Reckoning

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📍Ranthambore National Park, India The teak forests of central India hold their heat long after the sun has dropped behind the ridgeline. By late afternoon, the light has narrowed t o a few hard shafts finding their way through the canopy, and the shadows between them are absolute. He came out of one of those shadows. Not quickly. Not as an event. Just as a fact, the way tigers tend to arrive, placing one enormous paw and then another onto the dust of the track, his eyes on something ahead of him that had nothing to do with the woman with the camera. There is a small wound at the base of his right ear. Recent enough to notice, healed enough that it no longer concerns him. It marks him as an animal that has contested its place in this world and settled the question. The stripe pattern along his back curves over his spine like something carved rather than grown. The light found the left side of his face and let the rest go. Show more