Your style and your inventiveness are such a complete delight--I can't even tell you how happy I was when I saw that you'd written this. It's the first thing I've read on LJ in weeks, and I'm so glad I saw it (my only LJ alert these days is for gravesdiggers, lest I miss some breaking RG news, so I saw your post there!) At first, I thought--oh yay, this might be crazy and cracky--but then I realized that it has your signature combination of completely believable, sweet character development and bits of giggly, joyous humor. Having worked for National Geographic for years, of course I loved the aside about the film crew coming and luring the lioness away, and the "director, no daddy" bit was priceless. The shagging-to-exhaustion bit was terrific--all the more so because of its nature documentary accuracy! But the thing that never fails to amaze me is the one-on-one interactions. You created a wonderful, fully formed friendship between Linus and Fleck in which each of them had completely recognizable characteristics, emotions, strengths, weaknesses. Fleck even had a character arc in which he went from a slightly comic, self-absorbed blustery orphan to a mature, fatherly member of the new pride--but with just enough of the comic loser still ("I hate you!") And you had the good guys survive and thrive because of some very empowered females (take a cue from that, Mr. Moffat!) And all in under 4,000 words. Just a truly enjoyable fic---I hope you'll write more, and I also hope you're doing well otherwise--in terms of the original fic you were hoping to write. Love and good wishes and hugs.