The Rainbow Lion
A Legend from the Margins of the Book of Kells
The Pact
Long ago, in the time when beasts still spoke in dreams, there lived a lion with a mane like firelit gold and eyes that mirrored the dawn. His name was Leontius.
He ruled no savannah, claimed no kingdom. He wandered. Watched. Waited. And when the world grew silent, he roared prayers into the sky.
One dusking hour, in a glade where violets drank the last of the sun, he met her—Leaena, the lioness swift as storm wind, wise as rain. They hunted together. Slept in the shade of the same fig tree. Spoke little, for their hearts spoke louder.
But the land was dying. Hunters stalked even the sacred grounds. And when Leaena grew heavy with cubs, Leontius feared what might come.
So he climbed the Hill of Echoes, where no beast had tread in ages, and roared three times toward heaven.
An answer came—not as thunder, but as silence made thick and golden. A figure emerged from the light. Neither lion nor man. Wings folded like pages.
“You ask for protection,” the angel said. “Would you make a pact?”
Leontius bowed his head. “Anything.”
“Then take this sign,” said the angel, drawing a curve of light across the sky. A rainbow, pulsing like breath. “But remember—covenants are not shields. They are seeds. You will not be spared sorrow.”
Leontius accepted.
The Grief
Leaena was saved that day. The hunters fled, blinded by a blaze of colors roaring from Leontius’ throat. He chased them through thorn and thistle until their spears lay shattered and their boots stained dark with fear and blood.
And so the lioness lived.
But only for a while.
In the days that followed, Leaena’s strength waned. Her stride shortened. Her eyes dulled. The fire in her limbs dimmed to embers. Leontius brought her water from hidden springs, curled beside her at dusk, and whispered hope against the silence pressing in.
When the moonless night came, it brought the storm within her.
The cubs arrived—five small forms born into stillness.
Leaena licked them. Nuzzled them. Waited.
Her flanks heaved. Her body trembled. Blood soaked the earth. Her eyes sought Leontius—full of pain, and something deeper: love threaded with parting.
And with one last cry, she died.
Leontius stood over her, breath shallow.
The pups did not stir.
Five small forms. Five unopened futures. He nuzzled each one gently, as if the warmth of his mane could rouse them. But they lay limp in the grass, untouched by life, untouched by time. A stillness deeper than sleep.
He let out a low, broken moan—not a roar, but something older. Wordless. Wound-deep. The sound of a soul unthreading.
He remembered the rainbow. Remembered the angel.
“Why did you let me save her if she was meant to die?” he roared into the sky.
“Why give me a promise only to leave me with silence?”
The heavens were mute.
Leontius left the glade and did not return for three days. He walked the ashen cliffs. Laid in fields where no grass grew. Closed his eyes and hoped not to wake.
The Breath
On the third day, rain fell.
Not heavy. Just enough to clean the dust from his fur.
He returned.
Leaena’s body had been claimed by the earth, buried in leaves and lavender. The cubs lay where he’d left them, untouched by beast or worm—as if the world had held its breath.
Leontius approached them.
Kneeled.
Touched his nose to the smallest one.
And breathed.
From his mouth came a wind of color—not fire, not storm, but a rainbow that danced through the air like the brush of a painter on parchment.
He breathed again. And again.
One by one, the cubs stirred. A paw. A whisker. A gasp of life.
They blinked.
Looked up at him with eyes like morning stars.
And together, they stood—a father and his five cubs, at the spot where their mother had fallen, the rainbow still curling above them like a memory of promise.
Leontius did not smile. But his eyes were full of light.
The Manuscript’s Edge
They say a monk saw them once, years later, in a meadow not far from the scriptorium—a lion with cubs dancing in his shadow, and from his breath came not heat, but color: brilliant, woven, sacred.
So he drew what he saw.
And in the margins of the Book of Kells, if you look closely,
you’ll find a lion breathing rainbows.
And if you understand the story,
you’ll know it’s not about magic.
It’s about grief.
And love.
And the promise
that breathes again
on the third day.
I have no words to describe what stirred in my soul. Blessings, Father.
I loved this! What a touching story.