They took turns stroking each other with pine cones, and bush brushes, purring and prancing and posing,on the rocks and fallen trees, that they used for stages. Male and female...they were no different.
Tigers would not help any other animals in the forest even in emergency.
The mama tigers even ignored their cubs.They just gazed and groomed...gazed and groomed, under the giant peanut trees, upon whose fruits they lived. Tigers did not eat meat, in the "before"days".
Scat Scat was a sad tiger,smaller and not as beautifully formed. She kept to the edge of the rim of the trees that surrounded the ponds.Nibody noticed...nobody cares.
On a very hot summer afternoon,as the air seemed to bend and reshape the forest...as she was munching on a peanut, she saw the blur of a white tiger...running...no flying through the trees and into "the Other Parts' She had to follow. Nobody noticed.
The " Other parts "-were not forbidden.to tigers, but had no ponds to reflect in, and thus were of no interest to them.
There were red and blue rocks gnarled trees an enormous meadows of reeds and multi colored flowers...she saw the white fur flash along the rainbow of petals...and quickly followed into another forest,she a strong cry made her not.
The trees were denser ...the ground was strewn with colored rocks and leaves that tickled her paws.. but she went the deeper!
A soft cry made her right ear stiffen. A small gray baby bird lay near one of the twisted trees.Scat Scat hovered over it.
The sound stopped and the little creature shook.Scat Scat looked up and around. A nest was on a high branch.She bent over and opened her mouth...the bird shook harder as Scat Scat gently picked it up and climbed to it's next, dropping the frail creature next to the other chirping future flyers...
Scat Scat moved along the branches and spied a baby giraffe extending his tongue length to reach a tasty leaf ...she moved along the branch,her weight lowering it....allowing the giraffe to get the tasty treat.
She missed her pearnuts, but there was not one to be seen.She searched still for the white tiger, stopping here and there to help a creature,great and small, in her small ways,where she could...but still no white tiger.
As night neared, she exited the forest and curled up near a red rock and slept for the night in a big meadow..
The next morning she awoke,.lonely and hungrey she trotted,towards home.She grew closer when she spotted the first sight of water,an old pond rarely used outside her homeland. She dashed to take a drink of water and stood stunned.Stripes covered her body.
She jumped into the pond to wash the mud away. Furiously thrashing,she looked again...the stripes remained. She was petrified!
She climbed a Tom- Tom tree and curled up on a branch sobbing. A voice echoed all around her "Why do your tears floor so sadly?"
"I'm marred and marked. I can't go back without being laughed at and
scorned."
The voice grew softer and sweeter. "The stripes are the rewards for your good deeds. They are from within". The echo faded.
Scat Scat went home. She was hungry, alone,and had nowhere else to go. She huddled right at the trees edge for many hours,as she saw the other tigers pranching.Maybe she could live in the shadow of these trees.
Then something remarkable happened. The prettiest tiger looked up from the pond and directly at Scat Scat...it was the stripes....everyone noticed. Scat Scat could not hide. She stood frozen, as Golden Girl came foward,closer and closer. Tears flowed down her cheeks...she waited for the laughter to start. It did not.
"You are beautiful!" Golden Girl said. The other tigers came closer and circled her, clapping their hands, they said, "How can we get stripes?"
Scat Scat told them her story...And in the years that followed, tigers who wanted to be beautiful, spent their time doing good deeds.
SOMEBODY CARED!
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