I was like a dot of black ink on a white canvas. I was...ruining the perfectness, the cleanness, the purity. I was odd. I didn't belong here but then, had I ever really belonged anywhere? My mind ticks back to the humans, to my mother, to my brother, to the wild. I had only ever belonged in one place then I suppose, the wild, the jungle I was born into. Trees had reached up for the stars at night, and the light in the day, there twisted trunks coated in rough bark. Vines hung down like the body of a snake, blowing in the winds so that sometimes, you thought they were snakes. The ground, it was hard, sprinkled in soil and dust, soft on the pads on your paws. That was where I belonged. More persifically, the temple that lay in its ruins. Many times I had been caught playing there as a cub but now, now I did not dance. Nor did I play. I was not home, I had never been home except for a short year of my low life.

The trees here, they were thinner, not so dense, and coated in white frost. Where I came, it didn't snow. It was always humid, even in the colder seasons. My dark head turns back to look behind. Beyond my shadowed body and swishing tail I can see the paw prints trailing out behind me. With a small gruff noise I turn to look forward again, to being a black dot on the white canvas, without emotion, without caring, without knowing. I didn't know where I was, nor did I care. To me this was a failed jungle. In no way was it full of life like home was and in no way did I wish to stay. There was nothing here, nothing.

My thoughts wander of to that of my brother, Singha. He was nothing but a worthless, patterned rug, maybe used to decorated a room in a human house. In my front right leg, the naked bit of skin from the bullet wound he had left me to seemed to shout out, crying for attention. That's all my little brother was, a worthless attention seeker, a scab, completely useless. I was ashamed of him. He brought shame to the tigers, shame to our mother, our father, shame to me. For some reason I kept forgiving him but this time he had left me un able to do anything for my self for weeks whilst he ran of in fright. The marking on my head, our family of four shared it but his should have been shaved of, long, long ago.

I keep prowling though the trees, able to weave my way though them until I cam to an icy pool. I was surprised it was not frozen over but I was relived to. Although cold, although I hadn't talked in weeks, my throat was sore. Gently I lower my noble head, my tongue licking across the surface of the water, slowly drinking it up. It was like ice, trickling down my throat like the tickling of a feather. My eyes were shut, I breathed slowly, a misty white fog coming from my nose which was coated in a thin layer of a wet substance. Suddenly, my eyes open, blood red orbs darken, tracing a rabbit. Its fluffy tail disappeared behind a bush and I make a low rumbling growl, a warning. If it came closer, its life would be cut short.


"Talking" Thinking