9/20/12

Adrian eyed the man questionably. “What do you mean? Everyone has a name”, he said. “We are not given names because that would allow us to be unique” the man said, a sneer on his face. Leila took her face and placed it less than an inch from his, staring deep into his eyes. She could tell that he was not lying. Liars squirm when a tiger stares them down. Tigers know without a doubt when a two-legged fragile little human is lying to them. Adrian looked at Leila. She was really quite formidable when she wanted to be.

9/4/12

Alas. It was interrogation time. “If you don’t answer, I am going to let my tiger chew on your ear,” Adrian said to the man on the ground. Leila thought this was rather silly as he then wouldn’t be able to hear. She would rather nip at his knife-hand anyway. “I am nobody,” the man said, in a very thick accent. Leila growled and stuck her teeth very near his ear. “We are not given names,” the man said, obviously uncomfortable.

8/15/12

Frustrated and in his partly- drunk- sleep- deprived state, Adrian leaned his head over the face of the man, with the chest of Leila brushing up on the back of his neck. He could feel Leila’s breath rustle his hair in regular warm waves. It was soothing. He wanted to curl up next to her, bury his face in her fur, and sleep for many hours.

8/13/12

“Don’t crush him to death” Adrian said quickly. Leila shifted. The majority of her weight was now one three of her legs, but one giant paw was still pinning the man’s knife arm. Adrian directed his voice to the man on the ground. “Who are you?” he asked in a louder tone of voice than he meant to use. The man on the ground said nothing.

8/8/12

Adrian was a little slow on the uptake. Leila had a man pinned in the hallway by the time he had rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. “Leila! You can’t just pounce on someone!” Adrian yelled as he jumped across the room and halted next to Leila. She looked at him, and for a fleeting second he felt fear fly through his stomach. The pierce of a huntress’s gaze is truly terrifying. He turned his gaze down to the man and noticed the knife in his hand. “Ohhhh…” Adrian realized why his tiger had thrown the man to the ground. “Well, you should have just explained that he was attacking us” he said to her, half sarcastically. The man beneath her looked as if he was slowly flattening into a two-dimensional man pancake.

7/3/12

Leila crossed back to the door. The man on the other side swung the door open, only to be greeted by a full gown tiger, pouncing with all her teeth shining visibly in the dark night. She pinned him. There was a knife in his hand, but his whole arm was trapped by the weight of the tiger. He squirmed, twisted, and struggled, but he was stuck. As Leila looked down toward the knife in his hand she saw a tattoo wrapping around his arm. She knew that tattoo. She knew this smell. Both belonged to the man she had just killed. The hair was a lighter shade, and he had fuller round lips, but he was undoubtedly part of the other man’s kin.

6/24/12

Just as she was dozing off, Leila heard a shuffle outside the door. She sniffed the air. Salty. And something familiar- she had smelled this smell before. With swift silent steps, she crossed the room to Adrian’s bed and placed her head heavily on his chest to wake him. He twitched. She looked down and the still sleeping man. Carefully, she lengthened one of her claws and poked him hard in the thigh. Now he was awake. Awake and looking at her with fury. Before he could launch into a verbal complaint, a creaking sound brought his attention to the door. Someone was right outside.

6/21/12

Leila listened to the sound of his light snoring with one ear as she kept the other pointed towards the door. Adrian had always taken care of her. Not that she really needed it anymore. Ever since she was a cub he had been there for her. When she got brambles stuck throughout her fur, he was the one who spent hours weeding them out. When she got trapped in a barn once, he had to come rescue her. All throughout her young tiger life, she had trusted him to always be there to help her. Even if he was just a human. It concerned her that he lacked specific tiger instincts. Leila might get things caught in her fur, or get stuck in a barn, but she was able to sense danger and protect herself. Adrian, in comparison was hopelessly clumsy. He had no stamina, no fighting instinct, and no ability to sense danger before it was right in front of his face. It occurred to Leila that this must be a usual human predicament, or else that man would never have put himself in a position to be killed by a tiger. His instincts should have made him run the other way. No doubt his thinking had gotten in the way of the appropriate action.

6/20/12

Idiot human. Leila was exasperated. Adrian did not choose a good time to be drunk. She had all sorts of important thoughts and emotions to sort through. She looked down at her friend, and then leapt down to the floor, curled in a ball near the door, and shut one eye. “Fine fine,” Adrian said “I guess I will just have to ask you in the morning”. And without any more hesitation he stripped off his clothes and tumbled into bed.

6/19/12

Unfortunately for Leila, when beer is involved, Adrian doesn’t always behave according to his best judgment. “Really now, what’s got your whiskers all twisted?” Adrian asked as he walked into his room. As he turned to confront her she took one giant paw, and swatted him across the chest, knocking him to the bed. She placed her nose an inch from his and furrowed her brow. “Okay, okay, I didn’t mean to insult your whiskers” Adrian sputtered helplessly. Being pinned by a tiger really only ever leaves you with the option to apologize for whatever you may have done in the hopes that you guess the right thing.

4/26/12

Leila always thought it was funny how two legged people would huddle together in bars and think they were protected. Really, if she wanted to, she could prance in there and rip the guts out of every single one of them. It occurred to her that maybe letting the human world in on this information might not be the best idea. It seemed that upsetting them further might just make things harder for Adrian. “What has you in such a grumpy mood?” Adrian asked as Leila stepped heavy-footed through the hallway. She looked up at him. She didn’t really want to have to go about conveying killed a man, and pondering how easy it would be to rip the guts out of all the surrounding men. So she snorted. Usually, if she snorted, he left well enough alone and gave up the prodding.

