Many more days passed by. 

I would guess that it has been around four to five months since my birth. Another one of my siblings died a few days ago and this time I am pretty sure that the cause is starvation. We are slowly growing bigger by the day and our mother does not find enough food for all of us. If I am being honest for a moment, it’s actually really fucking sad seeing such a cute little baby tiger just laying dead on the ground, not moving. I don’t know what’s wrong with me but little baby tigers look just so damn fucking cute to me. Seeing such cute little bundles of cuteness die is just heartbreaking.

Today is still a special day, though. 

My three siblings and I went out with our mother a bit earlier. On our first hunt!

It’s probably going to end up in failure, though. For us at least. Big Mama will maybe catch something. 

I don’t really feel like that we are going to be of much use on the first few hunts anyways and it is mostly going to revolve around us slowly learning to hunt by watching, remembering and imitating mum. 

Maybe we could be useful by zoning it and cutting of escape routes, only if the prey is dumb enough and sees us, the little midgets we are, as threats, though.

 

… 

It’s almost midday by now, the sun shining high in the sky, light passing through the underbrush and tree tops. Some leaves started falling already and it’s actually not that hot outside. Autumn should be upon me and my new little family soon.

Mother started acting a bit different than usual just now. I’d guess that she has found some tracks, so I start trotting over to her on my four- not so tiny anymore- paws. I myself smelled many different kinds of odors on the way already, from flora to fauna, nothing so strong and fresh like this, though. 

Paying a bit more attention to the antics of my mother and completely ignoring my siblings, I notice her observing our surroundings more attentively. Following her example I note a much fresher trail of footprints in the ground and a stronger than usual smell from some animal.

The footprints look like hooves, so it should be a lone deer, or not? Maybe a boar? Or are there other things, kinds of animals or whatever the fuck with hooves around here? Ahhh…  let’s just wait and see.

We start following the trail, mother going first but slow enough for us to follow. 

Slowly, over time, the smell gets thicker and stronger, here and there some signs of the underbrush being unnaturally disrupted, a few more twigs broken here and there.

…

It's a deer. I can finally see it a bit downhill, through all the bushes, twigs and leaves, from here. Mother probably noticed it, too, no idea about my siblings, tho… why do I have such a stupid opinion of them, that I see them as retarded and completely incompetent playful bundles of fluff? 

Maybe I should just see them as more animalistic and less innocent for once, maybe their instincts and all kicked in and they actually did realise that going out like this IS actually something new AND dangerous… 

Now, back to the situation at hand… at paw? Lmao, staaaahwp stupid me. 

So, back to the situation at paw, we all noticed the deer and Mama Tiger slowly and carefully stalks on. My siblings stay a bit more back while I start to change my position, quietly and sneakily circling around the deer over the lush ground full of soft leaves. The wind is coming from downhill, the complete opposite of our direction, so the deer still shouldn't be able to smell us, but we could easily do so vice versa.

I arrive at a good enough position on its right flank a bit more downhill, but not too far enough so as to make myself noticeable through smell and distance, while trying to stay in its blind spot.

… 

The lone deer is drinking from a tiny pond in the little clearing it is standing in right at this moment, with its head down. The air around me is tense, as if mother nature is already aware of what's going to happen. I wonder if the deer's instincts are also screaming at it.

Mother, after circling only a tiny bit more to the left to be completely at the deer's back, uses this exact moment to suddenly pounce out of her hiding spot.

The deer only takes a millisecond to look up, turn and start running for its life. Mother mainly misses it and just narrowly hits its back with her claws, leaving two long gashes, making it stagger a bit and only slowing it down for a second. 

Not enough for mother catch up, though.

The direction it took off to is near to my own position, making me even more tense than I already was to begin with. My nerve-wracked body is filling up with adrenaline in record speeds, slightly speeding up my own perception. Shit. Fuck. I can do this! Gonna make me proud of myself.

I dash out of my hiding spot, adding additional chaos to the current scene and startling the deer even more. 

A small mound of elevated earth is in front of me, which I use to leap at it as fast as possible, latching onto its right foreleg, trying to claw and bite its throat out.

Instead of taking my prey down, pulling it onto the ground, I get a knee driven into my abdomen and catapulted straight off of it.

That was enough, though.

Still in the air, I can see through my blurry, shaky vision how the stupid deer staggers again and lost additional momentum. Enough for Big Mama to catch up and latch onto its back, succeeding in where I failed, pushing her prey down with her sheer size and weight.

