Kara growled playfully behind him.He did not want to scare the boy, it was just something that came naturally to him.No, he would not, could not hurt him, he was a good friend.

The human man-child stopped and checked about around him while he stood in the hanging vines of a weeping willow -- its leaves scantily covering the exposed flesh of his body.He saw the lion steaming toward him, his face flashing a bright grin.He let the Thunderian come close, only to nimbly strafe off to the side from the tree, trampling over its roots to one of the main fountains.

When Kara had again caught up with his prey, he found himself in an uneasy balance.He and Marcelus stood at opposite sides of the round, concrete structure.For endless moments the two just leaned over the rim, sipping the clear waters.An idea came to the cub just then:

“I guess the fountain is safe,” he said, displeased.

“The fountain is always safe,” Marcelus said, as he held onto the edge -- Kara was stepping closer to him.His impulse was to turn and run, but, when he saw his friend in full, he felt, oddly, a certain chill, a coldness that needed the warmth of the feline to tame.Lost in the lull of that dreamy netherworld, he did not notice until too late that he had let go of the safety of the fountain.

“Grrr,” the lion purred as he grabbed the teenager’s shoulders and lifted him up off of the ground an inch or two.Marcelus tried to squirm out of Kara’s grasp but he was not strong enough.The Thunderian eased him onto the ground and got on top of him.He straddled him, their nakedness pressing together.A kind of lust came into his eyes as he realized that he was flesh-on-flesh close to the human -- and that he was not nervous.But then again, he was never nervous around boys that way.He had just never realized before that the closeness that he enjoyed was something that could be craved.

Still thinking it was a game, Marcelus tried to get up from under the lion’s weight.In the mock struggle that followed the two ended up tumbling about, hand-in-hand.Kara’s flower came off his mane to fall onto the grass.The boy's wrestling wilted the petals as their rolling bodies pounded it into the dirt.At the end neither had made any progress and so they ended where they began.

“Marcelus,” he whispered as he let go of the human’s hands -- the man-child now no longer resisted.He arched his head up to be closer to the lion’s, whose own face was dropping down slowly, trembling in uncertainty.They got so close that they sensed the heat of their lips.

Kara let his legs relax as he carefully cupped the back of the youth’s head in his paw.

“Ahhh!” a girl screamed.

“Look!” someone else shouted.

The startled boys hastily separated and lay on their stomachs.They looked ashamed and afraid but they had not left each other’s side.

“What are they?”

The pair studied the scene around them -- the voices were coming from another part of the garden.They had not realized that where they had run off to was very remote and isolated.

“Thank Jagga,” Kara said as he arose.The cub, more muscular than his companion, helped Marcelus to his feet.

The teenagers hugged, letting their hands wander about the tensing contours of their backs.The feel of such gentle fingers exploring his fur made the young lion purr.He petted the moaning human in places where only the shade covered him.

The shouts from the others continued and brought them out of their euphoric haze.They ran across the fountains, around the bushes and past the trees until they had returned to the main entrance of the garden.There the girls were looking forward to the sliding door and backward to the surrounding walls in a frenzy of terror, not wanting to see something horrid but not being able to resist either.The boys covered themselves with their hands as they retreated into the foliage.Even Marcelus was spooked -- he kept trying to drag Kara to the side for cover but the lion's mind was elsewhere.

Huddled before the front steps were two children, their faces different and unusual.Clearly they were Thunderian, but they deformed in a way he had never seen before.No, that was not entirely true.He had seen faces like theirs once.Perhaps that was why he was not afraid.And then --

Herding the silent children was a human, about the same age as Kara.The youth had long, dark hair that went down to his shoulders.His eyes were a shade of violet and shimmered in a kind of wetness that hinted of the passing of tears and yet despite the sadness his face had an air of resolved confidence.The stranger was clothed in a simple, white cotton vest, open to his unusually toned form and a loose loincloth of the type that was in vogue in upper echelons of Metropolis society.

Kara trembled at the sight of such perfection -- quickly he spotted his robe and tied it around his waist.He stood, mouth agape and studied his god’s every move.

“Children,” he said, “these are your brothers and sisters.”

“That’s enough!” a stern voice boomed.A new figure approached from the concrete, from the side.“These, children, don't belong here!”It was Marsala, the city's Master of Activities.“Those, children, have their own places.”He stood at the edge of the portico, between the dark-haired youth and the entrance to the garden, wagging his finger defiantly.

The stranger sighed and turned around -- at once the children followed him back through the sliding doors that had opened without a sound.

“Go back to your play,” the man said as he looked back around the garden.The adolescents were emerging from their hiding spots.“There’s nothing to see here, those things are gone,” he reassured them.“Kara,” he said, having then noticed the lion.The cub was on the platform next to him by that time, inching toward the now-shut entrance.“Kara, I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“Sorry?” he shook his head.“It was like a dream, a heavenly dream.”

“What ever are you talking about, lad?”He laid a friendly hand on the lion’s shoulder.The teenager seemed oblivious to his surroundings -- Marcelus, Mesilina and Agripina were already at his back but he did not notice them at all.

Approaching the sliding door, through which the demonic children had passed, he treaded past his friends and schoolmates as though in a trance, forever rapt by that, that man --

“Son?” the human spoke.“You’re not upset?”

He turned to face Marsala.“Who was that?”‘He’s beautiful,’ he thought.

“His name is Caesar, he’s of low noble blood.He works for a hospital that cares from the throwbacks.”

“You must take me to him.”

There was a look of bleak despair in the lion’s eyes, a need, a longing that, though reluctant, Marsala knew too well.

“Most of his time is spent underground, that’s no place for a --”

“I am not afraid.I am a Thundercat.”

“Of course.”

The two walked out of the garden under the open archway that the sliding door had temporarily made.

“You were not frightened by the children?”

“I can’t say that I was,” he answered.The door slid shut behind him -- he gave no backward glance to the green garden or his peers, who were once again engaged in their simple lives.“Something about their faces was familiar.”

“Oh?” Marsala raised an eyebrow.

“Like I’ve seen faces like that before -- and I certainly wasn’t afraid of them.”He noticed then that Marsala had stopped walking behind him and was just standing there, looking dumbfounded.“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.Nothing really.”He scratched the back of his neck.“Perhaps it was in a dream where you saw those faces?”

“Maybe -- but that Caesar!”He thought to himself, as he twirled his mane in his forefinger, that the hazel-eyed youth looked like an angel.He did not catch himself until too late:“Do you think he might, I don’t know, like me, like a friend?”

“I don’t know," he said, matter-of-factly.

“I’d like to find out.”

He donned on his white robes.

“I want to experience his world,” he said, “I want to know what he does, where he works.Hold nothing back.”