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The Tiger and The River
- dcdizano
- Oct 18, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 26, 2025
Introduction
Have you ever stared into still water and wondered who you really see looking back?
In this story, a young tiger named Kai aspires to be just like his father, Raza, the mighty king of the jungle.
Kai’s reflection once mirrored his father’s crown, however, a disturbed river roars and swallows his reflection and Kai is forced to face something deeper than bravado
He thought strength alone would crown him king. In the end, even the fiercest learn - strength isn’t always in the fight, but in knowing when to flow with the current.
Read the Full Story
In the emerald depths of the Sundara Forest lived a tiger named Kai, son of Raza, the mighty king of the jungle.
They used to say no tiger could match Raza - the biggest and strongest of them all. His fur burned orange like the evening sun, cut with deep black stripes, dark and cool as night. His roar could shake the ground for miles.
Raza’s shadow stretched long. Even the wind seemed to move for him.
Kai wanted nothing more than to be just like his father.
“Strength,” Raza once told him, “is the crown you forge with your own claws. A true tiger pushes forward, no matter what. The forest bows to those who never stop moving.”
There had been other moments too - rare, quieter ones Kai barely remembered. Once, as a cub, he’d seen his father watching the river at dusk, unmoving for a long time, as if listening to something only he could hear. But when Kai asked about it, Raza had only said, “Even kings must learn the land before they claim it.”
Those words never stayed with Kai the way the others did.
He carried the lesson of motion instead, like claws in his chest.
Every morning, he chased the dawn through the forest, determined to be faster, fiercer, greater than the day before. When he stopped by the River Anara, he would gaze into the water and see a reflection growing more familiar each day - sharp eyes, steady shoulders, a king in the making.
But one monsoon season, the rains came heavy.
The river swelled until its calm song turned into a roar louder than any tiger’s. Its glassy skin vanished, replaced by a restless pulse. When Kai leaned over the bank, the tiger he expected to see was gone. Only dark water twisting, swallowing itself.
“Where have you gone?” he asked the current.
The river carried his question away.
He searched different pools, quieter bends - but everywhere, the water rushed too fast to show him anything. Without that reflection, Kai felt like a stranger in his own skin. His claws felt dull. His steps uncertain. The forest that once echoed his power now only echoed his doubt.
One evening, as the rain softened to a steady hush, Kai came upon an old heron fishing among the reeds.
“You look troubled, tiger,” the heron said without lifting its gaze.
“I’ve lost my reflection,” Kai replied. “Without it, I don’t know who I am.”
The heron glanced at the swollen river. “Perhaps it isn’t the water that must still,” it said, “but the one who watches it.”
Kai bristled. “Strength comes from movement,” he snapped. “From pushing forward.”
The heron finally looked at him. “So does drowning.”
Before Kai could answer, thunder split the sky. Rain fell in heavy sheets, and the river surged again, spilling over its banks.
Kai stepped back - and then hesitated.
He could retreat into the trees, wait for the storm to pass. But the river had challenged him, and somewhere in its roar he heard his father’s voice urging him onward. To turn away felt like failure.
He took one step closer.
The bank collapsed beneath his weight.
The water took him.
The forest vanished in a blur of sound and motion. Kai fought with everything he had - claws, teeth, muscle - but the harder he struggled, the deeper he sank. The flood did not care for strength.
Raza’s voice thundered in his mind: Never stop, Kai. Never surrender.
But beneath it, quieter now, was the heron’s voice: Be still.
For the first time in his life, Kai stopped.
He loosened his limbs. Released the fight from his body. The river did not swallow him. It held him - not as an enemy, but as something ancient and alive. He floated, breathing with its rhythm, until the storm spent itself.
When dawn came, the forest shimmered with silver mist. The flood had quieted.
Kai pulled himself onto the bank, drenched and trembling. He took time to steady himself, shaking out his coat, grooming until his fur lay smooth once more.
Before leaving to search for his father, Kai leaned over the water again.
There he was - not as he remembered himself, not as Raza’s shadow, but something changed. A tiger touched by the river.
As he lifted his head, a heron rose from the reeds and glided into the mist, silent and unhurried.
Whether Kai had found himself again or become someone new, he couldn’t tell. But for the first time, the uncertainty did not frighten him.
The forest stirred - alive, reflective.
And Kai walked on, carrying the river’s quiet lesson with him.
About the Art
About the Art
Original Name: [Untitled](2019)
Artist: Celeste
Medium: Acrylic on 12x12 canvas
Description: In the original painting, a tiger is stopping to have a drink after a storm.
Intellectual Property:
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