Explore
Breaking his self-appreciation was his building thirst, a reminder of why he’d gone there in the first place. He noticed how he was already kneeling on his forelegs but couldn’t reach his face into the water like a cat would. He leaned over and dipped his fingers into the stream, feeling its gently persuasive current pushing and swirling around him. He let his rear legs fold underneath him, forming a giant tiger loaf so he could get comfortable and start drinking. He scooped some water into his paw and drank from it. It cooled the fur around his mouth and trickled down his whiskers. The taste suffered from the soil but did not hinder the water’s blissful quench.
He took a few more pawfuls before wiping his paw on his chest and taking more time to look around. Where would he go now? What was there to do? He could follow the creek for as long as it wandered. Maybe he’d find whatever it fed into, but how far away was that? Would he be able to find his cabin from there? What if he ran into another tiger? Were there even any out there? Of course there had to have been. Unless this was some mythical realm full of unique creatures (which wouldn’t have surprised him at this point) there was no way he was the only one of his kind. He knew tigers, like all large predators, were extremely territorial. Maybe this was his, and any potential rival who wandered into it would leave upon realizing it was his.
He looked around at the forest. Is all of this really mine? He sniffed the air and picked up something he hadn’t given mind to. It was the smell of him, that which wafted on the wind and hung over like a fog. He’d been here before many times. This was his stream, and no one else’s. Those who decided to drink from it did so on his accord and at their own risk. Nature documentaries he’d seen in the past came to mind with figures of how much territory a single tiger possessed. He didn’t recall the exact number, but he knew it was measured in square miles. Not acres like some plot of land, but square miles.
And all of it was his to explore.
Jared got back on his feet. He took a deep breath through his nose, flooding his mind with the many intricate scents that hovered around him. Looking back up the stream in the direction it flowed, he wondered without concern, What will I find at the end of that? So he ventured forward, off to discover what belonged to him.
* * *
The creek wandered for a great stretch, reaching into varying swathes of flora as unique as they were foreign to Jared. More hills greeted him, some affording good views of the land around him. In the distance he saw the blue ridges of a mountain range, their slopes textured by the clumped treetops. A river, likely the one his creek fed into, snaked between them and through the Manchurian topography. As nice as the thought may have been, he doubted all of it was his territory, but he was on a mission just to see how much of it was.
He did not make it to the end of the creek when night fell. The deerskin back at his cabin sounded very comfortable at that moment, but he made do with a makeshift den he carved out of the ground between two massive shrubs. Finding the best position to sleep in proved a bothersome task. Was he supposed to lie all the way down on his side or huddle his tiger beneath him and sleep with his anthro side upright? A few minutes of squirming in place passed before he had to remind himself not to think about it. Muscle memory. Muscle memory. Soon he was slowly lowering himself down on his side, letting his upper portion lay on the ground. He huddled his legs and folded his paws beneath his head. He closed his eyes, tried not to think about his cabin, and fell asleep shortly after.
Written by TheGreatJaceyGee on 22 December 2023