In the land of Hatuga, there are Haves, and there are Have-Yours. Have-Nots are nonexistent, for the forest is so overabundantly fruitful that one cannot live their life without declaring at least one thing to be solely their own. There are many, however, who are never happy unless they possess the one thing treasured by someone else. These are the Have-Yours, and ravenous beasts who will cease at nothing until they have seized that which they covet most from their neighbor. And, even after that, their dissatisfaction persists.

Once, not too long ago, the most feared predator in the forest was neither the wolf, the lion, the snake, the polar bear, or the caterpillar, none of these which you might normally guess. No, for in those days the Panther was the supreme hunting machine. She was not just the agilest of cats, but hunted in enormous packs that could number as large as forty – forty human-sized cats, pitched as the night, leaping soundlessly through the canopy before pouncing without warning on their prey three stories below. They were lean, lithe, and could grip limbs with even less effort than your average gibbon – whether those limbs were the tree branches they bounded across, or the limbs of unaware feasts devoured in seconds as that swarm of treetop piranhas descended in a swirling tornado of fur and claw.

Panthers used to be a well-oiled machine, a pack of hunters even more singular in their collective mind than wolves. The wolves of Hatuga, in fact, learned their techniques from the Panther, only to replicate their system with the flaws that come only naturally to an imperfect translation. Guttural growls in their muscular chests, short like a morse code trapped in their lungs, would vibrate through the trees and coordinate every attack – the obstacles in the brush, the map of the trees, the status of the prey, and, most importantly, their method of approach. For each Panther trusted her sister with her own fulfillment, and therefore her life. No, there was not one greater example of efficient communication than the Panther – most feared of jungle predators by the tight-knitted nature of their community.

But an efficient machine is not immune from the chance accident that sends a spring popping off into the void, the destiny of one panther who chanced to land on a rotting branch during a scouting expedition. She fell all the way to the floor, unperturbed as her plummet was softened by the pads on her feet, executing the pack’s prepared protocol and thereby landing safely thanks to the teachings of her sisters.

Now, in the panthers’ territory, there lived many other Hatugans both predator and prey alike. The least of these, a predator by nature but treating himself like prey, was Watersnake. Watersnake lamented his lot, a venomless reptile with drab markings, unseen and passed on by all. His scales were not eye-catching, so he concealed himself in the dirt. His bite was not dangerous, so, from the safety of his hiding places, he hurled insults. And his tail, though he could mimic the much more infamous Rattlesnake by vibrating it at high speeds, he kept still. He did not want to attract fearful attention that he could not back up with devastating action.

Today, though, was a desperate day in the life of Watersnake. He was feeling particularly self-destructive, tired of the flecks of dirt always in his eyes and hateful of his fellow Hatugan. So, when the panther plummeted ad landed safely next to him, he seethed with righteous injustice.

“Why would this creature,” he slithered through his despondent thoughts, “blessed with a beautiful coat, a graceful tail, powerful claws, and a fearsome roar, also be blessed with the utilities to fall thirty feet out of the sky and land as if it had never left the ground? It’s not fair! Not fair, no!”

That was his last thought, before the natural fuel of frustration and pessimistic comparisons propelled Watersnake to lash out. He knew it would be his last lash, but at least all in Hatuga would finally know him, either for his bravery, his stupidity, or the mark left by his action, as the worm who dared challenge the apex predator.

When the Panther felt a sting on the end of her tail, she was worried she might have shredded it back up among the branches. But then – the rattling. The familiar death rattles of a Rattlesnake, poison dangerous enough to paralyze a Panther in under a minute, and kill her in three. The Panther hardly glanced at Watersnake – his mouth full of her tail, his eyes blazing with the fires of finality, and his own tail vibrating like a bee’s wings to keep up the facade – before she shredded that sorry snake to chunks between her claws and fangs.

But the damage was done. The Panther had been convinced by the display that her tail, her source of pride and balance, was now poisoned. And her training in these situations was very clear: her tail had to go. With tears in her eyes from the forthcoming loss and not just the present pain, she clamped her teeth at the base of her tail and gnawed until she was able to pull it free, separating the toxin she feared was working its way up from doing further harm.

