Who has told you that you were strong, you dunce?! Those who naïvely claimed so must never have set foot into your terror-frozen world, never seen you thrash around futilely in the liquid silver of your torment…
You were born on the very edge of winter, as if it was already rejecting you the very moment you first cried out. You were rejected by ice, yet not accepted by the spring thaw, either. You remained a stranger in your own winter, in your own pack, whose leader you might become one day…
Yet, you struggled for years to preserve the ice inside you, as if shouting: "Here I am! This is what I am; why can't you accept me?! I am your creation!" How many years did you spend doing it? Enough to make it clear to you that you were a stranger. It wasn't the pack that turned you away; you were born an outsider… You had your own path to make through packed ice – south, toward the spring that would not come…
Finally, having discovered this path, you realized once and for all: you are not a wolf, seeking your pack. The wolfish life for which you were born and bred, with its wolfish laws and ways that you learned so well was grey, just like their coats…
You were an ounce, a snow leopard, sprinkled with the silver dust of the upcoming spring. You stepped softly and noiselessly, your silky belly gliding over the snow; you were snow itself.
Snow that stood still, waiting for spring to come…
Wild cats have almost nothing in common with wolves, the wild dogs. Nothing, besides this wild freedom, freedom from collars, rules, norms, and morals. You were free; and freedom was your strength. You betrayed your pack just as easily as you betrayed others; your step was full of smooth grace of a predator who knew his own worth.
And predator you'd been; you lived for the chase, for the pleasure of it, for the triumph. Your half-wintry essence guided you, making you strong and invincible. The very sight of your claws and teeth instilled fear; your bared fangs unsettled the wolves around you. Even those who'd known you from birth feared you.
Oh, how naïve you were to believe that winter would last forever; that you would always remain a wild cat, a loner by choice, only occasionally crossing paths with wolves. You strode along, walking softly on the backs of those inferior to you, the rodents, the lesser predators; your icy eyes barely spared them a glance. You obeyed the law of the forest, the law of wild freedom…
You listened to no one but yourself, until you crossed the border of winter.
Spring didn't accept you, but it changed you. It prepared you for the day when you would be put on a leash. You bristled, you bared your teeth, showed your claws; but your lonely heart, half-frozen from wondering the snowy wilderness, was yielding. Yet, you were far from thinking yourself a weakling. No, you were strong, because even though you were raised among the wolves, you remained a cat, whose fur could give warmth to those who sought shelter at your side.
Spring thaw brought you confidence in your invincibility. And it also gave your life purpose and meaning; it showed you the way which you began to follow ever more surely. You wounded others, you healed the wounds, you bared your teeth in a smile.
A wild cat learned to smile.
You didn't really give up anything; you saw it all clearly – you chose your way, reveling in your ability to do so. You believed in your strength, not noticing that the half of your heart that had been waiting to spring to life was about to awaken.
It was about to tame you.
Oh, for so many years you bristled at the mere mentioning of a collar. It meant captivity; it meant the loss of the freedom that had always been paramount to you. You could be cunning, allowing another to approach, even allowing fingertips to touch your coat. Yet, the fur always stood up at the withers, the claws were ready to rip, the teeth bared.
It stayed that way until you put your paw on the one who brought with her your collar, your bonds. Only once did you allow her trembling hand to touch your withers – and you could no longer live without the soft fingers that stroked your beautiful, proud back, caressed your ears, pressed your big powerful paws. At first, you were ready to growl, but when she embraced you, pressing so trustingly against your warm side, putting her arms around your neck, hiding her face in the silver of your fur, you surrendered.
You were ready to beg her for a collar, but she refused. She gave you the spring with the right to return to the wintry fields. And return there you did; there, you once again could be a predator, gliding over the snow, stalking your prey, quenching your ambition. But you always returned to her caressing hands, her forgiving eyes, her trusting voice. You allowed her to hold you closer, to breath in the wintry smell of your ice-crusted fur.
With her, you became tame.
You could sprawl next to the fireplace, purring, stretching your long paws, warming your back with her fire. You were still a predator, but now you were her predator, you were her pet leopard. You easily reconciled both sides of your nature, unaware of the spring penetrating your supple body, destroying the icy bridges inside you, melting ice into water. You didn't notice that you were spending ever more time by her fire, throwing yourself ever more rarely into a wild run across the snowy plane…
You thawed out.
The wild beast became almost tame, even though you could still kill with a single blow of your powerful paw. Yet now this paw's sole duty was to protect her hearth.
You allowed yourself to forget that not only the winter rejected you – so did the spring. And you had to pay the price for that oblivion. Pay too dearly, too cruelly… Because you realized that you were weak. The big paw rose to strike – and struck at nothing…
It was as though you were kicked out, a house kitten no longer wanted. Feeling abandoned, you sat in a snow-drift, weeping at being powerless to change anything. You were but a kitten whose eyes held the longing for the lost hearth.
Confusion, incredulity, disbelief. Disappointment, pain, anger. Wrath, helplessness, finality of loss.
And loneliness. And cold.
No one has ever seen cats weep. They weep inwardly. No, not weep – they sob, tightly clenching their sharp teeth, bowing their heads low – so that no one can see their eyes, petrified with the shock of betrayal.
They weep, surrendering to the loneliness and to the cold. And they usually survive. They grow feral once again, and they never allow a human hand to touch them; or even get close.
They forever remember the hands that betrayed their trust; and, surely, they do not try to lick the wounds on these hands or keep them warm when the cold weather comes. It is against their wild nature that prevails over the appeal of the hearth.
They become wild and strong once again. Yet, sometimes, looking closely into their eyes, one can see the frozen shards of former pain – these are unshed tears, frozen in the cold.
