Through the Forest
The answers, if he would ever find them, were deeper in the forest where he would have to go find them. He took a deep breath. It’s alright. I’m a tiger. Nobody’s gonna mess with me, right? I mean, other tigers I guess, but something tells me I’m not going to run into any of them soon. Thus, he began his journey away from the cabin, turning his head to look back once before it was swallowed by the trees and he couldn’t see it anymore.
The woods were not so suffocatingly dense throughout. Not far into his trip did he wander into varying ground, the earth swelling over hills so steep they were bare with rock. The ground was strewn with twigs that would snap beneath his feet, adding a somber soundtrack to his lonesome journey. The canopy was alive with birds, their chirps being his first bit of company since his arrival in this world. He would see one on occasion as it hopped and twitched its way up a branch before shuttling off into flight. They regarded him no more than the trees they flitted between, their beady black eyes betraying no fear of the large cat roaming the forest floor.
His ears flicked suddenly, and he came to a stop. It was automatic, done without his input. He rounded his eyes and turned towards the noise to filter it more clearly. A steady rumble in his ears made his fur stand on ends. He was drawn to it, though he wasn’t sure what it was. Instinct made him turn in its direction and journey towards it.
The building dryness in his throat told him what it was before he began to recognize the sound of a running stream. He saw it when cresting over a hill, just a thin brook no deeper than up to his knees. It ran from as far as he could see in both directions, vanishing like a long stretch of road. The air was rife with the smell of moist earth and the visits of other animals. He smacked his lips while realizing how thirsty he was. It had been a long walk. He’d earned himself a drink.
He came up to the bank. His feet sank into the sandy ground, leaving a trail of his gargantuan footprints. He saw his reflection in the surface, and though it warped and bounced with the flow of water, it offered the first real look at himself since being transformed. What struck him first was the size of his head atop his shoulders. He brought his paws up to feel it and realized most of it was thick, heavy fur. Kneeling on his forelegs gave him a better look.
Though his eyes were remarkably large with dangerously yellow irises, they maintained the same shape that had defined him since his days as a human. His jowls were massive, heavily padded as they were by a bush of white and black fur thicker than his paw. Wings of white sprouted around his eyes and onto his brow. The pattern of black stripes was symmetrical across his face. He opened his mouth and saw giant, sharp fangs outclassing what he’d had as a wolverine by several leagues. His tongue was a massive paddle studded with white flesh spikes capable of rending flesh in just a few licks. Framing it were glistening black lips that quivered with his every exhale.
Jared was no expert on tigers, but he thought he knew what kind he was. His massive size and the kind of forest he was in lent to the idea that he was a Siberian tiger, the most massive of all the subspecies. He couldn’t hope to name all of them, not without his phone handy. The other two kinds he knew of were Bengal and Sumatran tigers. Neither of them was this massive or fluffy. If he was one of them, he would’ve expected to have been transported to a jungle somewhere. He smiled to himself, pride swelling a little. I got the coolest kind of tiger there is. Awesome.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 18 December 2023