The Panther did her best to try and make it back to the pack. The longer she searched, the longer her vision stretched, until it was obvious to her that the loss of blood from her posterior was just a much a danger as the venom had been. She was not so familiar with her surroundings from the forest floor, wasting the meager supply of consciousness left in her possession on trying to spot the branch that failed her in the treetop as a starting point. Her head was still upraised when she finally collapsed from the self-inflicted wound.

As the Panther’s vision blurred back to life, her first waking thought simply being shock that she was still alive, it came to her attention that she had been moved inside a canvased shelter. Gaudily decorated, earthy and warm, a smorgasbord of furs and metallurgically tailored art pieces.

“You’re awake! For a second there, I was worried you wouldn’t, but here you are.”

The curtains partitioning the inside from the out parted, and a young man came waltzing in on the smoke of a blacksmith’s fire outside. The Panther was still woozy, but that did not hinder her first instinct: to snarl at the intruder in this strange tent, though it probably belonged to him. She did not care about learning his intentions, for he was strange to her.

The young man, still more boy than man, laughed at her. His good-natured cheeriness calmed her down instead of steeling her defenses.

“I’ve always heard you Panthers were fearsome creatures, and it’s amazing to see how true that is in person! Oh, there’s no shame in how I found you passed out in a bush, nearly dead. There was so much blood that I never would have found you if it hadn’t trickled its way down to me.”

The Panther tried to rise. Her legs were weak, and she wobbled about until she collapsed again in a pile of furs. The young man reached out to comfort her, but quickly retracted his offer when her jaws snapped at his outreached digits. Turning her attention cautiously from him, she began to lick the stump where her tail used to be. She could still feel the ghostly presence of that severed limb, flicking about in a reality where it still existed. Her licks were small, pitifully half-hearted.

“Look,” whispered the boy meekly. “I could make you a new tail. Nothing that would replace what you had, of course…but something is better than nothing. I happen to be a skilled metalsmith, and, I promise: it will be the best work I’ve ever made. Because I’ll make it specifically for you.”

The Panther was too drained of energy to reason whether she should trust the boy or not. Instead, the warmth of good intentions emanated from him relaxed her suspicions, and the skill displayed by the sculptures littered about the tent reassured her as a testament to his dedication. Besides, he had tended to her well enough while she was asleep, bandaged the stump where her tail had been. What threat did a clawless, fangless, furless little beast pose while she was awake? 

Confident in her power when matched up against her host, even in her anemic state, the Panther consented to a test run for whatever machination he had in mind. The metalsmith’s excitement was palpable, for his talents had never actually been used for something practical before. 

“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Give me two weeks, and I’ll have the perfect new tail for you. I promise, you will not regret it.” 

For two weeks, the Panther was tended to as an esteemed and valued guest by the metalsmith. He would work on her tail in the misty hours of the morning, hammering and molding solid gold into rings, then linking them together with complicated gears and wires. In the afternoon, he would go out hunting, returning with some wild fowl just as the sun began to set. And, at night, he would sleep outside under the stars, allowing the Panther free reign of his own personal territory inside the tent. The metalsmith was also persistently friendly with her, carrying on pleasant conversation through just about any subject they could think of. If she wanted to talk about it, he had something to contribute, and she almost made a game out of finding some topic that might eventually leave him speechless. 

Eventually, she did. The night before the makeshift tail was to be completed, as they were watching the stars together, the Panther asked the metalsmith why he only made statues for the longest time. Pretty things, she admitted, having grown fond of staring at their intricate shiny coats all day, but still quite useless in the grand scheme of the forest. Silence was never the boy’s first response, so she almost wondered if he had wandered off somewhere when no answer came.

But he was deep in thought, having never really explored that part of his motivation before. 

“You know how,” he explained, “you were once so very good at hunting? But you would only hunt for what you knew you could catch, and what you knew you would eat? And that you never had to guess why or how you knew you would catch and eat, but you knew by the fact you could that it was worth the pursuit? It’s kind of like that.” 