And you went through that as well; and you were ready to grow wild again, until the spring returned and reminded you in no uncertain terms that winter would never again accept you; that you had grown too attached to the fire; and that you had no right to abandon the one who pushed you away, because you had vowed to protect her; because she had given you the very half of your heart that was now beating so painfully in your chest, preventing you from returning to the wild life in the forest.
And so you overcame your nature. You reached for the hands that had once given you warmth and caress. And you realized that those were not the hands that had caressed you so often – it was as though there were gloves pulled over them; and that beneath the rough cloth, the hot skin of her hands was bleeding and burning with pain.
And you did the only thing you could do – you bared your teeth and bit at the material that clung to the beloved skin. You bit in, at the risk of slicing those hands, at the risk of wounding the sweet palms, and pulled – with all your might – ripping off the gloves. You did it, although the ice inside you almost cracked open your heart. And yet, you stood fast, you kept pulling; you didn't even flinch when you heard her tortured outcry, when you saw her pain, when you saw her collapse, exhausted by this strange duel between the wild cat and the offending fabric…
You remained strong until you saw her blood, and her voice, which you had not heard for what felt like an eternity, called out to you, using the name that she gave you when she tamed you… Your teeth – these terrible, cold blades of fate – lost their grip, your huge paws buckled, and you – the free, wild beast, the snow leopard – collapsed next to her, unmanned by her pain and your ineptness, and a sound escaped your throat that you had never uttered hithertofore.
You howled, as though you were back to that time between night and day, when you were born amidst the wolves.
Have you ever seen cats weep? You did not even know you could weep – like this – silently, frantically, heart-rendingly, tearlessly. And whisper "forgive me" in a broken voice, with no air left in your spasming lungs. And all around you – on your fur, on the snow, on her – were the red marks of your strength… As though your merciless claws caused her to bleed; as though you were the one who betrayed her by causing her pain…
And yet it was you – you, the unfeeling, you, the stone-cold – whose gaze, frozen into the icy slabs of past pain, was fixed starkly, without as much as a flash of former devotion, on her torment.
For the sake of what did you make her suffer? For the sake of what did you allow even a drop of her blood to fall down in the snow?!
For the sake of becoming her pet once again; for the sake of being able to return from the wintry forest full of wolves to the burning fireplace; to lie next to it and feel her caressing hands stroke your bristling withers.
A cat, wild and strong, you have become weak because you had allowed her to put an invisible yet irremovable collar around your neck.
You lost the battle with yourself, you fool, yet you allowed her to win.
"What is wrong?"
He looked up at her in confusion.
"Are you crying?" she moved uneasily, slowly, carefully, as though approaching a wild cat; reaching out to pet him, yet ready to pull back at any moment, should the cat hiss and withdraw.
He touched his face – it was dry. In a few cautious steps, she closed the distance that he put between them after he managed to stop her bleeding, and knelt before him. Her green eyes watched him anxiously, and she was biting her lip, wincing in pain.
"Tell me," she whispered. "Tell me everything: every second that we were together… Everything that you remember…"
"And what have you recalled so far?" he did not shrink back or hiss when her soft palm stroked his cold cheek.
"Not too much…" she struggled to find the right words. "You know, it is as if… As if I am standing in the middle of the street and cannot understand how I got there, although I am certain that it is right for me to be there… Or… as if I fell asleep as a child and woke up ten years later only to find myself much altered…"
Her warm fingers tenderly interlaced with his, and he had a strange feeling that she trimmed all his claws with that single gesture.
"I remember how I feel about you…," her green eyes never faltered from his gaze where she might be seeing the shards of frozen tears. "Yet, how it happened… I barely know anything about us…"
All he wanted was to lie down with his tired head in her lap, so that she would stroke the back of his head, so that she would adopt him once again…
"I remember your voice," she was whispering slowly, stroking his arm with her fingertips. "I remember the taste of your kiss… I remember the heat of your body… I remember your eyes… Not as they are now, and it scares me…"
"What are my eyes like now?" he moved closer to her in a barely perceptible motion.
"Wild… And lonely…"
"Are you crying?" the corner of his mouth twitched, hiding behind the smile the deadly fangs with which only recently he could destroy anyone in his path.
"It is easier for me than for you," she stepped toward him and awkwardly hid her face against his chest, unable to stop the unexpected tears. It was so natural for him to hold her closer, to shelter her from the cold world, to warm her with his silver fur, to let her embrace him. "It is terrible – to cry inside…"
He started, and she drew back a little, looking into his face, searching for something.
"Tell me everything, right from the beginning."
"It will hurt you."
"No more than it has hurt you," the tears kept rolling down her cheeks.
"Why are you crying?"
"You look so… lost… You were hurt, weren't you? I hurt you…"
"It was not your fault."
"It was not yours, either."
"I had almost lost you."
"I am here; I shall not leave you, not when I just found you again."
"But you hardly remember anything."
"It doesn't matter."
"And what if you never recall any more?"
"It doesn't matter. I remember what matters most…"
"What is that?"
"The ice in your eyes," she breathed, stroking his face. Her tears dried up. "And the heat of your heart."
Have you ever seen cats cry? Have you witnessed the rare moment when a drop of pain slides out of the corner of a big, almost glassy, eye, rolls quietly down the fur and stops for a moment on the chin before falling down in the snow, dissolving in deafening silence..? Then the cat blinks, trying to comprehend the strange salty aftertaste on his fur.
And if at that moment a soft caressing hand were to touch his back, the cat would close his eyes and stay still, giving in to the moment of purification.
Hot lips traced his cheek and then stopped shyly on his icy-cold lips. A drop of salty dew dissolved in their kiss, going straight to the winter-ravaged, wounded heart of the snow leopard…