I hit the ground. And FUCK does that hurt. Like, FUCK! Argh…

Ugh… everything is wobbly… and hurts. Argh, my head… my tummy… I wanna cry.. wait, I think there are actually tears falling down my feline snout… 

Trying to stand up slowly, I carefully move over towards my mother, who has successfully killed our new meal. 

She licks my face as I drew near. Ahh, I'm pretty sure that she is proud of me, hehe~

Mother doesn't lick and clean us that much anymore, my siblings and I needed to start doing so ourselves, so it has been awhile since I felt her tongue slobbering me. It's such an absolutely beautiful and nice feeling, getting cared for like this. The licking itself feels very funny, too.

 

… 

We are on the way back home, to our little shelter. The sun is about to go down soon, while mum is dragging the deer carcass all the way already, my siblings just trotting playfully alongside her. I am close to them, too, but have other, more important, personal(?) matters to do.

Since I killed, or at least participated in killing that deer and it being my first "kill", I thought that maybe something changed about my status, profile, whatever the fuck you want to call it. I didn't really look at it after the first time, one of the reasons for that being the… out-of-world experience that lead to my… not so good condition, which took a few days to heal. Mana or whatever kind of magical energy, which is suddenly real, was completely out of the question, too. 

I forgot all about that, or rather I wanted to forget all about it, at first. 

Now I am a bit older, though and hopefully a bit more… resistant to it? I don't know, to be honest.

But it should be almost half a year since then, so it's worth a try.

Let's see, Profile!

[!]

[New Trait obtained "Captivating Eyes"]

[New Skill learned "Sneak"]

 

[Siberian Tiger]

[Status: Adolescent]

[Name: ??]

[Traits: Captivating Eyes]

[Skills: Sneak]

[Affinity: ?}|°$^¥¢¥•??]

What…?

… 

I say whaaaaaaaaat…!?

I mean, cool. I gained a skill and a trait. I could understand it maybe, like, how I was able to learn the skill. That trait, though… how dafuq did I gain it…? Furthermore, affinity?! What??

AHHHH! I shake my head from side to side. SO many questions… !

If I would guess, then I'd say that I gained the skill earlier as I was sneaking around the deer, looking for a nice position to ambush it in. About the affinity? No fucking idea. 

That Captivating Eyes trait, though… no fucking clue either, to be honest. I never paid close attention to my eyes, no idea about what colours they are, even. Only thing I know, which is quite useless I might add, is that they were brown in my last life.

Ahh, I could have looked at the reflection of my face in the pond the now dead deer was drinking at. Meh, shit happens.

All I need to remember now is to look into a reflecting surface to check my eyes and maybe try and learn another skill. Maybe I could gain another trait, too, if I am lucky…

Wait, maybe I do know something the affinity part. Could it have something to do with that out-of-world experience? Hmm, that will be hard to test. I am not gonna continue to even think about how hard it's going to be to clear that shit fully up… 

 

...

Finally, some time later, we arrive at our shelter, mother dropping the carcass outside in front of it. Following that, everyone gets their share of deer meat and slowly move towards their resting place for the night.

 

… 

The stars are shining bright tonight… 

I am outside, sitting on all-fours on a small rock, just looking at the all the stars in the night sky. I wasn't able to sleep yet, feeling a bit uncomfortable and all that… sigh.

The moon looks really beautiful, too. 

I have always loved the night, still do now. It's much quieter than the day and not that many people are outside or awake in general. It's just so peaceful. But the night is often analogized with death. But death can be beautiful in it's own way, sometimes it gets romanticised, even. All the talk and shit about Death's Kiss for example. Death could be.. death IS a form of art in its own kind of way… Death is a part of life and more. Nature is beautiful and death belongs to nature, so it should be, too. 

Maybe I shouldn't go into thoughts of killing and how the art of killing is beautiful, too, which it could be, though… I mean, I don't wanna end up as an artist that is skilled in many different arts, one of them being the art of killing and an additional obsession with the number four…  

No, wait. That's actually pretty fucking sick. Like, fucking cool as fuck, bro. 

Who and from where was that artist again, though?

… 

Shit aside, ahh I got lost again, what I was actually going on about... was... that…? 

…

What was I thinking again…? 

Ah, yes. Looking at the starry and bright night sky, alone, with only some insects chirping and a calm breeze to keep me company, makes me feel at peace… and it gives me hope, that my future may be just as bright, peaceful and romantic like the night. 

There's just one sinking feeling in my gut, a feeling… 

A feeling that it's going to be just as much, just as deadly as the night is…