from her slowly.

“Oh, Tulu, I will always cherish our love forever,” Mother did the same, until at last my parents were apart. “Return to me safely.” She ordered him in a soft tone. 

He did not answer back with his voice; he only nodded once, knowing that the sooner he left, the sooner he would be reunited with his love.

After separating from each other, Mother grabbed Sura by the fur on her neck and motioned Nukka to come to her side, while my limping sire approached me and grabbed me by my neck fur. 

After nodding to each other, I watched as my mother leaped away with the black and white child in her mouth and her smaller clone-like daughter running by her side. I could hear the small voices of my sisters as they moved farther and farther from Father and I.

“Mama? Mama, where are we going?” That was Nukka. She was looking up at Mother while she walked beside her. 

“Yeah, where are Papa and Brother going to, Mama?” Sura, still in the grips of my mother’s jaws, asked.

“Somewhere safe, my love,” I recognized the warmth of Mother’s voice. “They’re going somewhere safe too.” 

I wanted to cry out a farewell and tell Mother that I loved her, but Father, with waterfalls of salty tears down his cheeks, turned me away from her fleeing figure and began to run the opposite way, although he was limping a little bit.

I couldn’t hear Mother and my sisters’ voices anymore as Father took me away from our home. I was crying too. I was crying out for her, just like my father was. 

Mother . . . Mama!

MAMA . . .! 

I knew that Mother couldn’t hear me; she and my sisters were too far away, and my thoughts just couldn’t slip through my throat so that they could hear. I somehow ended up crying myself to a sorrowful sleep only minutes later.

I never saw my mother alive again. I never even got to say good-bye to her . . . or said that I loved her and appreciated how she raised me. 

The next thing I remembered was being laid out by a wooden building, waking up only moments before dawn. Nothing around me looked recognizable to me, but just like when I was only a few moments old, I heard a voice in my head . . . a familiar, warm voice that was howling to me. Somehow, I knew that she was okay now, free from the sadness that I had seen in her eyes hours earlier, but where she was, I did not know.

I smiled slightly and went back to sleep, not knowing what twists and turns my young life would lead me to. However, no matter what happened to me, I would always wish that I could see her again and tell her one thing . . . 

Thank you for loving me, Mother . . . and good-bye for now . . . .

(5/9/2007 – finished)