*Imagine

     I sit down in a large comfortable armchair and wait for company. She enters a few moments later, prowling across the floor with her usual feline grace, though at this moment she has a body to match. Sleek black fur clings to perfect, dangerous, coils of muscles, and a pair of the most intelligent jade eyes I’ve ever seen, make up her panther form. Her tail swooshes behind her leisurely, as she takes easy, but measured, and always silent, steps closer. I nod hello to her, and she to me, sitting upright in front of me, posture perfect, tail curled about her toes.

     “Have you ever wondered,” she begins, without hesitation, voice strangely human for this feline form, “why I choose the form of a panther above all others?”

     I must admit that I have not. It always seemed to suit her so perfectly that it never occurred to me to ask, let alone wonder. Now that she has mentioned it, however, I find myself strangely curious. I tell her so.

     “It is because, when I first fled my fate at the sight of my young son Archir, a god before my eyes, I lost myself in the forest. I wanted to wrench myself from the hands of the gods who would use me, and the family that would not, could not, have me. But the forest has her own eyes, and she is ever lonely too.

     “The roots did not trip my feet, nor the branches snatch and tear my clothing. Instead they held me tenderly, and carried me, when my own strength waned, as far as my will would drive me. When at last I collapsed, with neither the desire, nor the power to go any further, the forest floor yielded to me, and hugged my body in an affectionate embrace. But as I lay weeping, I felt a pair of predator’s eyes fall upon me.

     “She was a panther, exactly as you see me now, and as she watched me with her cool, indifferent eyes I envied her. I was in her territory then, an interloper, but she allowed my presence. I knew that she saw weakness in me, and the power she held over me was overwhelming. Had I threatened her in any way, she would have killed me straight away without hesitation or remorse.

    “However, I wasn’t afraid of her for this. In fact, I loved her for it, and when I held out my hand to her she came, stopping just outside my reach long enough for me to know it was by her own will that she came, and not mine. She didn’t know it, but I could never have been mistaken. She was proof of my mortality, a thing I have longed for every day since then.

     “She stayed by my side and lent me her courage, protecting me as I slept that night. And in the morning I had strength again to face my pain.” She is silent now, awaiting my reaction, but I have none. I know her pain almost as well as she does, I have shared each moment of her life since her conception, and the things I do not know now, I will in time. So for now she and I simply watch each other, feeling and not speaking.

     After a while, I cannot bear silence for long, I ask her why she chose this story for me.

     “Because none of it matters,” she says, “To anyone but you.”

     She stands up and pads away, and I watch her go without protest. To try and cling might sever her from me forever. I do, however, wonder when she will be back again, but I’m always here in this place. So I’ll wait until she’s ready to talk again.