The Panther didn’t quite understand, but what she did notice was a somber tone had overtaken his demeanor, a shade she had not seen before. She wanted to know, get more out of him – but she felt she should not. That was his territory, and the least she could do was leave that part of the encampment to him. But the most she could do was gently tug his shirt with her teeth, not tearing it, and offer him a place back inside his tent for the first time in weeks. So she did. And the sleep she had that night, curled up next to the metalsmith’s side, was the night the phantom pain of her tail finally evaporated into a vague memory.

The next morning the Panther awoke to see the metalsmith sitting next to her. Bright-eyed, smiling, almost glowing with confident radiance, legs crisscrossed at the base of her resting place. And there, in front of his folded knees, lay the new tail in all its splendor. 

The tail was a work of mechanical genius. Several golden rings, inlayed with crushed Amethyst, Sapphire, and Onyx to harden the exterior and give it a blackened sheen. Within each ring was a complex array of gears and regulators, harnessed to piano-thick wires that ran through each interior. These wires and wheels kept the golden rings bound together as they swayed back and forth, up and down, all around,  with every bit the fluid movement of a Panther’s tail mimicked as was the style.  

The Panther would have been skeptical to accept something so quickly, but she had grown to appreciate the metalsmith’s art. To wear one of his original pieces excited her in a way she had never felt before. She first considered it might just be the highs of receiving special attention and gifts from someone she had grown to care about. What she would discover, much much later, was that this was her first experience as being considered an individual, and not part of a larger whole – even by herself. 

Panthers exist within the pack; outside the pack, panthers do not exist. This is how the species has stockpiled infamy, branding themselves as predators not to be trifled with. And now, for the first time, a panther considered itself the Panther, distinguished among its kind by her enviable replacement tail. 

The Panther, therefore, felt an explicit need to show off her tail to the rest of her pack. To reassure them that she was still alive and capable of hunting, of course. But also to make the most out of her good fortune and generous friend by showing them both off. The metalsmith was not keen to the idea of waltzing into a den of panthers, but he wished to monitor his friend closely. If he observed any pain or discomfort where the concealed harness held his masterwork in place, he would want to adjust it immediately lest her wound break open again. 

The panthers’ den was carved into the side of a mountain, home to abandoned ruins built by some human Hatugan tribe long forgotten. No one quite knew why the ruins were abandoned, or who built them in the first place, but the panthers deemed this a worthy spot and chased out all other signs of life within a five-mile radius. The silence was eerie to the metalsmith as they entered that territory. To the Panther, she felt the relief of returning home. 

The interior of the cave was several stories tall and deep, with countless ledges (due to the dark) staggered about the cave walls. The glittering reflection of a thousand eyes alerted the Panther that her entire pack was home. The glittering shine of the Panther’s tail alerted her pack that something was amiss. And then they saw their sister’s companion, and they were up in arms. 

The Panther had to strike five of her sisters across the snout before they would stop lunging at the metalsmith with salivating maws. She explained to them why she had gone missing, which they seemed not to have taken notice of. She told them the story of how she came to lose her tail, which they didn’t much care about. And then she told them of what this metalsmith came to do for her. That piqued their attention, for they had noticed the beauty of the twitching artificial tail reflecting moonlight on the stalagmites behind her. They demanded to know this bold architect, the one who dared believe he could replicate the sacred image of a Panther’s tail.  

Truth be told, to a cat, the jeweled tail was absolutely mesmerizing. And it was no secret from her body language that the Panther took pride in the gift – not merely because of its value as a priceless work of art, but also because of the caring feelings behind the person who gave it to her. He had made her stand out as an individual, with this gift making her unique against the standard black coats of the panthers around her, and by his very devotion to tending to her at her worst. 

