The Lizard King

Sunlight filters down through the tall trees, down through the cover of the forest, where a lone beam strikes the rock where I rest. I bask in its warmth. It rained for an entire week and today the sun peers from behind the gray clouds. Today the forest shines brilliant, gleaming. It teems with life. Birds chirp and sing. The rain drips from the foliage above. Everyone but me, I suspect, missed the sun. Who likes rain for a week? Monotonous. Dull. Gray. Droning.

I enjoy the rain.

In the savannah, a weeklong rain would produce floods, swelling rivers and ponds. The deluge welcomed by the barren soil. Welcomed by the animals who would drink and bathe in the lakes created by the rain. But here… here, it is the way. The rain is a constant in this land, flourishing with green trees and bushes, and flowers of sharp vivid colors. A constant wetness. A dry patch is an obscene rarity.

My parched and dry skin aches from napping in the sun’s warmth for too long. I miss the rain. It is time to make way to the small pond where I can cool off.

I leap from my perch on the rock and speed across the warm pebbles and rocks, across a grassy knoll, and down a slope. With all the rain, the pond would be nice and full. The pond is close by, but far enough to make the trek dangerous. Always watched, tracked. Hunted.

Every movement could be my last. One slip away from death.

I cross over a few tall rocks, down another slope, and across the hot sand to the water’s edge, then slip in under the shimmering surface.

The pond is full. The water is cool. My hot dry skin steams and cools off, drinking up the moisture. The burning stops. I relish in the relief. 

A hawk flies overhead and circles the pond. Stealthy. He slips between sunbeams as he floats on the updraft, casting his ominous shadow upon the forest floor of the clearing. I slip under the water, keeping the top of my head high enough to breathe, and watch the hawk. Slow, quiet, covert. He makes his clandestine circles. And waits. I watch. And wait.

I’ve been in this jungle for five days now and have seen no other life like me. In a world teaming with life and abundance, I walk alone.

It wasn’t always like this: Alone.

I miss my siblings, wrestling and biting each other. I miss the dust and dryness of the savannah. The cool shade of the acacia trees. The warmth of bodies near me on the cool nights.

I miss my mother.

She taught me to stalk. She taught me to hunt. She taught me to kill. I lived for the hunt. I lived for the kill. She also taught me to share the good fortune of a kill. I thrived on raw meat, running with warm blood which nourished my body. Soon, my siblings and I would build a family of our own. To teach our cubs to hunt. To teach them to kill.

But not me.

I was shot.

My life cut short five days ago by another predator’s rifle. I was hungry and picked up the scent of a kill. No stalking. No hunting. Fresh meat lying in the brush, dying. One slip away. He shot me to keep me from his kill. He shot me, to take my teeth and my claws, my weapons, as I lie there bleeding and gasping for air. The dusty savannah soil drinking up my blood, nourishing its barren depths.

I gasped my last breath as he watched. The savannah sun casting his long shadow across my dying body. One slip. And everything went black.

I awoke in the rain. The constant, droning rain.

Different.

I am longer the hunter killer I once was. No longer with my siblings. No longer with my family. I am still a hunter, but I am also the hunted. I am prey. In my mind, I am still a dominant species. The one who stalks the large prey. The one who hunts with the pack. The one who, fierce, with my weapons, leaps from the grassy plains and takes down the hunted, and tears into their flesh. I nourish my body with the warm blood and meat.

But I am none of that now. I scamper and hide under rocks, under foliage, under… water.

I should let the hawk take me. My death could turn about new life. I could once again rise, rise and become... Like that bird in our stories. A great rebirth. I could become a…

Hunter.

Hunted.

Prey.

I watch a water spider skim the surface near my face. Prey. Hunted. I, the hunter, lurch out and eat it, then duck below the water. Nourishment for my body.

The hawk flies on. The shadow of death disappears and the sun’s ray once again glistens upon the water uninterrupted.

I creep from under the water and perch on a rock. I lay in a ray of the sun. The heat warms my body. My cold blood pumps through my limbs. This is my new life.

Calm.

Peaceful.

Lonely.

I watch a careless dragonfly bounce around the pond. Prey. Hunted. It flies too close to me and, in a moment, becomes nourishment for my body. And in one slip, the hawk’s talons, sharp as my old claws, latch on to me, tight around my body, and carry me into the sky. Above my perch. Above the pond. Above the trees. Above the world.

Spectacular!

We fly to a tall tree standing proudly above the rest, under its leaves, and to a nest where the hawk lands and presses down on me. He squawks and looks into my eyes, watches me as I gasp for a breath under his weight.

A flash of movement and a quick sharp rupture of my flesh…

Black.

Float.

Free.

Breathe.

I open my eyes and…