When I wake up, I’m almost surprised. I’d thought it was too late, that the potion had been too little, too late in the style of all the best tragedies. Or had the whole thing even happened? Had I really thrown myself into a life-death struggle with a vicious creature to save a leopard cub? A cub whose mother saved my life in return? It seems too fantastical to be true, even for this strange life in which I find myself. I doubt its reality even more when I take into account that nothing hurts.
I open my eyes. There’s a break in the forest canopy above me and I can see the bright blue sky. It’s about mid-afternoon, from what I can tell. Without a watch or phone to tell me the time, I’ve got pretty good at using the cues of light, temperature, and animal noises to orientate myself.
Carefully stretching, I feel no pain, but I do feel the sensations of dirt, twigs, and grass under my hands, so I’m not still numb. Testing my feet, I can feel my toes and move them. Good. I’m not paralysed or anything. Pushing myself up to a sitting position, I feel over my stomach. It’s smooth, healed, though the rips and bloodstains in my clothes attest to the fact that it really shouldn’t be. Then I notice something that makes me freeze, ice going through my stomach.
My vision is strangely limited. I can see everything I normally would to my right side, but my left side vision is...limited. I can see my nose and beyond it in a straight line, but my peripheral vision? I lift both hands and wave them to the sides of my head while looking forwards. My right hand, I can see. My left hand... No. Nonono. I grab at my face and put my hands over my eyes. My right eye is reacting normally. My left eye...is not.
My left eyelid blinks, I can feel my finger when I touch the eyeball. But I can’t see out of it. If I close my right eyelid and leave my left open, it’s as if I’ve closed them both. I’m...It’s… I can’t deal with this right now. I push myself to my feet with nervous energy, then stop dead.
The leopard is there, in that half-lying, half-sitting position cats and dogs take. She’s watching me intently, the tip of her tail twitching every now and again. I’m not an expert in cat body language so I can’t tell if that’s a sign of annoyance or interest. Or even if body language for cats on Earth has any relevance to a giant leopard several worlds away. Forgetting about my eye for a moment, adrenaline rushes through me as I go into full-scale fight or flight mode.
“Good kitty,” I say shakily, lifting my hands placatingly and hunching over a little, not wanting to seem at all threatening. As if something as small and puny as me could seem threatening to a killing machine like her. I start backing away, hoping I can get far enough that she will stop being at all interested in me. If she’s hungry and hopes to make a nice snack of me, I’m toast. “Nice kitty.”
Why did you save my cub?
The words echo in my head like a resonant bell ringing in a vast cave. Is that saying something about how much, or, more to the point, how little my mind is filled? Bringing my pitiful Intelligence and Wisdom stats to mind, I can’t help but feel more depressed at the thought. Then I shake the thoughts out of my head – not literally: I’m rather trying to avoid sudden movements at the moment.
Human, why did you save my cub?
The words are repeated, though this time there is a sense of annoyance. At the same time, the leopard rumbles for a short moment. Is it….? Could the leopard…? Could it, she, be talking to me? In my mind? Given what I’ve seen so far, can I really rule out anything as a possibility? And ultimately, who’s going to know or care if I’m wrong?
“I wasn’t really thinking about it,” I answer honestly, the sheer terror curdling in my belly preventing me from finding any sort of pretty lie. “Your cub was so small and cute; it didn’t seem fair that it should die just as it started to live.” Well, in for a penny, in for a pound. I think for a moment, forgetting to continue slowly backing away in my pondering. “And I’m tired of worlds which destroy the innocent.”
It’s surprisingly true. And I’m not just talking about this world, either, though the kill-or-be-killed nature of the place here is probably even harder on the young than the corporate world I came from. Of course, it helps that the leopard cub was absolutely adorable and the wolverzard was more like an escaped experiment from a mad scientist’s laboratory.
I thank you, human, whatever your motives. I had thought my den safer than it is, and I would have been most grieved to have returned all too late to save my offspring. I wish to reward you, but I must know more about you in order to offer the most appropriate gift.
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“I mean, you kinda already saved my life,” I say slowly, not wanting to look a gift-leopard in the mouth, but at the same time not wanting to be like Chicken Little, getting lured into a fox’s den with pretty words and then swiftly eaten. “You gave me my health potion.” Then I frowned as my memory tells me that actually the ground moved to bring my health potion nearer to me. That’s not possible – I must have been delusional at the time.
