Tiger Stripes

Orange lilies and black irises swung across her village on the Tigris Festival's eve. Cata wore traditional auburn robes, her bare feet appearing for a moment with each step down dirt path toward the jungle. She watched the leafy canopy thicken overhead. The peach trees were always plump this time of year.

Her family dreamed of the fruit -- round and soft, a sprinkle of fuzz, supple and sweet. Just as the fruit that she carried upon her torso. She'd bore its weight for nine moons. Nine blinks of the Goddess' eye. Soon she would be ripe and her family would grow.

Joyous thoughts, however, did little to stifle the hardship of her trek through the trees. Cata held her kinship close in her mind to lend her strength. One hand grappled through trunks and vines while the other clung to her stomach. She was hoping for a son.

The scent of the air changed. A sweetness unknown to the humid jungle. Her wide eyes thrilled over the bursting grove of fruit trees. It was a lucky season. Perhaps the Goddess herself would bless the festival by making an appearance.

Cata gleamed, collecting peach after peach into her wooden basket. The furry, pinkish orange skin had her fingertips dreaming of her Goddess' fine coat. How she would perish to touch her just once, to stroke her strong tail or the velvet of her ears. The long ago last sighting of the Goddess had been when Cata was first learning to forage despite her chubby legs and toddling feet. The world was larger then. And time was slower.

"Aggh," A fierce quake rumbled through her stomach. Juice dripped down her arm, spilling onto the earth, as a battered peach fell from her clenched fist. Cata, too, fell to the earth, and her basket spewed fruit across the grove. The woman wailed. She sunk her hands into the sticky mud and screamed to the forest. Her belly coiled and spun and ached. Had she been cursed by the orchard? Had she done wrong by the Goddess?

A final peach fell from the sky, dissolving in a specter of color into the dirt and darkness. The eve's festival had long been sleeping. And Cata lay wrecked, panting in her pool of harvest.

She cradled her daughter.

"Beautiful," a whisper startled the new mother. Out from the night emerged a tigress. Her black stripes faded into the jungle surrounding them, their orange mates shifting between fern fronds like snakes.

Goddess, Cata wanted to cry, to crawl to her, to beg her for relief. But she found her throat dry and her lips sealed. The tiger stalked up to the woman, a warm breath huffing over her child's head.

"You've struggled alone, Cata." The tigress' mesmerizing eyes held Cata's gaze. She was trapped in them, but nothing about the predatory nature of her Goddess stirred fear in her heart. It was strength. "I've seen you from the jungle edge. On this eve, your perils have mounted."

Cata's body trembled, whether from anxiety or exhaustion, as the tigress circled her. "I watched the birth of your daughter. Never have I borne witness to this. I did not know that your kind held such a will." The Goddess again pressed her face toward Cata, holding her eyes in a trance.

"I am proud of you. I am in awe of you."

Cata's strength gave out, and her head collapsed back to the dirt. "Alone in the night, you are strong, Cata. Yet I can sense you weakening, now." A soft tail drifted over the woman's arm. She closed her eyes, hugging her child closer. "You plucked fruit in my honor while you, yourself were so ripe. This celebration, you gave yourself to me and to this child. So I will lend you my strength to return you home."

The Goddess bowed to the mortal mother. Her enormous white paws dipped into the ground under the weight of her consuming presence. A final searing blaze raced across Cata's torso, and her scream was answered with the great tigress' hissing call.

Newly alight, Cata cradled her child and climbed onto the Tigress' orange back. The masses of muscle moved beneath her as she traced her fingers over unmarked planes of peach fuzz fur. The night had claimed her stripes.

When Cata returned to her village atop their beloved Goddess, her kin knelt before them. They rejoiced in her safety and held her daughter to the heavens. The tigress, bashfully draped with a necklace of lilies and irises, merged back into the last shadows of daybreak.

Cata's sister coddled the child while her mother prepared a feast for her exhausted daughter. As a peach sun peaked over the horizon, Cata removed her stained robes at the edge of a glimmering pond to bathe herself. Her swollen body sunk into the water with a sigh that seemed to ripple across the pool's surface.

On instinct, her hands cradled her round belly. And there, in the soft morning light, she noticed her Goddess' stripes adorning her skin. They were stripes of strength and light and sun. Of harvest and bearing and fruit. Of womanhood and motherhood and kinship.

They were white as staring into the sun. And they were beautifully wild.