The Girl and the Tiger

Soon his body would be still and rejoin the jungle.

If we can’t hear the other humans in our midst, whose words we can easily interpret, what hope is there for us to understand what animals are saying?

“What it comes to,” he said one day, grinning, “is the question of whether or not we are smart enough to understand how smart animals are.” Then he thought for a while. “Or to register that our smart is not their smart. That it is a dimension we cannot see.”

“Make your effort honorable and if you fail, let the failure be memorable.”

“They created us, you know? The elephants, the tigers, the wolves and the bison. There is a reason the first men prayed to them—a reason they were our gods. Back then, when we were still connected to the land, people knew. Do you think we would have been able to breath or build shelter and ships without trees? Do you think your greatest grandmother would have even been possible had there not been fish in the rivers and soil to farm? It’s almost absurd to list it all—it’s impossible, too. Everything we have comes from them. They were here long before us and raised us on the plains. The bones and teeth and antlers tell the story. We’re all the same, made of the same parts. All start off the same in the womb.”

She was a rock of convictions in a time when men believed in nothing…unfailingly true to an age that was false to the core.