3/27/12

Leila sniffed the air. The smell of ale really was disgusting. She had bits of cowhide stuck in her teeth, which bugged her and put her in a foul mood. Tonight was not a good night. Leila was on edge.
Normally she took care to avoid startling two legged creatures, but she wasn’t in the mood. Leila rounded a corner and trotted over to the door of the pub. Right as she was about to push on the door, it opened. Adrian was standing before her, looking strained. Leila thought maybe the ale had made it difficult for him to walk, and places herself close by his side.
“We have to go straight to my room” Arian said, “They won’t allow you to be near everyone in the bar”.
There was a grumbling noise coming from Leila.
“I know, I know, but I’m coming up with you” Adrian said quickly.

3/19/12

“She really is very calm, and would never ever harm anyone” Adrian said quickly. “But she is really always with me and will probably hurt anyone who tries to make me not stay the night near her”, he added as the man opened his mouth.
“As long as she stays in your room, an’ doesn’t claw anyone er anything, we shouldn’t have a problem” the barman said, looking a little taken aback.

3/15/12

Adrian knew that Leila was around. He hastily started talking to the man behind the bar, as well as the people nearest to him. “So it slipped my mind to mention this earlier, but my companion will also be staying with me for the night.”
“Alrigh’ that’d be fine” said the barman.
“Well, my companion is a tiger” said Adrian sheepishly.
The man who had been telling Adrian a story about a dangerous bear snorted and dripped ale down his front.
“WHAT?” he said, with much more volume than was really required.

3/14/12

The stories continued, and Arian began to feel his energy failing him. He was exhausted. Just as he was thinking about how nice a bed would be, his tiger sense started tingling. Normally people can sense if someone is behind them, or if they are about to enter into a dangerous situation, but Adrian could sense Leila more prominently than any of those things.

2/24/12

Adrian’s brain was fuzzy. He was sitting in the pub drinking some ale, listening to a man tell him stories of his adventures in the nearby forest. “Be careful if you ever go in there, you’re likely to run across a feisty animal or two” he was saying. Adrian was giggling to himself. He knew a feisty animal of his own. “One time I ran into a rather aggressive bear, right after I ran a few miles away I thought that the bear was probably hibernatin’ and wouldn’t be chasin’ me anywhere”.

2/20/12

As she inspected the lifeless form she noticed a tattoo twisting up along his arm. He was wearing all brown, and smelled musky. “Interesting” she thought. That smell was unrelated to anything around them. This-forest-musk was full of juniper and oak. He smelled all wrong. She licked his flesh. “Salty” she thought. Unappealing. After another second she turned and headed back towards the pub where Adrian resided. She would just steal a cow from a neighboring farmer. After all, who could blame a tiger for taking the scenic, cow-hunting route?

2/7/12

Leila looked down at the remains of a man. She glanced around. She was alone except for the rabbit. If she wanted to, she could eat this man and nobody would know the difference. But as she looked down at the man, she couldn’t help but notice that something seemed wrong about eating him. Adrian was a man. Or, at least, he kept telling her he was…
She couldn’t imagine a tiger ever eating Adrian. She, his tiger, would kill anything that tried to hurt him, including one of her own kind. He was her human, she would never allow anything to happen to him.
Leila looked down at the man she had just slaughtered, and felt a disgust bloom insider her.

1/29/12

She felt her stomach clench. A great and terrible energy was collecting inside her as she looked in the direction of the smell. A large man was standing near by, watching her closely. He twitched, and in that instance Leila released her energy through her limbs and let out a terrible roar. Her claws sliced through his skin, making ribbons of his flesh. He was dead. In his hand was a long sharp dagger. Leila looked at it, and then realized that it had been the cause of the pain in her shoulder. Blood was oozing down her fur and dripping to the ground.

1/27/12

Leila skirted around the building, and made her way quickly through the outer reaches of the village. Before long she found herself in a large meadow near the edge of a clump of trees. Air brushed over her, and she caught the scent of rabbit. “Useless”, she thought to herself. Rabbit wouldn’t make a sizable meal. She walked towards the trees and concealed herself in the shadows. It wasn’t long before the rabbit had hopped into view, unaware of a tiger in the shadow. “Maybe just a quick treat…” Leila was meditating on the flavor of rabbit as some other scent passed through her nose.

1/17/12

As Adrian followed her through the village he noticed how everyone who caught sight of Leila ducked into the nearest building and out of her way. It occurred to him that a great number of people probably haven’t been privileged enough to really have a relationship with a tiger. After all, although Leila was stubborn and could kill almost anything she faced, she always showed compassion and love in her actions toward Adrian. He made a mental note to inform everyone in the pub that she was safe, and very rarely aggressive to things with only two legs.
Within a few minutes Adrian found himself before the door of a rather loud pub. The smell of well-cooked food was seeping through the walls toward him. Leila looked at him for a fleeing second before swishing her tail and disappearing into the increasing darkness.

1/16/12

They walked for a few more minutes before a village could be seen in the distance.
“Leila, I am going to need to eat, and it’s getting dark. How would you like to entertain the possibility of staying in the village tonight?” Her only response was a noncommittal grumble. “Well then, seeing as you aren’t totally opposed, I think that is what we should do”.
As their steps brought them closer to the buildings Adrian whispered, “Leila, do you think you could sniff out the pub?”
Leila, who was all too aware of the scared glances coming from every surrounding window, gave him an annoyed glance before turning to the right and walking straight toward the pub. She never understood how Adrian couldn’t find a pub. The yeasty stench of bread and beer was so distinct and revolting. Why anyone would be attracted to anything other than the butcher shop was beyond fathomable.

1/15/12

Leila usually seemed to have limitless energy, but when carrying a human around, even she grew tired. She chose to walk slightly off the road, where the earth was softer and didn’t irritate her paws. After hours of slinking through the vegetation lining the road she paused, crouched down, and allowed Adrian to slip off her back.