Totem

Alex had moved up close,as if in a trance,fascinated by the sight of that great feline.His grandmother called a warning that he didn't hear,and he kept going closer,until both hands were touching the wire that separated him from the animal.The jaguar stopped pacing,emitted a deep growl,and fixed its yellow gaze on the human outside its cage.It froze in place,its muscles tense,its jet pelt quivering.Alex took off his glasses,which he had worn since he was seven years old,and dropped them on the ground.Cat and human were so close that Alex could distinguish each golden fleck in the pupils of the beast as their eyes locked in a silent dialogue.Everything faded away.Alex was alone,facing the animal on a vast amber plane surrounded by lofty black towers,beneath a white sky in which six transparent moons were floating like the heads of medusae.He saw the cat open its jaws,he saw the gleam of its enormous pearl-white teeth,and in a human voice,but one that seemed to issue from the depths of a cavern,it spoke his name:Alexander.And he answered in his own voice,but it,too,sounded cavernous:Jaguar.The cat and its counterpart repeated those words three times:Alexander,Jaguar;Alexander,Jaguar;Alexander,Jaguar,and then the sand of the plain became phosphorescent,the sky turned black,and the six moons began to whirl in their orbits and scatter like slow-moving comets.


Alexander encounters his totemic animal,a black jaguar...Fragment from chapter 7 of City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende.One of my all time favorite books....


Done with watercolor and colored pencils...