All the panthers smiled, licking their sister as a sign of welcome and comfort for her loss. They even licked the metalsmith as thanks for taking care of one of their own. But each and every one of those wildcats harbored in their heart a secret – that they coveted what their sister had brought home. Not the tail, not the man, but the happiness that these things seemed to afford her. Needing more time to sort through this new rising feeling of jealousy, the pack invited the metalsmith to spend the night in their den and share their latest catch of Wildebeest. They celebrated with warm milk harvested from dolphins living in the caverns underground, not rejoicing for the return of the wayward panther, but as a routine booster injected into the morale and connection of the pack. But the seeds had been planted; the metalsmith enjoyed the festivities, his good Samaritanship a badge of honor. The panthers watched him closely, fake Cheshire grins reassuring him, seething and plotting all the while to themselves. 

The first casualty came that very morning, before the sun had even stretched its fingers beyond the cover of the horizon. A larger panther, one of the oldest hunters in the pack and the least satisfied with her place in society, was found dead behind a tree. It was evident she had tried to gnaw her tail off, for, rather than bleed to death from the self-inflicted wound, she had choked to death when the tail got lodged in her throat. 

This tragic accident caused a rumble throughout the pack. Not because the death impacted them emotionally, or the sight of a dead sister spurned them, no. It was because they realized that they were now all after the same thing: to be as content and happy as the prodigal Panther.  

Their hair bristling as they passed each other, eyes locked and teeth bared, the panthers spread out through the forest, each finding a secluded spot to begin the delicate removal of their organic tails in favor of artificial ones. Surely, such a sparkly treasure was the secret to their sister’s happiness?  

When the Panther stretched herself awake and yawned in the heat of the afternoon, she noticed that the metalsmith was no longer sleeping next to her. A far-off clanking caught her ears, the sound of metal on metal, that warmed her heart and bid her to come. She trotted off deeper into the cave, searching for her talented artisan. 

The rest of the pack, careful not to disturb their sister with that coveted golden tail, softly kneaded their paws on the pack of the metalsmith until his eyes fluttered open. How surprised he was, to see an entire line of panthers with nubs for tails, bleeding and begging for a tail like she who still slept so soundly. 

Quite the bleeding heart, the metalsmith gathered his tools and followed the pack into the back of the den. After spending hours quickly dressing their wounds, he proceeded to craft them makeshift tails with the abundant gold they brought him from deeper in the caverns. But each tail he made didn’t quite look right, or move in a realistic way, for he had not the two weeks to craft the mechanical parts necessary for a true work of art. What he was making were simple counterbalances – still pretty to look at and moderately functional, but nothing compared to his friend’s specially crafted tail. 

At first, the metalsmith tried desperately to hold on to that good feeling of being useful, and the panthers tried their best to be grateful with what they received. But as the pain in their backsides mounted, and the tails got sloppier and sloppier as the metalsmith’s hands tired from unrewarded charity, and the happiness they saw in their sister remain unreflected in themselves, the more they hated this metalsmith for their tailless state. Finally, one of the younger ones refused what was being offered. 

“Make me a tail like your first, please,” she spat back in his face, keeping her stump away until she received what she believed she truly deserved. 

“That would take two weeks!” spluttered the metalsmith. 

“I can wait,” came her reply. Same was the reply from the next panther, and the next, and the next, until a hundred panthers were reasonable enough to each wait two weeks for their own amazingly wonderful joy-granting tails.  Two weeks for them…years for him.

The whines were deafening. The metalsmith covered his ears, looking panicked all around him, daunted by the task of pushing what he loved too far to extremes for panthers he barely knew. The first tail was made with the love of a bent-up passion, and the joy at being useful to one in dire need. But now he was being used as a tool by a society of ravenous predators, who took no chances in being satisfied. And so the first meek thought in his generous, charitable heart muttered the unavoidable truth: 

“I can’t.”

The Panther trotted to the edge of the open space just in time to see her sisters descending from the walls, swarming all around her beloved metalsmith, before he was enveloped by the pitch-black eye of that storm of fur. There was a surprised inhalation from the center, which echoed for a while over the sound of tearing and chewing, before it faded away under the chaotic soft padding of paws. When the panthers peeled off, each to their private nook, all that remained of the metalsmith was a pile of bones – stripped clean, nothing to distinguish them from the stones strewn about the cave, save their distinctive shape and the deep cuts of tooth and claw. 

