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His earliest memory is of the cold that comes at dusk, and a woman saying to him, “Be brave.” He cannot remember her face, and the harder he tries to, the more she fades. In the end, her singular voice and the bracing cold are the only pieces of his roots he has left, and he carries them with him when he leaves to sail the high seas.
On the Orbit, he had learned, among other things, that to be brave meant to be like a lion. He did not know what a lion was, so someone drew him a picture, scribbled on the back of a napkin with a leaky fountain pen. He thought it looked silly, and said so. The kitchen staff had laughed, and in that moment, swinging his legs from the countertop and surrounded by warmth, he had felt at home.
In a zoo in South Blue, when the Orbit had docked to restock before the next leg of the cruise, he had met a real lion for the first time. It looked nothing like the picture. It was a huge beast with a flowing mane and pointed teeth and big, padded paws, but he still thought it looked silly. He certainly didn’t think it looked brave. It had sauntered up to him, twitching its whiskers, and when he stuck out his tongue, it had roared in his face, ferocious and deafening. The baby in the stroller next to him started to bawl.
He was not impressed.
She looked like a sunflower to him, but Franky had insisted that she was a lion, bro, a lion.
She was bigger than Merry, but sweet too, in her own way, and brave enough to carry them to the end and back, like Merry would have done. He loved her too, immediately.
When the Thousand Sunny-Go set sail on her maiden voyage, he was impressed, to say the very least, and so excited that his hands shook and his heart stuttered.
Half buried in the rubble of Thriller Bark, pain like electricity through his limbs and creeping oblivion, he hears the blade slicing through metal and air, quiet as a breath, and two whispered words from behind gritted teeth,
lion’s song.
Zoro’s solitary form, how it wavers, flesh and blood and bone before cruel machinery.
He is impressed. He is horrified. He gets up, and stumbles, trembles. Stand your ground. Be brave.
This is what she meant.