The hornbill blinked. Once. Then he turned his head with a slow, mechanical click.
"Zazu," Simba said quietly. "You haven't moved in an hour."
"Very good, Your Majesty," he said. And this time, when he looked at the cave wall, he saw the stone. thousand yard stare zazu
"Your Majesty," Zazu said. His voice was not the chirpy, officious instrument of Simba's cubhood. It was a dry rasp, like twigs snapping. "I do apologise. I was… compiling the morning report. Early."
"It's the middle of the night."
"Zazu," Simba said, nudging the perch with his nose.
A long silence. A cricket chirped somewhere in the grass below. The hornbill blinked
Zazu's beak opened, then closed. He looked back at that invisible point on the wall. "Do you know what I remember most, Sire? Not the fire. Not the famine. Not even the little skulls near the elephant graveyard."