Patron Predator
The moon glided across the ripples on the shallow river. Shrieks and cries of animals echoed, momentarily ripping the green and dark sheet of forest silence. Fishes flowed gracefully, falling at once from the quiet forest to a delightful valley where the river splashed and sprayed on life around.
Colored like the moon, two tiny crystals showed at the river bank. The cheetah hesitated, dreading the biting cold of the water. A paw in the river and another consideration later, he slowly moved inside. When he let go, the water carried him downstream. His heart fluttered but the hum of the river calmed him and slowly he spread his limbs, looked up at the midnight sky.
The river took him through thick and thin of the jungle, across where the foxes slept and where the hyenas hunted. He dreamt to the rhythm of the tress and about small cheetahs and large gazelles. He smelt grass and then flesh. The fishes tickled him.
A sharp bend in the river nudged him awake. The human lights had started showing in the distance, yellow and white. He swam upstream and to the right until he was out of the water. The cheetah walked to the fringes of the forest where the human houses started to show and climbed atop a tree. He waited for the human people.
As the orange of the dawn broke in the sky and the roosters crowed, they arrived. The tallest of them spread a sheet beneath the tree and they sat in a round. They spoke and laughed. Then they sang. Their sharp and pure tone cut between the trees like rays of early morning light.
The cheetah listened from atop his tree, careful not to rustle any leaf. The animal paid attention to the colors at the horizon, to the human lights in the distance, and he noticed the hundred dragonflies around. He enjoyed the warmth of the sunlight on his face. He didn’t mind the hunger. In the trance of the tunes, the line between animal and man blurred.
When the songs stopped and the last human disappeared back in the fog, the cheetah descended. He lurked for a while, before he charged back up the woods, his paws steady against the dewy grass.
