets to choose how long. Everybody gets to choose how full. Don’t count my days, honey. Fill them.”

Day Fourteen

She was slower that morning. Her wings had gone thin as old paper, the gold faded soft.

“Amos. Carry me up to the high rock. I want to see the sun come up over the whole valley. Just once. From the top.”

So the mightiest lion in the world climbed the highest stone in the valley with the smallest thing in the world riding in his mane — and he climbed it slow, and he climbed it careful, and not one step of it shook her.

The sun came up gold over everything.

Juni rests in the warmth of Amos’s mane.

“Oh,” Juni whispered. “Oh. Look at it all.”

“I’m looking,” said Amos. And he was. He truly was.

She folded her wings there in the warm dark of his mane, tucked in like a leaf that had finally found its branch.

“Thank you for letting me land,” she said.

And then it was quiet.

Amos stayed up on that rock until the sun was high. Then he lifted his head and he roared — and the whole valley froze, because they knew that sound.

But it was different now. It wasn’t a threat. It wasn’t a warning. It was the sound of a heart too full to hold itself in. It was a thank you, in the only language he had.

After

Amos lived twenty more years. And in all twenty of them, nothing ran from him again.

They came to him. The old ones came to sit in his shade. The young ones came to climb his back and pull his ears, and he let them, every time. He turned beetles over. He watched the wind come across the grass. He learned the names of things.

The animals no longer run from Amos — they gather around him.

They stopped calling him the mightiest lion around. They started calling him the kind one. And he liked that better.

Every spring the butterflies came through — blue and yellow, sky and sun — and rested on the great gray rock, and on his shoulders, and on his nose. Amos would hold so still. So very, very still.

Amos rests among the whole valley he once ruled by fear.

And when the young lions asked him why he let them, he always said the same thing:

“A friend of mine had fourteen days. Fourteen. That’s all she ever got. And she spent every one of them on me.

Some folks come into your life for a season, and some come for a lifetime. Juni came for both — hers was the whole lifetime, mine was just a season.

And neither one of us got cheated.”

The Moral

Mighty is what you can do.
Kind is what you choose.
Grace is doing the second one when you’re famous for the first.

You will not get to pick how long.
You will absolutely get to pick how full.

So be the lion who bows.
Be the butterfly who lands anyway.
Be still long enough to see the wind coming.
Turn somebody right-side up today — you’ve got the strength, and it costs you almost nothing.
And when somebody gives you their days — any number of them — know exactly what you’re holding.

Thank you for letting me land.

— Ricky Rude · TheRudeWayz.com

Truth is rude. Deal with it.