Sabertooth

Two Sabertooth cubs interact with the humans, baboons, bears, and other animals of this time weave a fascinating story of survival when our earth had different rules.

 

Chapter 1

Half A Million Years Ago

Nothing stirred that was not rooted in earth. The dried grass with its familiar rustle moved only when swept by the hot winds rushing down from the barren hills. His eyes, dry and crusted, squinted through the watery movements of the heat waves at a far off tree with few leaves, none of them green. He came to attention as the bottom branches bent and swayed, then as if with a purpose the next branches higher up followed the same rhythmic flow pushed lazily by the wind. No animal inhabited its branches and he relaxed his false alert.

The heat had sucked the life out of everything; almost. He still lived, the king of his world, but now there were doubts even in that assessment. To be king, you needed subjects. The flies that pestered his dried eyes would not count. And if they did they could not be tamed.

He scanned down the length of the shallow valley until it was interrupted where it folded in upon itself, causing lines of deep depressions. In these troughs streams had coursed unhurriedly towards a wide river to the east, their presence often only made known by the sun's sparkling reflection. The sandy mounds above the streams had often been dotted with the tracks of inhabitants. But now the prints had been filled by the hot winds and the streams had run dry.

Wearily he walked to his lair that afforded him a look over the next valley and he sighed at the same emptiness. The lair sat high on the easterly point of a long narrowing plateau. The plateau cleaved the savannah into two valleys. In each, there used to run a stream flowing to the east where they merged in the distance.

Many miles to the north rose a tall black mountain. Barren, rocky land surrounded it and nothing green could be seen. Just south and east of where the dried up streams merged and grew to become a river, began a jungle so impenetrable that most animals on the savannah shied away from it. Everything to the west of the jungle and river was desert and north of there a red stone plateau rose abruptly out of the sand dunes. It ran east and west, its sheer steep cliffs giving the once lush savannah protection from the encroachment of the desert.

The savannah was his kingdom and now that the prey was gone, his survival was in peril. His tongue hung heavy and dry; swallowing came with difficulty. Even the flies that had staked a claim to his face, with its usual feast of dried food and saliva, were gone. He would go down to the dried up stream and like yesterday, scratch up the baked earth and see if water seeped up. He jumped when he stepped on one of new stones that covered the ground. Red and smoking only days before, his feet were still burned. The stones had cooled but his memory had not.

A moon ago far to the north, a volcano had erupted. The morning of that day, when the mountain taught all those around who truly ruled their world, he had caught a baboon. He had been lazily licking the hot sticky blood from his paws when he noticed the dead animal's head. The eyes, staring at him, were strangely alert and staring at him even though the head had long been separated form its spine. This bothered him that his meal, that had fought so uncharacteristically poorly, haunted his feast. He swatted it, disappointed that it did not fight back. It rolled over and if the baboon could, he would have seen only the fresh green grass painted brightly with his own blood.

Comfortable that no eyes were upon him, he stretched back and there in the wide-open grasses of the savannah, yawned and invited sleep. The first loud gurgle from his stomach barley caught his attention. The next one physically moved him. One eye half committing to regard this curious movement. The other opened when he realized it was not the result of his ingestion. He knew that the entrails of the baboon, although his favorite part, often invited such rumblings and pain. Often the entire contents of his hard won meal would be emptied through one orifice or the other.

He slowly sensed that this was something else: the rumbling of big prey. They were spooked and running fast. He rose up and looked around with drowsy eyes. On a far off hill a dark swarm of water buffalo ran to its crest and then disappeared down the far side. A cloud of dust was their only evidence. They spooked at anything, probably smelling him and his kill.

A long yawn and belch had him back in the grass. The next thing that tore through his senses was a noise so loud and deep he sprang up in full alert. The earth shook so that he was unsteady and for the first time in his adult life he ran to his lair for protection. As he huddled under the rocks while his world burned, smoked, and shook, a distant memory skirted his mind, one long forgotten but fresh with current familiarity. When he was a cub, the ground had rumbled and the air had smelled burnt and familiar. The rocks of this very lair had shook with such intensity that they fell and split.

Today those memories were repeated as the heat, fire, and ash spread, killing everything in its way. It had reached for miles and even those not in its path suffered and died. If not for his lair of rocks, he surely would have perished. Few creatures had survived. What could fly, flew away. What could walk, ran away. If it was rooted, it withered and died.

For many days the mountain showed its strength and all the other animals had fled save him. Never had he hid from anything for it was not in his nature, nor in his manner. The sounds and shaking of the earth put the fear to him so much he almost empathized what his prey must endure from him. For days without food or water he had clung to the pile of rocks where he was born. His territorial borders tied him to this land and leaving was not even a passing thought.

Finally the rain of smoke and fire from the sky had stopped and he ventured out. Some of the rocks were still hot and he had burned his feet. He now limped and avoided all unfamiliar stones. The noises of the distant smoking mountain haunted his dreams. He was once the proudest and fiercest, but the mountain had forced humility upon him. An emotion uncomfortable and unfamiliar to him, for until now, there had been nothing to fear.

His domain once rich with food and water was now his prison. He could not leave or come close to the boundaries set by scent markings of his kind. He had feared nothing until that day, but his confidence was coming back, for only one animal ruled all; for it was his time, his place. He was Sabertooth.