Silent Witness

I’m sitting in the forest, surrounded by a carpet of yellow and red leaves. The trees stretch up around me, their skinny brown branches reaching into the sky.

Suddenly, I hear movement behind me, distant but clear. My heart skips, and I turn just in time to see a panther step out from the bushes, its sleek black form emerging into view.

Without hesitation, I leap to my feet and run. I can hear its footsteps behind me—quick, heavy, closing in. My pulse races, and my legs push forward faster. I glance back, fearing it’s hunting me, closing the distance between us. But as I turn, I see its attention is elsewhere. Just behind me, on my right, the panther is chasing another movement.

A deer. Realising it’s being hunted, the deer sprints forward, but the panther is faster, closing the gap. With a powerful swipe of its paw, it strikes the deer’s hindquarters, sending it sprawling to the ground. Before the deer can rise, the panther sinks its teeth into its neck, ending the chase in a swift, brutal movement.

I stop, frozen, as the scene unfolds. The panther knows I’m here; I can feel it in the way it pauses, glancing in my direction. Its yellow eyes lock onto mine. I expect fear to flood over me, the urge to run—but I feel neither. There’s something in its gaze that reassures me, a sense that I am safe, that I am not its prey.

Relief floods my body. I don’t fully trust this exchange, but I know the hunt is over—for now. As long as the panther has the deer to satisfy its hunger, there is a fragile truce between us, even though I know this peace is only temporary.

The scene before me is gruesome, blood pooling around the lifeless deer. The panther begins to eat, tearing into the carcass, and though I want to look away, something holds me in place. I stand rooted to the spot, captivated, unable to turn away. I watch as nature’s raw brutality unfolds, and strangely, I feel a quiet acceptance of this violent reality.

The forest around us is still, as if the trees themselves are holding their breath. The air feels thick with something I can’t quite name. Watching this brutal side of nature, I realize that, in some ways, I am the same.

We humans are no different, I think. We, too, are predators—the most dangerous of them all. We kill to survive, just as the panther does, and we consume life to sustain our own. This same predatory instinct separates me from the deer. Perhaps the panther senses it, as it might have sensed from encounters with other humans. It knows instinctively that humans fight back, that we are dangerous, and that we can harm it. In nature, the weaker is consumed by the stronger.

Out of sight, out of mind—that’s how we approach our predatory nature. But the blood remains, just like the panther’s, staining the earth.

As I move away from the scene, the panther’s gaze remains fixed on me. In that moment, a wordless understanding passes between us—something ancient and raw, a silent acknowledgement of the world we both inhabit, an unyielding truth.