The Panther sat, her tail lying still in the dust. She bent her head down over the bones at her feet, sniffing them, trying to pick up the faintest scent left behind by the craftsman…Nothing. There was truly not one trace left of him.  

There was a sorrowful rip of fabric, a clank, and the sound of only one pair of padded paws stumbling clumsily out of the cave. In her departure, the Panther left behind the golden, jewel-encrusted tail and its harness, the last remain of the man who had saved her life – abandoned, discarded among the bones of its creator. It was by no fault of her own that he was now gone, for what can one panther do against the whole of her society? Nothing, for its work is done in the shadows, and the consequences arrive and depart like the death of will.

The rest of the pack hardly noticed the Panther leave; their eyes were captured by the makeshift tail she left behind. Those eyes gradually became aware of the other eyes around them, hungry and isolating, Only a few minutes of bated breath passed before the pack swarmed again, this time at each other, snapping and batting their ears and whiskers, blood flying, competing for the right to possess that unnatural prosthetic. 

Eventually, the pack came to a very reasonable compromise. Instead of any singular panther donning the tail permanently, they studied its intricate contraptions until each was able to replicate it for themselves. None was as well-crafted as their model, for no cat had the passion, the skill, or the opposable thumbs to rival that original inventor. Instead, each panther compared their tail to the tails of their neighbor, and found those surrounding them severely wanting. And where one believes they are surrounded by uninspired beggars, one tends to grow suspicious, and close off from the rest of society. 

And so the pack, each member safeguarding the posterity of her own posterior, dispersed – each panther sought out her own way, alone, guarding her back against the jealous, coveting paws of her own kind. Having given up seizing the happiness they had seen in the Panther by deciding that it was a façade and did not actually exist, the panthers found solace in security. Their existence became wrapped up in keeping what they already possessed, so long as what they possessed looked better than what they thought others possessed. The tail spoke for the panther, despite not being part of the panther in the first place. 

A panther was still quite capable of hunting on its own, but these were now less-than panthers. They may have replicated the tail successfully, but no one knew how to maintain its synchronicity with an organic body. Metals rusted, surgical connections newly pioneered beyond the original’s designs harbored infections, and every single panther was weighed down by the heavy burden until their joints ached and their bodies bloated and slugged. Slowly but surely, health slipping away as easily as the prey they starved over, the panther population died out. Even in their dying throes, they clung tightly to the tail they thought enhanced their being with the hope that they might one day find joy delivered unto them. But that joy never came, and the only day they ever found was their final. 

As for the Panther, after she threw off her tail, she never quite regained her poise. She could barely hunt, for she was no longer limber, and the jungle grew to adapt in ways that left her hunting methods in the dust. And yet she persevered, spurred on by a need to survive and the pride, not in her tail, but in the individuality born through her tragic experiences. She began to craft weapons, pounce from the undergrowth and water instead of from the canopy, and lay traps and ambushes that better served her diminished speed and agility. She may not have had a tail, or a pack, but she had herself. And she worked hard every day to make sure that would be enough. 

Some Hatugans believe that she began to walk upright to counteract her balance, forage and seek softer foods due to the difficulty of relying on meat every day, and evolve her thumbs into the opposable kind to craft better tools. Some say that these human tendencies overtook her whole form, until you could only tell she was once a Panther by the pointed ears folded away under her jet-black hair. And I would tell you, this theory is highly unlikely. 

Yet… I believe it. For the Panther was still a Have-Not. True, she no longer needed a pack, but she did need a friend like the one she once had. Indeed, we Hatugans believe she would naturally do whatever was necessary to be among those who were like the metalsmith – the one friend who helped her in her time of need, helping her build enough strength to define herself. And no amount of gold, no quality of tail, no solidarity with society, can replace that kind of bond.  She refused to settle for substitutions, ever again.