Asraif The Lion

Flaked dirt crunched and crumbled beneath his worn paw, claws gently tested the earth, a tongue flicked over parched lips. The sun beat down, warm rays slowly cooking his aged skin stretched far over tired ribs. A pang of hunger and pain taunted his stomach of the last bountiful meal he had tasted, almost eight years ago.
Prey was no where to be seen, as was the way now in once plentiful Africa. Asraif, the last lion lay down beside a contaminated watering pool, staring at the big city lights before him. Once he had not known what people were, now they crowded him and buzzed around, hungry bees looking to destroy his home. Glazed golden spheres started gloomily out upon the prairie, every blade of grass seemed to be kinked with the boot of man, every home trampled, every prey killed. There was simply no more room.
Asraif lapped the tainted water slowly; a slow wince crossed the withered face, for this was not the water he had wanted upon a final day. The loneliness ensued, his breaking heart once more; the massive mane tilted towards the heavens and he roared the fiercest roar a lion could muster the roar of his ancestors who had owned the plains with their lionesses and younglings.
As he roared his pained story, man snuck up to him, rifle clutched tight in a greedy palm, fat lips puckering with vain satisfaction. Asraif the last lion fell to the ground, a shattered heart bleeding upon his chest with a single silver bullet shot directly through it. The lions ceased to be, and man walked on to buy another electronic toy, leaving a tired lion pelt to rot in the hot and poisoned plains.