Leonidas had not found the key to his sin by the time he and the tiger reached the top of the first mountain.  The tiger let him rest there.  The beast folded his front paws in front of him and told Leonidas to pray.  Then he went to sleep.

Leonidas prayed.

God did not answer.

If he had not seen the heavens open and what seemed like a hand of pure gold lift Samara and take her above the clouds, he would have thought perhaps her god was somehow not the same as his god.  If God spoke so easily once, why couldn’t He speak to Leonidas again and tell him what to do?

Leonidas put a hand to his head and scowled.  God was telling him what to do.  He had sent the tiger to guide him. He was asking the wrong questions when he prayed.

He had begun by praying that he would be able to bring Samara back home with him.

The second time he prayed, he prayed that he would understand his sin so he could repent.

The third time, he prayed that the tiger would stay with him until he’d figured it all out.

When he closed his prayer, the tiger had awoken.  “It’s time to go,” the tiger said, nosing Leonidas and letting his fangs brush against the protruding bones in Leonidas’s spine.

Leonidas was traveling with a tiger.  He was in danger.  He’d forgotten about the danger.

It was just that the ordinary had been left behind so long ago that the miraculous was nothing. He got to his feet and followed the tiger down the mountain, only to climb another mountain after that.

Night had long since fallen, and soon Leonidas would not be able to see anything with no moonlight and no starlight.  The clouds hid the heavens.

“Will we sleep?  Will we walk all night?” Leonidas asked the tiger.

“We can stop.  We can stop if you’ll sleep with your back next to mine.”  The tiger yawned, and Leonidas saw his teeth flashing in the last rays of daylight.

A chill ran down the man’s spine, and he remembered the dead bodies in the tiger pit.  This tiger had tasted manflesh.  He remembered the feeling of the tiger’s fangs against his vertebrae.

“Are you brave enough to sleep with me nearby without a priestess to block me?  You know I’m not being commanded in the way I was before.”  The tiger was making fun of him.

“I’m unarmed,” Leonidas reminded the tiger.  “I didn’t leave home with the idea that I would be on the road for days.  You could have eaten me anytime you wanted to, you just didn’t.  If you find yourself famished, you have the advantage. Go ahead and eat me.”

“So,” the tiger asked languidly.  “If you’re not afraid of a tiger with teeth and claws and a gaping stomach ready to swallow you whole, why were you afraid of a woman with neither fangs nor claws?”

Leonidas slumped against a boulder.  “I don’t know.  I’m a soldier.  I can kill people.  I have killed people.” Leonidas did not give examples of who or why he killed.  He went on with his explanation and brushed past the things he did not wish to discuss.  “I’m a hunter.  I have hunted animals that had a taste for my father’s sheep, but a woman is a different matter.  She’s not something I can kill or fight off when I’m at a disadvantage.  I don’t like how she could use my appetite against me.”

“Has she done that once since she arrived?” the tiger asked.  “Did she use her beauty to twist you around?  Did she make you sin?”

She had not.  Leonidas did not like to admit it, but she had done nothing wrong.  He just hated himself for feeling a rush of blood when she was near.  He hated her for offering him what he wanted.

He hated himself.

He hated himself most of all.