Ranee and the Tigers (standard:adventure, 1131 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Oct 15 2008	Views/Reads: 3117/2521	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Coming of Age can be a real challenge when your adversary is a Bengal tiger. Oops -- two tigers!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

tiger's prize. 

Smoke billowed from the tiger's flaring nostrils and belched out of its
roaring maw.  Green fire flared from its phosphorescent eyes and 
flickered along its thrashing tail.  Ranee felt the blast of hungry, 
savage tiger roiling beneath her, beside the high walls of the temple 
of Ptah.  Ranee danced on its roof.  The dead Paca hung dripping from 
her waist. 

Below her terrace, Ranee's tiger roared and rumbled, percolating the
night with macho barks and menacing growls.  Its moonlit tail thrashed 
in angry circles.  A lion-like mane arose to frame its awful head.  In 
its desperation, the violent, frustrated beast emitted a musthy, vile 
stink that rose to the terrace undiluted. 

Ranee recoiled, but not for long.  She drew out the bolas and began to
swing.  Gyrating her torso, she whipped the three balls around until 
they formed the apices of an equilateral triangle, cranking them higher 
and faster until they buzzed.  With a fillip, Ranee unleashed the 
balls.  One struck the roaring tiger between its teeth, and hung up on 
a sabre tooth.  The other two spun around its nape and locked over its 
windpipe, choking off a roar.  The man-eater exploded into fury.  It 
leaped amid the brush, caromed off the temple wall and rolled over, 
claws a-splay, hawking and spitting. 

Behind her, in shadow at the north side of the temple, a second tiger
stalked, seeking a path onto the parapet.  At the opposite wall, Ranee 
climbed down a steel ladder, to watch the male expire and to recover 
her bolas.  A close look showed the cat was nearly toothless.  No 
wonder it preyed on children. 

Tiger Two leaped gracefully, lithe and precise, landing on the roof.
Bloodscents reeked from a steel ladder at the opposite wall. The tiger 
stalked it carefully.  At the parapet, she saw spread below her two 
meals. One was a blood-covered bite-size morsel that would hardly fill 
her belly.  The other was a fretful expiring tiger -- a substantially 
larger meal. 

An instant later, the second tiger vaulted the ladder, cuffed Ranee
aside and began feeding; Ranee cowered in a corner and watched the 
female gorge herself on her dead mate.  As dawn's flowers unfolded, the 
second tiger dragged the shredded carcass back to its den to feed its 
cubs. 

Before long, Eos arose from her rainbow futon and shone on Ranee from a
col between aretes.  Shamash-Savitar climbed Aruna's bow-arch and began 
to bake the world again. 

By facing death while smeared with blood, Ranee had earned her title of
Assassin. Now she could tie her sari with a carmine sash, and diminish 
in stature any aggressor who stand too tall, who roared too loudly. 

Seattle, October 15, 2008 Gerald X. Diamond Copyright 1990


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