Since you wouldn’t have needed it if not for interceding on my cub’s behalf, it does not count towards the debt I owe you. Indeed, the fact that you were brought so near death on her account, and indeed have earned a physical disability for your actions only add to the weight of the debt.
I bring my hand up to my blind eye, a surge of emotions once more rising. I force it down again. For now. I say nothing, just stand there hesitating.
Come, the leopard tells me. Sit, and tell me how you came to be in this unpopulated world. She gestures and the earth moves. Again, since with this new evidence, I have to guess that I wasn’t dreaming about it obeying her command before. It forms a low chair, nothing fancy; just a seat with a back and raised sections to either side which will work as arms. Suddenly, I realise the probable reason for why the cave looked so unnatural: she made it. The other problem with the chair is that it’s also significantly closer to the great cat than I am now, even than where I started.
I hesitate again. This seems far too much like the Chicken Little scenario. Come, she tells me again. I promise you safety for this audience. After a few more moments of thought, I mentally shrug and walk towards the chair. If she’s lying, she’s quite capable of killing me even if I ran away as quickly as I could. Humans can’t stand up to a normal leopard without armour and/or guns; standing up to this massive version of one with nothing more than a lumpy branch and a short knife seems...improbable. I might as well play along with her.
Tell me, human, she says once I’ve made myself comfortable on the earthen chair, how came you to this world?
I start by telling her about the object Nicholas gave me to bring me here, but then that required me to go back and talk about why I’d be foolish enough to choose to accept a one-way trip into the unknown. Before I know it, I’m pouring out practically my whole life story along with all the trials and tribulations I’ve faced since I’ve been here, and the decisions I need to make about my future.
It’s...cathartic. I cry, I’ll admit it, when I talk about what I’ve left behind. I shudder and shiver when I think once more about how many times I’ve come close to death since being here. I feel fear of the future once more grip me by the throat, but this grip is looser than it has been at other times, because instead of struggling with it on my own, I’m sharing it with someone else. It doesn’t matter that that someone else is an inexplicably telepathic leopard, who might want to eat me for a late lunch – or early dinner – but just that she’s listening.
And when I’ve finished and my words peter out, I feel a deep relief and lightening of my sense of self. I’ve missed talking to others, I realise. I’m not the most extroverted person, and social occasions usually make me need to take several days of quiet time at home to recover, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like people. In fact, the opposite is generally true, though they frustrate me immensely too. The old adage of ‘a burden shared is a burden halved’ has never felt so true as now, even if the one I’ve been sharing it with is a disturbingly intelligent and communicative giant leopard.
As if on cue, a little bundle of fur bounds out of the cave and snuggles into its mother’s stomach. When it stops moving except for a little shifting of its paws, I realise it must be drinking milk. At the thought, red rises up in my face. I don’t know why. It’s not as if I would find the sight of kittens or puppies drinking from their mother embarrassing back home, after all. Perhaps it’s that I’ve just spent a good hour talking to the leopard mother like I would another human that makes me suddenly ascribe human norms to her. I rise anyway.
“Look, I’ve been talking your ear off here. I’ll just leave you to your...you know,” I gesture towards the feeding bundle of fur, “to looking after your cub.”
Stay. Her mental word halts me in my tracks. It’s not threatening in any way; it’s just so full of calm, implacable command that I couldn’t move if I wanted to. I haven’t yet given you your reward. I’ll probably regret my chivalrous impulse, but I wave my hands in the air.
“Don’t worry about it; your company has already done me the world of good. If you just agree not to eat me, I think we’re good,” I chuckle nervously. My nerves turn into full-blown fear when the leopard snarls a little and gets to her feet. The little cub yowling in complaint as her late afternoon snack disappears out of reach is only a little distraction from the immensity of her mother.
The leopard is even bigger than I thought she was: her shoulder is above my head and her jaws could fit around said part of me without even opening wide. Her tail is switching back and forth, and her head is lowered so it’s practically on level with my own.
“Look, I’m sorry for whatever I said,” I squeak out. “Please don’t eat me!”