Legends of Belariath
Somali
Birth of a Chakat
Life for me started 45 years ago in the lab of a dark wizard named Yondu. He told me that I was the product of a human..two black panthers and some magic. He told me that he created me on a whim to see if you could make a new type of beast. He collected a male and female panther..a lost teen that happened to stumble upon his castle. He dragged all of them down to his lab and strapped them all to a table. He then mixed of some chemicals and stuff in a large vat. Once he did that he then took the three of them and lowered the table top with them screaming and roaring into the vat where he used some lighting from the storm outside and a few spell phrases. The vat then started to glow and the roars of the panthers and the screams of the young girl slowly started to merge as one. After several moments he lifts the table top out and there was the final product laying on it...me.
I laid there for I don't know how long..but it was day when I finally slowly opening my eyes and saw the sunlight shining in one of the windows. My body was stiff and sore and I whimpered as I tried to stretch out. I felt about and found that I was on a bed of cloth covered straw. I slowly rose and stumbled out of the bed. My body felt weird like it wasn’t normal. I slowly stood and I swayed around abit as I slowly gained my balance. I took some small steps towards the window and got some strange feelings like there was more floor under me than normal. I looked around the room and noticed a large mirror standing in the corner. I moved over to it that's when I got a major shock. There staring back at me from the mirror was a very strange beast.
I don't remember what happened after that but Yondu told me that he heard me scream and rushed into the room to find me laying on the floor in a dead faint. He sat me down and told me that I was his creation. That I would vault him to the top. I didn't understand what he meant by that. He told me that he named me..his new beast a Chakat..and that then name he gave me was Somali..and the type of cat that he had wandering around his castle. Both names were strange to me.. In the days and months ahead of me he taught me how to walk, leap..climb, use weapons. He was proud that I learned so quick. In the span of a year I had the skill and dexterity of one that took years to learn.
Life as a chakat got better day after day. I loved how agile my body was. I could leap seven feet straight up. I could climb trees very easily. My running speed was close to matching a cheetah...and since I had two hearts and two sets of lungs I could keep it up for awhile. I loved being a chakat and hoped that others would as well.