Panther

• Poppi Gudgeon-hmelnitsky, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2012

Deep in the jungle the pants of the summer leaves is electrified against the blaring sun that sparks through the canopy. Overhead a crunch and a swing as branches plummet to the thick woollen ground below our trespassing feet. Tracing over thick leafed, over-pressed mud do we wander upon. Trees escape to the sky as their heavenly bodies grow thick and fierce, splitting the air into moulded sections. We have been walking for hours and the longer we track the more layers of jungle open out to my eyes. It is looking at somebody from a distance. You start by noticing their most prominent features. Then as soon as you take the time to really analyse them their hands unclench and even their heart unwinds so you can really see every little detail that was ever a part of them. The lines in their face that shape their smile, their stance and how they express emotions by changing their body frame. Until finally everything is so intricate that that one simple person seems to be but a creation of so many different things twisted together on the eve of a new day.
As we first arrived on the edge of the jungle all I saw were splashes of colour. My vision seemed blurred for such a long time because I couldn’t open my eyes enough to take in everything. It wasn’t until the third night when I lay awake under the melting stars that I started to take in my surroundings. The trees and their leaves swirled around the sky, creating a story of pictures to set your eyes upon. A thick mist had lifted just off the ground and was swirling around the air coiling itself on top of one another. I could hear an animal screech out its mothers name and scuttle under an overturned log.
That night, my dreams transformed me into the pulsating jungle. Vines from overhead hanging trees wrapped themselves around my body. Flowers began to bud underneath my skin and leach down my body like a tattoo as they opened out to reveal the colours of their birth. The petals splayed out and entwined themselves up through my hair. I opened my mouth and rhythms of the jungle flew to the sky of melting stars. Suddenly, I was awake and was staring into the eyes of a panther. Her eyes flooded mine casting shadows deep into the jungle behind me. She wrapped her mystic purr around my beating heart. A stream of moonlit air fell across her face and her eyebrows rose to acknowledge my presence. Her lips parted and a call of darkness fell across my body. Her shoulders hunched up tightly to her face and with an elongated sigh, flicked her tail and waltzed back to the depths of the jungle.
I think it was at this moment, that I truly discovered the true beauty of the world. I breathed in imagination and fell deep into the breath of the jungle.