Suicide Of The Wild

    Luminous with deep adoration, the tiger’s green eyes shone through the unruly undergrowth. The tiger was lean and muscular, powerful yet submittal to his love.
    His ardor belonged to the forest. It was the hands of the ancient gnarled roots, climbing emerald vines and towering trees that held his soul’s fixation. The tiger lived to breath the humid, mossy perfume of his lover, to bask in her open clearings and to adore her as much as she him. The forest’s vivacity depended on her dear, the tiger, and his life was dependent on her.
      The tiger’s paws padded through jade leaves and spring grass with steps so light the plants rose back up after him, leaving no trail. Passing through tall, fuzzy grass, the tiger stepped on packed, coffee-coloured ground, sprinkled with smooth, grey pebbles. Spread before him, like a glassy carpet, laid a lake rippled with the calm movements of natural serenity.
    The tiger lowered his broad muzzle into the crystalline lake, lapping up the water of his lover’s breasts. His gratitude was boundless, and the forest’s love was never-ending. She was the one who provided his entire world; the forest even gave him the lucid water he now stepped into.
    It was crisp and cool as a winter’s mid-afternoon, refreshing as a nap. He paddled across in five great strides, leaving a momentary aqua-path behind him. The tiger dove down, liquid silk waves caressing his great mass.  He parted the surface of the translucent water and shook his head, vigorously, droplets bounding off of him and bouncing onto the lake’s clear face. 
    The tiger growled with satisfaction, ‘Thank you, my sweet forest.’
    Feeling a minor earthquake tremble inside of him, he swam out of the water intent on finding himself a meal.
      Wet fur bristling like the spikes of an alarmed porcupine, the tiger felt the adrenaline of excitement pump his predator’s blood, rapidly and without warning, through his veins.  His second love was the hunt.
    The tiger arched his spine, flinging back his head towards the heavens. Above him, the treetops lay in angry circles of jagged green, their leaves cutting into the air like hot, explosive missiles ready to launch. He released his back, yet his tension was still building up, like elastic nearly snapping. The tiger’s eyes peered through the bushes, scanning, body ready, searching, muscles tight.
    Spotting a dwarfed, white hare, the tiger had sprung up, launching himself through the air, agile and hungry.
    In a great sweep of the tiger’s paw, and extraction of his sharp claws, the hare found himself, like his white fur, dead and limp in the tiger’s mouth.
    Blood spewed, like a fountain, from his body, pooling on the ground, staining the tiger’s toes and spraying onto neighboring leaves.
    Hunting, being a natural instinct, one would expect the tiger’s immunity from sorrow. Yet, the remorse of killing still permeated his soul. He understood the cycle of the world, the life of the forest and the breeding of animals, but felt his prey deserved his grief and remembrance in exchange for their lives.
    As he feasted upon the hare’s flesh, the tiger felt a prayer well up inside of him, it joined the soul of the hare as it ascended and disappeared.
    The tiger slept that night, nestled in frayed, honey yellow roots. His sleep was that of kings.
    Noon of the next day, remarkably early, the tiger was awoken by a distant, overpowering stench. This distant stench overpowered even the fragrance of the bushes overhead. Drawing his paws into his sides to rise up, and releasing the embrace of his love, reluctantly, the tiger slinked out of the bushes, into the open forest.
    The sun was shining, as the tiger had never experienced, rays of light, bounced haphazardly off of leaves, reflecting into the tiger’s brilliant eyes. He could not see the source of the horrid smell, for the light was too strong, but to see was not necessary, his keen, pink nose led the way. It was incredibly simple to trace the trail, for the air was drowning in some foreign, rancid malodorousness.  The tiger crept forward, nearing the culprit. Now, in a darker part of the forest, he stopped as his eyes adjusted to the light.       
    Within seconds of his pause, his nose was clogged and his eyes became blurry and filled with salty dewdrops.  The stink was approaching.
    Loud, heavy steps of black, leathered booted feet echoed through the wind. Louder than a thousand thunderclaps it was, jarring to the ear as crashing trees. There was more than one of these strange creatures; they wielded thick, silver axes as they passed. These must have been men.
    They had plain fur only on their heads and the rest of their body was naked but adorned. The men were walking through a hectic collection of trees nearby, boots of cow pelt leaving trails of bent grass in their path.  One of the men with a mop of shaggy, blonde straw and a grey, weathered coat stopped. He was walking in front of the procession of humans and like a snowballing effect, as he ceased, the others did so too.
    “Here,” he said.
    The men released their metal axes from belts, too of cow pelt. There were about a hundred of them, each accompanied with an axe and each, of a sudden let out a piercing, “Aeeee!” They swung their silver, destructive axes into the tress, cutting into the arms of the forest.
    The tiger felt, first, fear quiver through him as these men, uninvited and unwelcome with their loud calls and cold hearts, began a massacre in the clearing, just a few feet away. Then, though his fear turned to blind hatred and his hatred effervesced on the tips of soul. Unintentionally, the tiger began to moan, a low deep moan, as if pained, for he was. He moaned and grieved for all the magnificent trees in the clearing and for the disfiguration and agony of his love. He moaned for the forest as she wept in around him, as she shook, as she wallowed and as she pitied herself.
    The men took notice, each dropping their ax, mesmerized by the terrible beauty of the music emanating deep from the tiger’s throat. As his song died to a whimper, the men felt the frigid grasp of terror grip their minds,
    Screams of, “Tiger,” were heard as well as a single, well-aimed shot. 
    Blood spilled from forth the tiger’s body. His soul, his vitality, his strength released into the thirsty ground. The tiger died and the forest too decayed around him, not because of the chopping down of trees, but because of something else, something deeper and that reached from within.
    Every leaf of every well-fed tree yellowed and curled, the roots released their hold of the brown, wet dirt and every creeping vine peeled off, falling in a heap onto the ground. Throughout the entire forest, trees lost control of their calm waves of leaves and it was as if a tempest was throwing the tree trunks, ruthlessly about. All scattered lakes overflowed and their pristine water became like that of the sea, like that of salty tears. The violent deluge that ravaged the forest swept away the wildly swinging trees. The trees swam, dragged by the water, and snagged all other life on their path. The men too, flailed and scram, begging for forgiveness, from God, from the tiger, from the world, to no avail. They, too, were carried away, among the debris, lost in the madness of the muddy waters. The flood of tears moved erratically, without destination, but it mattered not where they went, what mattered was what remained.
    Laying on acres and acres of soil upon which once flourished a forest, was the damp, bloody body of the tiger. He laid, in fetal position, a mass of browning leaves between his legs.
    The image was a faint remnant of the deep bond between tiger and forest. The lines traced in the dirt recounted the forest’s grief upon losing her lover. They told the story of suicide.