Simba tried to dash out of the den as quickly as he could while still keeping his eyes on Nala, so he didn't notice when Scar appeared in the mouth of the den; he slammed right into the older lion.

"Well, well, well, what do we have here?" Scar said, picking the cub up with his forepaws. "The little prince! Good afternoon, Simba! What brings you to my humble abode?"

"I was going to go find some food for Nala," Simba answered meekly. He hadn't been doing anything wrong, exactly, but no matter how gorgeous Nala had become since he'd last seen her, the cub (being a cub) was a little embarrassed to be so obviously smitten. Heck, right up until he'd seen Nala in all of her glory, Simba had been convinced that all girls had fleas.

"Happily, the young lady won't have to rely on your hunting skills," the older lion said silkily. The insult went right over Simba's head, because at that moment, a cackle of hyenas dragged in what looked to be a freshly-killed zebra. Simba saw how Nala's eyes lit up at the sight of food, and against his better instincts, he wished that she would look at him like that.

"C-can I stay while you eat?" Simba asked, but Nala's face was already buried in her meal, and she didn't look up at the sound of Simba's voice. "Nala?"

"Let her eat," Scar admonished. "You can stay if you'd like, as long as you don't bother Nala." That was fine with Simba, so he sat down and watched Nala stuff herself.

It was...incredible. As massive as she was for her age, Nala was still much smaller than a full-grown zebra, and yet she ate like the carcass was just a light snack, stuffing down what must have been several times her body weight in meat. As she ate, her already-sizable flanks ballooned visibly, until Simba was afraid that she would pop like a bubble--and that was with nearly a third of the zebra left! His romantic fascination was now matched by a morbid one, as he waited for her to explode. He wanted to cry out for her to stop, but he remembered what Scar had told him and so held his tongue.

And, of course, she didn't stop. Simba understood how Nala had blossomed from a scrawny cub to an immobile beauty in just a few weeks, if she ate like this every day. He noticed that the hyenas who had brought in the zebra made sure that Nala had to move as little as possible to get another bite, and deep down, he envied them. He wanted to be the one right up close to the gorging lioness. He saw her fat toes curl as she continued binging, and realized all of a sudden that the noises she was making as she ate weren't from the pain of her overstuffed belly, but from pleasure.

Finally, she had finished the whole zebra. She looked around blinkingly, as if she was coming out of a trance. Simba opened his mouth to tell her how amazing that was, but Scar cut him off.

"How do you feel, my dear?"

"Is there any more food?"

"But of course," Scar replied, and motioned for the hyenas to bring in the next course. Simba's eyes bulged. It was an eland, and it was, if anything, bigger than the zebra had been. Mouth agape, he looked at Nala, but she didn't seem at all worried about the danger of consuming such a large animal. She just watched the hyenas drag it toward her, a contented, almost sleepy smile on her face.

"You can't eat that whole thing!" Simba cried. "You'll explode!" Scar looked at the cub sharply, a hint of a snarl on his lips. The dark-furred lion had worked hard to get Nala to her current state, and if Mufasa's son thought that he was going to shake her out of it, he had another thing coming.

But Scar underestimated how much Nala wanted to keep eating. At Simba's outburst, she looked over at the cub as though registering his presence for the first time. She opened her mouth and said...