• Cyrin woke to find she was breathing fast and the leaves and grass she used for bedding were scattered along the cave floor.As she was trying to to calm down, she wondered if the dream was real and her father truly was still alive. She shoke that notion out of her head. It was impossible for him to have survived. She was there as the great tiger Saber attacked him, wounding him in the face, chest and legs. He had tried to limp away, but to no avail. With one more sweep of his huge paw, Saber knocked the old wolf off the edge of the mountain side. From the bush she was hiding in, young Cyrin saw her father's body bounce and break as it fell down the cliff side and into the river far below. As hard as it was for her, she restrained herself from going to the cliff edge to see if he had survived his fall. It was a false hope anyways, and even at her young age she recognized that. Saber's real target had been her, not her father, and the danger was growing now that her father was not there to protect her. She hid as best she could in the dense bush as she watched Saber search for her.After a time, he must have concluded that she had escaped, because he took another quick look around and then stalked off into the jungle to look for his prey. She waited until she was sure that he was a safe distance away before she slowly and silently crept out of her bush and over to the edge of the cliff. As she stared down at her father's broken body in the river far below, tears appeared in her soft blue eyes......