its coat white as snow, deadly as a viper. Snow leopards could outrun us all easily. But the snow
leopard could only have appetite for one of us - just one. We exchanged glances; one of us had to
be sacrificed to save the rest. Gavin took one decisive step forward, towards the snow leopard.
No! I wanted to shout. I already lost one friend. Not another, please not Gavin, I thought. But
I was being selfish, extremely selfish. We ran the opposite way just as Gavin leapt at the snow
leopard, and with a short scream, his body hung limply in the air for a fraction of a second, and
not a single sound escaped his mouth. His throat was almost ripped off his body, with only a tiny
string of skin and flesh attached it to the body. I approached my friend with caution, glanced at
the body, while the snow leopard nodded, letting me have one final look at my friend. A teardrop
fell onto Gavin’s wound, lying there like a glistening pearl.
As I retreated, I thought Gavin had it lucky. He’d died at the hands of a snow leopard, not
our enemies. Being eaten by snow leopards was a dignified death. It’s part of nature. But our
enemies... It was plain unfair.
I trudged along the golden sand, all my thoughts, all my feelings, all my desire to live-gone.
I was an empty shell. What is the purpose to live? Is it better to lead an unhappy life than to be
dead? What is the point of living without friends and joy? Even if I did have children, what would
their lives be like? Running all day, all night? It’d be torture.
Behind me, I heard the distinct war cries of our enemies.
“There they are! Shoot the gazelles down!” they screamed. Rapid cascades of bullets pierced
through my fur coat, into my flesh. Warm, thick red blood oozed out of gash in my neck. Crimson
and fresh, it dribbled down my neck and sunk into the sand as the droplets of blood fell against the
desert ground. A huge, cold grin hung crookedly on the face of a young man, one of our enemies,
and he approached me, dipping two fingers into the wound, he smeared my blood onto his face.
My head was spinning. The image of him was a blur. The voice of the young man, our enemy,
a human, announced, “First blood!”
