Darshan K S

The rocks sit dry in a riverbed the rains had abandoned, cooked pale under a dipping sun's last flames. A blue sheep flees from me, darting through the ravine, his hooves finding grip where my paws find none. I had clawed him. He is bleeding. And still he finds a pace I can’t. A scramble left. A lunge upward. As I squint against the orange rays, he leaps off the ridge. A proud eagle. I sink my claws into the earth and watch him crack against a boulder and tumble to the creek. I pity the poor creature. He wouldn't have suffered so in my belly.  

Life wasn't always feral. The moon reminds me of that every night. Even knowing that, I'm still helpless. Restless. Like something is missing that would make life feel whole.  

I blame it on last spring—the best I've ever had.  

I prowled lower down the valley. The canopy was louder here, alive with the rustle of monkeys overhead. My coat, that camouflaged with grey rock and snow, did nothing against all this green.  Everything else the mountain had hidden under snow now walked in the open. More so now, since the humans began eating through the rock.  

Hunger almost felt embarrassing down here.  

I stretched out along a thick branch, from where I could see all the way to the plains. As I watched the river broaden, a golden shimmer cut through. The shimmer sharpened into a broad jaw with the unhurried squint of something that had never needed to hide. A lion who knew exactly where she was going. Cautious, I crossed the river before she could close the distance.  

“What’s a ghost doing in the warmth?” she asked.  

“What’s a gold coat doing outside flatlands?” I shot back. “Every monkey in the valley saw you coming.”  

“The mountain made you careful. Maybe too careful. The valley might do you good,” she offered, stepping into the river like it was dry land. “Don’t be scared. I barely eat monkeys. Only migrating.”  

“A lone she-lion migrating to the foothills?” I kept a safe distance.  

“Yes. And you’re a snow leopard without snow. Sounds like fate,” she teased.  

“Humans digging up your mountain is no fate.”  

“Half of my pride got poached. We run from the same.”   

I went still. She had a glint in her eye that hadn't asked permission yet.  

“We could hunt together,” she offered.  

“I’ve survived because I work alone.”  

I thought of the eastern ridge. The mountain had not rotted slowly. It had been eaten.  

“A flower wouldn’t be fruit without the bees. It would fall down and rot.” She held my gaze. 

“All things rot. Life, youth, innocence, even the heart,” I murmured, leading the way. “It’s up to us to savour them while they’re fresh.”  

“Well then, what have you savoured till now?”  

“I have to keep looking.”  

We enjoyed two days bounding through the sparse forest tucked between the mountain shoulders. I taught her to hunt woolly hares and to read the streams for fish. She had the strength to take down a bear, but the fish slipped past her claws. Today, she steered us toward the prairie.  

“We’ll kill together,” she decided.  

I followed, though I couldn't have said why. The lush grass opened wide. Too much colour, too much open sky, nothing to dissolve into. The prairie didn't know the mountain's fate moved toward it. The blasting would reach it by the first smell of rain. 

Prowling through the prairie, we found them—a pair of musk deer, grazing without suspicion.   

“I’ll circle around. Just wait for my tail to rise on the other side. Then drive them to me,” she whispered, disappearing into the green.  

As the wind held, I ducked low and ran. Not for survival. Just because the grass swayed and my body wanted to move with it. The buck lurched left. I cut him right. He had nowhere to go but her. All I had to do was keep him honest. It felt like half of something worth remembering... 

We ate without ceremony. The sky burned like molten rock—her coat, I thought, without meaning to. 

“I'm not dragging him alone,” I grumbled.  

“Let the vultures get him.” She turned toward the woods without looking back. 

“There are no vultures here. You come from too much privilege.”  

“He’ll only weigh us down.”  

“My mum taught me never to waste food.” I didn’t move, one paw still resting on the kill. 

“What about your dad?” she smirked.  

I remembered the ridge where my mother left me. Not the leaving—I hadn't understood it as that at first. Just a morning that kept going without her in it. And then another. And then I stopped counting mornings and started counting kills.  

“Never knew him.”  

She turned back. “I’m sorry.”  

“Solitude is my way of life. Not something to pity,” I insisted, observing the sky that had deepened into the quiet blue that comes just before dark. 

“You don’t miss your mum?”  

I picked at the grass near my paw. “Of course I do. She raised me. And then she left. I’m free to move as I wish.”  

“You make it sound like freedom is enough.”   

“Isn't it?” I looked up. On the far ridge, something that wasn't thunder splintered through the rock.  

I stiffened. 

“I've never been alone a day in my life,” she admitted. For a moment, it didn't sound like a blessing. I stopped circling.  

“That sounds like safety,” I commented, quieter now. “Knowing someone would notice if you went hungry.”  

“Maybe,” she said. And then, quieter, almost to herself: “That’s all they could notice.” She lifted her eyes back to mine. “And I'd have traded all of it for one season of not knowing what came next.”  

I looked at her. “And I'd have traded every season of not knowing for just one that meant something.”  

The full moon owned the sky. She had settled at the edge of the outcrop, legs folded under her, tail moving slow and without purpose. Below, the ravine cut narrow and dark, a stream running along its floor, catching the moonlight in ripples. I sat closer than I'd have allowed myself two days ago. She was already watching the moon.  

“Do you ever talk to the moon?” she asked.  

“Do you speak to things that don’t answer?”  

“I used to talk to the sun every morning. When there was no one else who'd listen.” She paused. 

“You do remind me of the sun.” 

“The sun never talked back either,” she sighed, quieter. “Maybe he saves it all for the moon.”  

“Maybe I'll ask her about you.”  

She smiled at the horizon. “And maybe I'll ask the sun about you when you’re gone.”  

We ran through the woods like it was a game—and as we crested the ravine slope, she stopped, chest bared, roaring until the valley had no choice but to listen. I hesitantly joined her, with a yowl more suited to a house cat.  

“I never have enough time to look back and understand what I’ve been through,” she leapt across the narrow ravine, catching a thick branch like she'd always known it was there. “There’s always something to do.”  

“Well, I do have the time,” I leapt and perched next to her. “I just never know what to do with what I find.”  

Somewhere below the valley, something metal was eating through the dark. We both heard it. Neither of us spoke.  

I leapt into the shallows that were flowing through the ravine.  

“Do you not miss the old mountain?” she asked, following behind.  

“Not really. Maybe one day I will come to love a place.”  

She came up alongside me in the shallows, and for a moment we were side by side, our  

reflections breaking apart in the current.  

“For someone so keen on savouring things, you run from them awfully fast.”  

“Do you miss the pride?” I asked. 

“In a way. And in a way, not.” She moved ahead, and I stayed behind. “There's nowhere else I belong. But I needed to find that out for myself.”  

“That’s good to know,” I admitted, watching the silver glimmer of the moonlit current. “I'll have the ridgelines to myself again.” She stopped in front of me.   

“It’s fascinating how much we're capable of when we stop long enough to think about each other.” She looked into my eyes. “I've come to realise, sometimes the bravest thing you can do is ask for help.”  

The moon is a crescent tonight. I hunt around the ravine from time to time. And I like it here, even though the grating from the southern slope has been getting closer. It feels like I’ve found something new within me—the way a shadow at dusk is larger than the one who cast it. But I don’t know what to do with it.  

I have to keep looking.