July/August 2002

The light glinted playfully across my face, awakening me from my slumber. I reluctantly got up from my warm, furry haven curled up beside my mother with all of my siblings around me. I stretched luxuriously, and winced as I remembered yet again how hard the floor of that cave was. Cautiously, I tried to crawl over Hashim, who had odd brown stripes across his forehead, and Malishkim, with the white paws, without waking either of them up. I warily crept up the natural stone stairs that circled their way around the inside of the cavern and peered into the shallow freshwater lake in the room at its zenith. The reflection that looked back up at me didn’t look anything like the faces of my family. My face was tanned from the sun, but it was still starkly naked and pink. Everyone else in my pride had rich, deep golden fur over their entire bodies, and the papuas, or fathers, in our pride even had a long brown fringe of fur around their faces. My hind legs were much, much longer than theirs, and I had peculiar miniature extensions with tough plates at the ends of them coming out of my paws. The reflection that looked back up at me didn’t look anything like the faces of my family I splashed awkwardly into the water, transforming my reflection into a plethora of tiny ripples. I liked it that way. I couldn’t see that I was different. I began to wash. It wasn’t always like this. My moshi (mother) found me under a bush in a mirage when I was very young, crying louder than she had ever heard her own young yell. I was a hideous, Crimson, wrinkled tiny thing covered with a strange-colored fur that wasn’t plush at all. But Moshi felt an unusual sense of compassion for me, and she had finished her hunting for that day already anyway, so she gently placed me on her back and took me to her pride. When all of the papuas in our pride came home, not everyone thought that I should be welcome. However, my moshi and papua insisted, so they brought me along with them from shelter to shelter. The others had to listen to them because they were the leaders of our pride. “Lalashim? Are you up there?” My moshi’s melodious voice awakened me from my daydream. I quickly licked my paws and ran them through the long, red fur that only grew on top of my head. I stretched and finally ran silently down the steps. All of the moshis in our pride were looking up at me expectantly from the foot of the stairwell. The sun was showing its full, round, orange face, a small hoofka above the horizon, so it was time to go hunting. The papuas and cubs were still sleeping, as they would until they saw it fit to rouse themselves. We all slunk out of the cave into the bright, warm morning. I loved waking up early to go hunting with the females. Everyone walked along in a comfortable silence until we caught the scent of an antelope, Zebra, or other hefty animal. The giraffes we left alone, though. There was an old legend saying that if anyone tried to sink their teeth into their supple flesh, they would move their powerful legs and kick us to join our ancestors in the heavens. Then, we would creep up as close as possible to the animal, and when we were sure that we were at the most advantageous spot, we would run simultaneously up to prey and trap it until one of us could clamp our jaws on their neck, the fatal spot. There would be a small struggle, but eventually the animal would succumb to death and hang limply in our mouths. Finally, we would eat until we were full to bursting and bring what was left home. This was where my job would come up. Two summers ago, I discovered that the sticklike objects protruding from my paws could curl around a kill and make carrying the meat much simpler. Since my legs couldn’t move swiftly enough to trap our meal, my teeth weren’t sharp enough to cut its throat, and my nose was too feeble to smell the animal, I insisted to the other hunters that my task would be to carry the kill back home. That day, we were all chattering cheerfully on the way back. It had been a good hunt; we had brought home three zebras and two antelope. Suddenly, my moshi stopped in her tracks, her muzzle raised high and twitching. “Humans! Upwind from here!” she exclaimed. We all swiftly turned our heads upwind. As one, we skulked from bush to bush, out of sight of the humans, until we could see them. It was rare that people ever came here to the savannah because the climate was so harsh. Being that we were all very curious creatures, when they did come, we always went, unnoticed, to check them out. We never attacked them unless we were particularly desperate for food or they were disrespecting our space. As we all crouched under a patch of dry grass, we inspected them painstakingly. These particular ones looked very strange. Most of the humans who came here were very dark. Moshi says that they are the native humans of this land. But these, these humans had oddly pink skin, so light they were almost white! There were two of them; one of them had long, red-gold hair and sparkling blue eyes, and the other had short, deep brown hair and greenish eyes that looked rather like the deepest part of the hidden pool in our cave. And yet . . . they looked vaguely familiar, like a memory from a dream. One of our youngest moshis, Ganua, blurted out precisely why I remembered them. “Why, they look like you, Lalashim! Especially the one with the orange hair!” I