In Robert W. Krepps short story “Pride of Seven” a young Masai boy, The Sheep, must kill a lion to become a man, but struggles to do so because he wants to keep some individuality in a place of social conformity.
The narrator, a Western man who joins the Masai culture, asks the Sheep to join him in watching a group of seven lions, to which The Sheep chooses one of the lions to be the one he will kill. The Western man is torn between supporting his Masai friend and the lions he loves to study every day. When the day come for The Sheep to kill his lion, the entire tribe accompanies him to observe, but when they arrive at the bowl where the lions typically are, they are gone. The narrator climbs up onto a high rock and witnesses the seven lions