Chapter Text
Now Rann the Kite brings home the night
That Mang the Bat sets free--
The herds are shut in byre and hut
For loosed till dawn are we.
This is the hour of pride and power,
Talon and tush and claw.
Oh, hear the call! --Good hunting all
That keep the Jungle Law!
-Night-Song in the Jungle
The jungle lay quiet in the cool shadows of dusk. It was by no means silent, yet after sunset in the underbrush of the vast forest a certain tranquility settled upon animal and human alike. However, as the mist falls upon the lower levels of the trees, all sorts of creatures come alive, and with the awakening prey come the hunters.
You make your way noiselessly through the thicket, the damp of the day’s humidity now brushing cool against your skin. You mask your movement’s noise well, springing from branch to branch when the cricket’s song moves into a crescendo, keeping close to the running stream to blend your footsteps with the flow of the water. Only a little more to where your prey is waiting, unaware of your silent approach.
Brushing aside a juicy leaf almost twice your size you finally look down onto an empty clearing. Save for a few fireflies, no one is in sight. Catching your breath, you crouch back into the blue shadows of the tree you are in. Surely you aren’t early, Brother Wolf had only just given you the heads up and you had immediately begun your chase.
You peer down carefully once more and then close your eyes. The jungle vibrates with the sound of water dripping, the first night birds crying and the life within the ancient forest. Now, concentrate. You hear the slight breeze and feel it caressing your skin, damp from the ever-wet greens around you. You hear a pecker work on a close-by tree, long dead by the sound of the hollow taps that vibrate back every time the bird cracks his beak against the bark. You hear the distant river flowing down to the Great Falls in the valley.
You hear a soft rustle of leaves below your feet. Immediately your eyes snap open. Beneath you, a shadow glides into the open of the clearing, making its way towards the dark shore of a nearby waterhole.
Determined, as quietly as you can you move to the next branch, silently thanking the trees for their coverage. The animal beneath you is large, yet doubtlessly one of the most graceful in the kingdom animalia. And one of the most lethal.
On velvet paws it approaches the edge of the water and bows its coal black head towards the smooth surface. A pink tongue laps out and the feline’s reflection is broken by ripples disturbing the mirror image of the dark and spectacularly starry sky. You can make out the panther’s shoulder blades, cinched together as it crouches, held together by strong muscle and you can’t help but shudder at the deadly power emanating from the beast. Its purpose is now peaceful whilst quenching its thirst, but you have come to learn that an animal is at it’s most vulnerable at the drinking hole, as it is forced to give up its guard. If provoked, that panther could within a second have sprung up from its crouch and have its enemy ripped apart on the ground before him.
You inch forward, closing in on your target. You can still hear the soft drip of water from the drinking panther and you rub your sweaty palms on your furs. Just a bit closer…! You place your weight on the branch before you, and look down. A second too late you realize in horror that you are hovering just a little too far over the edge of the water and are now in clear sight of the feline, your pale face reflected immaculately by the water surface.
The Panther however keeps its head down, and you can’t believe your luck as you very slowly start your retreat.
Until it suddenly freezes.
You breathe in sharply as you find your gaze locked to the creatures’. Panicked, you scramble back, only to find your hands grasping into thin air and with a cry you feel yourself tumbling down sharply from your hiding spot! The Panther stays in place, its eyes widening in surprise at the human falling out of the tree, straight at him.
You somehow manage to twist, but still collide face first with the back of the gigantic cat. The air is pushed out of your lungs and you ribs protest in pain. “Ugh!”. During a short struggle, you try to subdue your prey, but just as quickly find yourself pinned to the mossy floor by a heavy onyx paw and your throat caught in between a very powerful jaw and two sets of very sharp teeth. The canines dig painfully into the sensitive skin of your neck and you barely repress a whimper as you feel something warm trickle down to your chest. Not that you would admit that you are scared.
After a tense moment, the teeth withdraw slightly, but the Panther’s stare is almost harder to bear. His eyes are the consuming yellow colour of a savannah sunrise. He stares at you, lower lids squinting up with the intensity of his regard.
You stare back, right into those burning orbs.
“Do you have any last words, Child of Man?”
His soft voice floats through the air. It’s a deep, dark tone, not lacking in warmth. It feels almost coquettish as your neck tingles from the animal breathing warmly onto it, scenting you, nudging its damp nose softly against the small section of bleeding skin there.
He makes a noise, almost as if he were tutting in disapproval (but Panthers can’t make that sound, can they?), and suddenly you feel a warm, wet tongue gently glide up from above the dip of your collarbone to a very sensitive spot just underneath your ear and back again.
You swallow, hard, and the Panther chuckles quietly.
“You always were a reckless cub.”
You gasp in indignation. “Cub?! I am no child any longer! I have far passed beyond that stage! Surely even you could not have missed that, Bagheera!”
The Panther just hums and continues to lavish your throat with attention. While this is certainly embarrassing, you know better than to deprive the big cat of his care taking. Ever since he found you all alone, floating along on the calm waters of the River Fateful, as the animals call it, he has played a very important part in your life. He has been your best friend, your mentor, and your teacher.
Since the moment you first laid eyes upon him, you had always thought him to be the most beautiful creature of all, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.
Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path; for he was as cunning as the snake, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.
He taught you the meaning of things in the jungle, until every rustle in the grass, every breath of the warm night air, every note of the owls above your head, every scratch of a bat's claws as it roosted for a while in a tree, and every splash of every little fish jumping in a pool meant as much to you as to every other animal. Even though you grew up with your pack, the wolves, he has always been there for you and you call for him when your need is at its greatest.
