I am not like any ordinary world
He lies, limbs tangled in leaves and branches and dreams such terrible dreams. Within them a man carves for a girl and a boy at once so similar and yet so different. From a block of wood the man makes two small statues. Two identical cheetah kittens emerge from the block of stone. The work is long, the detail so careful. But when the cheetah cubs are made and one is passed to the girl who takes it and disappears, the other is passed to the boy. He clutches it tight, but in its grasp, the wood rots and splits and comes apart within his hold. The statue the colt holds cries out as it breaks. Its cry is the bleat of a lamb, the crying of fear and sorrow.
Leonidas startles from his dream, the cries turning to yowls as the dream lives on within his ears. He lies still, there in the silvered darkness where frost settles her white jewels upon the ground. There in the milky moonlight where mist hangs low and pregnant over the forest floor. It is all so still this night, where the boy lies, his gold muted into grey. He lies still, awake, thinking of the statue of the cheetah cub, until he hears its cry within his ears again and knows, then, that it was no dream.
The silent forest echoes with the low, bleat and the higher growl. The boy rises suddenly, for he knows the sound of his cheetah; the statue his father gave him, brought to life by a magic that turned wood into flesh and bone and muscle.
He trails through the woods, listening to the cries, until there at the bottom of a ravine, caught like a lamb in a bramble bush, a nearly grown cheetah lies. It watches Leonidas with golden eyes and its lips peel away from long canines. It thrashes where it lies but the grasping plants do not release it. They dig into the cubs open wounds and the creature hisses and spits, feral and frightened. From atop the ravine Leonidas watches his cub, wondering why his soul does not twist with recognising its familiar.
@Danae
