Children of The leopard, sneak peaks.

Here's part a novel I'm writing, about two 14 year old congo-born children turning from human to leopard in Bosten.

Saba and Somba sat on the floor of their bedroom, lost in conversation.
Only yesterday they had been caught by a worried mother. She had driven into the dark abandoned parking lot of the zoo. Sneaking in she risked loosing her hybreds to a big cat rescue center, if this happened who knew what would happen when they discovered the hybreds were not just leopard but also half human!. Calling and calling for the teens she moved across the eerie darkened exibits trying not to be afraid. Forced to look and look among the various animal exibits she was releaved and terrifed all at once when she picked up mutated human/leopard pugmarks in the dry foot packed earth. Following these she cunnily avoided sacurity camras that were sationed in odd out the way places, like on an ice cream stand or under a bush. Panic reared like a stalion however wen she finely saw them.... saw the darkened forms of mutated half human/ half leopards climbing a tall fense into the Impala enclosure.

"STOP!" was all that utttered from lips beneath eyed glazed with the primal instinct to protect the young from danger.

Now here they were grounded, alone and afraid for a future of evil. They knew it was all only a matter of time before their new home would be a cage at a big cat rescue center. It would be tamed out of them, they would be spayed and neutred and live out their lives in cages, a far cry from the life Leopard Mother wanted. The leopard mother? She couldn't have been real could she? But looking back Somba and his sister had recalled strange moments when they thoght they could see her spirit in their bedroom, always they were alone, always it was at night and always for just a short time. It said that she loved them as a mother and wanted the best kind of life possible the best kind of life their rapidly changing condictions would allow. But then lugaria, Leopard grandma had come for her daugher saying the children couldn't be saved from growing up as humans. Mother leopard snarled at leopard grandma saying her lick of love was permanent and that she was sorry for breaking the jungle code of wlld and tame. Fearfuly the two glanced at the eerie miss as they ceared leavng behind a chilling sence of normality. They had left them now but maybe they would be back later for them after talking things over in the land of the dead.

"We shouldn't have done that",
" Done what?"
"Gone to the zoo, you now how afraid mother is for our safety."
" But Saba lets be reasonable Laharia, our meat messager told us to go hunting. We cannot dare to refuce the lioness if we do we'll never go back",
"Go back... where? theres nowhere for us to go but the rescue center and you know it", "Go to the jungle" was on his lips but he hid it well, the young man didn't want her to loose this resistance to their impending shocking reailty of life alone without human contact or safety. Yet it scared him, being tame was a handicap in the jungle and he wasn't sure she was really ready to have to go back.

Slience.

"All I know is that I'm changing and so are you. We are growing spotted fur and big white teeth, we live in a world of terror and confusion the spirits are good and they want to help us. But I'm scared of them and.... and you... you know it",

"They are our only hope Saba our only hope',

( To be continued, Did you guys like it. )

"we must leson to them or die by the human rac my sister..", Hearing him, her voice choked with raw emotion. "I know my brother.. I know. I just wish it was different. I wish we could live in our world, the word we grew up in after the hunters found us and took us away from Africa's savergery and wildness"

He looked at her, saw the fear and desire for it all to be over, then stated. " Africa is a fine land in it we shall be happy hunters. Its where we belong now. Laharia said the scraches on the implala doe we killed was magic of the moving meat. The meat maidians or princes keep it under the fury cologen casing until a claw or tooth cuts deep drawing forth the blood of The Mother, she said it was a sign, saying we should get going right after we hunt the zoo's baboon exibit as a final rite of passage from human to animal, that to stay for much longer would be fatal.",

"I know, she...... taught us many forbidden things, but sadly importent ones sense there's nothng we can do about it now. Though under it all I feel my tameness slipping away like a slipery sea crate from a screaming sea eagle. I just hope like the sea snake there's a warm wild home and future waiting far down below under the crashing waves. For the first time I'm not afraid to hunt in the darkness dressed only in spotted leopardskin. I feel that nameless hunger for meat and predation and the calls of the wild eccoh within loader then ever.",

"Good my sister that's very good",


"Children what are you talking about?" a voice from outside the closed door demanded.

"Nothing, just about a nature program we saw in science class today. It was about sea eagles and sea crates hunting and surviving out in the wild",


(To be continued)


It gets pritty intense at times but I like the adveture and conflict that goes on between the children and the parents and school.
Any opinions?

" You are NOT going back to the "wild"... get...get that idea out of your heads right now!" a womans voice shot fearfully back in the blackness.

She was all alone with the hybreds in the house and a son away in high school or out with friends, poor from having to buy an expensive wild cat diet and feed massive amounts. To avoid any police investacation she ordered the products online from an illegal big cat breeder shipping it to her for reduced cost/ her husbed was away in Africa as useal, this time on a game conservation mission to protect elephants from the ivory trade so he didnt yet know the crimes she was geting into as a last resort to having the children put to sleep. So far safe..... the neighbors had no idea of the danger lurking behind the fense although Somba had reached sexual maturity and had to be let outside at night ( to make sure no one was watching) to urinate or spray on the oak tree. The smell of an intact Leopard was growing stronger.

Saba and Somba shivered in cold fear under the bedsheets, they knew it was true, they were going back, But what if it was tamed out of them? What if they could no longer see Laharia their meat messager from the otherworld? What if the instincts to hunt prey and kill and eat it were dulled like the housecats living in homes across the county? Then what life would they live?


They looked to the sky outside the locked window, glass broken from the slash marks of young strong claws for a sacred sign and prayed to Leopalara and Pantheria that they would delivered from mans machenie maddess. In the darkness the oak blew in the breezes and Somba hoped it carryed his message to Mary, the she- leopard in the zoo. They had been banned from going to the zoo, but they still longed for it, to see the moving meat all penned up and tame. To hear a Leopard's wild cry rivberbate in the darkness or even better to gaze into the flames of the carnivore first hand.

(To be continued)

Outside for now was still, chrickets chirped and a dog brawled to the moon hidden by the thick green oak leaves. The children, sat up unable to sleep, They were worried now more then ever about their future. The Big cat rescue center seemed a dark omen instead of the releaf seen by those at first glance.. those vets, doctors and prisits who only wanted to help them. It was to them in many ways... jail and they had done nothing wrong other then being what the leopard mother wanted.

Life in the center would be a cruel caged existance far from the real vast jungle and sunny skies where brightful birds sang every morning to the splender. They would be altered and fed raw meat simlar to what they were getting at home but it just wouldn't be the same as running wildly to the zoo, leaping unsuperised into a cage and seeing all the fleeing pure organtic princes with their curled crowds of conformity and meat madains with deightfully tan cologen casing screaming cries to the wild leader. A bucking back and then the taste of blood. Fear scent and wild messages from a pehistoric brain that wasnt really nesscary anymore.. NO they would sit in the cages miserable and unstimulted

For the safety of the people. it..... it had to be this way.