But right now, he is teaching you a lesson.
"Tell me, have I not taught you to take utmost care of your reflection in the water when approaching drinking prey?”
“Y-you have, Bagheera.”
His answering growl reverberates on your neck and you can barely repress a shiver running down your spine.
“Then I suppose you can tell me why I saw your human face hovering right above mine in that tree before, now, can you?”
“Ah, I, um…”
He cuts you off. “Now don’t stutter, think of what you want to say and only then speak.”
You swallow hard again; well aware he can feel your every move.
“I- I’m sorry, Bagheera. I will do better next time.”
After a moment of silence the wet pressure disappears from your collarbone and the panther briefly rubs his forehead against your cheek, letting you sit up.
It has grown increasingly dark beneath the large ferns and trees and you hold back a yawn with your hand.
Bagheera’s voice softly permeates the air again. Yet he does not seem angry. He sounds almost… nostalgic.
“I do not know what to tell you, cub. Long gone seem the days of the clumsy little frog, stumbling around on your two brittle legs, pulling my fur more painfully than any child of the jungle would have ever done.”
You look away, grinning.
You loved more than anything else to go with Bagheera into the dark warm heart of the forest, to sleep all through the drowsy day, and at night see how Bagheera did his killing. He killed right and left as he felt hungry, and so did you—with one exception. As soon as you were old enough to understand things, Bagheera had told you that you must not ever touch cattle because you had been allowed to stay with the Pack at the price of a bull's life.
"All the jungle is thine, cub," Bagheera had said, "and you may kill everything that you are strong enough to kill; but for the sake of the bull’s life that I exchanged for your safekeeping, you must never kill or eat any cattle, young or old. That is the Law of the Jungle."
You had obeyed faithfully to this day, grateful for Bagheera’s sacrifice.
Looking over at the large feline, you notice him staring almost wistfully over the water illuminated by the risen moon, fireflies dancing merrily atop its surface. Carefully, you reach out to caress his brilliantly shining fur, black hues tinged green and blue in the light.
He flinches at your touch, breaking out of his trance, yet he does not look at you.
With a small twinge in your heart you had noticed him growing more and more reluctant to your touch over the last few years. Whereas once he had nestled with you, draping his warm body around your fragile little human form, now he would barely even rub his face to yours anymore, let alone let you sleep near him. You tried to push away the hurt you feel whenever he reacts negatively to your touch, you tried to write it off as Bagheera’s overall distaste for affection (he really never lets anyone close to him, not even the wolf cubs), but you couldn’t help but wonder what had changed for him to constantly hold you at arm’s, or rather, paw’s length.
Just as you are about to withdraw your hand, you feel a sigh emanating from your friend and he finally turns his head to regard you. You can’t read the expression in his amber eyes, but you return his gaze in earnest, subconsciously holding your breath in anticipation.
His whiskers twitch slightly as he finally breaks eye contact and, much to your surprise, he slips his large head underneath your hovering hand, his eyes sliding shut.
His face looks oh so innocent in that moment. Incongruous to the stern chiding you received moments before, as though he had already forgotten. Your eyes flit all over the familiar visage, searching. Aha. You see it, then, hidden in the slight crinkle of the creature's snout. There is mischief behind that expression, as well as a gleam of self-awareness.
He is humoring you.
Not willing to pass up on the increasingly rare chance, you bring both your hands up to rub at the panthers ears and he stretches himself out to his full length, keeping his eyes shut. You notice your pale skin striking a harsh contrast to the onyx fur as you run your hands over and over the warm animal. Feeling somewhat bold, your hand drops lower to rub at the feline’s neck. A low sound escapes Bagheera and you realize he is purring deep in the back of his throat. You flush, happy to have wrought such a pleasured sound from him and you continue your ministrations until, just under Bagheera's silky chin, where the giant rolling muscles are all hidden by the glossy hair, you come upon a rough patch of skin, the texture of a scar.
Your hand stills and Bagheera falls silent. Cautiously you trail a finger over the broken flesh.
"No one in the jungle knows that I, Bagheera, carry that mark—the mark of the collar, of imprisonment. And yet, Little Cub, I was brought up amongst man, and it was amongst men that my mother died—in the cages of the king's palace at Oodeypore. When I first found you as a little naked cub, I was reminded of my own cubhood, and it was because of this that I paid the price of the bull for thee at the Council to decide your fate.”
You must have looked astonished, as Bagheera continues, words full of sorrow and tinged with fury.
“Yes, I too was born amongst man. I had never seen the wonders of the jungle. They beat me and fed me behind bars from an iron pan in my prison until one night I felt that I was Baghira—the Panther—and no man's plaything! So I broke the locks with one blow of my paw and escaped that wretched place. Yet because I had learned the ways of man, I became more terrible in the jungle than even Shere K- the most ferocious beasts themselves."
He breaks off, as if worried he had already said too much.
"You look so troubled, cub. Is it not so?”
"Yes," you say, struggling against the knot in your throat "all of the jungle fear Bagheera—all except me."
A chuckle rumbles through the clearing.
"Oh, you truly are man's cub," says the black panther very tenderly. He looks like he is about to rub his head against your cheek, but then decides against it in favor of scrutinizing you. "Look at me," he almost whispers. You obey, looking him steadily between the eyes. Bagheera turns his head away in half a minute.
"All this is why," he says, avoiding your gaze again and shifting his paw on the leaves, "even as I returned to my jungle, so must you go back to men, to the men who are your kin."