Quietly, Salaam moved along the underbrush of the jungle, her feet making a soft “pomf” noise on the forest floor, and stopped behind bushes. She looked on at the huge cow in front of her. The enormous Indian ox indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, called a gaur, was seemingly oblivious to Salaam’s threatening presence just a few feet in front of it. Usually it would have been in a herd with others of its own kind, but it was not. Ah well, that was his loss.

Its dark red coat glistened with moisture as it walked along, and it stopped ten feet away from Salaam’s hiding spot, and she was disappointed; it was just a little too far away. She wanted to rip it apart, to let her claws and fangs sink in, to kill, and then feed on the meat. Knowing she had to wait, she did, staying a position to pounce, but the gaur did not budge.

When she felt that she could wait no longer, she flew through the air, landed just a foot short of the gaur, and then jumped again and ripped its throat out before the massive beast had even reacted to the first jump. But now Salaam had to watch for the gaur’s horns—the giant ox would take another minute to die, and its horns would be looking to gore her. But it decided to run instead, and half a minute later, half a minute too soon, the gaur collapsed dead on the floor. Salaam purred gently, strode over to the bull and ate savagely, letting the blood of the gaur drip down her orange coat and dirty it, letting its blood stain her enormous canines.

She roared a terrible, mighty roar which shook the forest, and then she did it again, exultant and mighty in her victory. Salaam continued her feast and bared her teeth between great bites of raw, warm flesh. When she had finished her meal, she got up shakily, and collapsed…weakness, she thought? What is this weakness? Must conquer it…

And suddenly, human skin appeared, first orange and striped, and then a dark brown color, common to the Dravidian people of India. Her fangs and claws shrunk to teeth and nails, she became much lighter, and her eyes changed color and became smaller.

Just a few minutes later, a majestic Bengal tiger had become human, a scared Indian girl who didn’t know quite where she was…

“Salaam,” she whispered.