Chapter 1 Part 1

I wasn’t quite sure how I had gotten into this mess. Well, I knew how, but I didn’t know how. Here I was, in a great hall mad of marble and alabaster, with massive towering walls and—gah, I don’t have time to describe the godforsaken room! I was crouched on the white marble, bowed before a woman who currently had control over my fate.

Making sure that my head stayed low and keeping my gaze far from the woman’s haughty face, I looked to the creature that sat silently beside her, giving me a mournful look.

I desperately implored to him with my eyes. Kgosi, help me!

But he just lowered his sad amber cheetah eyes.

Before this, before I found myself bowing before this arrogant, angry queen, I had been blissfully innocent and ignorant, free of the sticky situation that I found myself in now.

Before this, my only concern was the gradually cooling autumn weather; the only begging I had to do was to teachers for leniency (what can I say? I had a problem getting to class on time).

The weirdness began during that last sunny day of the year. I was napping on a towel, in the still-green grass near my dorm, enjoying the last of the summer sun. At this point the trees in the surrounding forest had already gone fiery red and warm orange.

Life was good. Today was the start of a long weekend, I didn’t have too much homework and the weather was to my favor.

My eyes were closed—I was falling asleep, actually—when I got that feeling that I was being watched, that something was close to me, interrupting my nap and invading my personal space. I opened my eyes and—yikes!—I was met with amber eyes within a feline face. This was no housecat feline either; this was a friggin’ jaguar of the savanna kind of feline.

The face hovered over me, golden and black-spotted, looking as if it was ready to go for the jugular.

Naturally, I screamed.

As I scrambled away, scared out of my mind, whatever the creature was leapt away, and before I had time to identify it or to even fully understand what had just happened, the creature retreated into the forest, its spotted coat melting into the burning leaves.

That’s how it all started, with those golden amber eyes. But let me go a little further back, to before even that first meeting.