verb.
To fall back under pressure. To shrink back physically or emotionally.
noun.
The kickback of a gun upon firing.
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It takes a stubborn mind to cling to their humanity when the world seeks to strip it away.
It takes a desperate soul to reach f...
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"So, he is real."
The statement hung in the air as Katrina stood behind the two-way mirror in the small observation room, her eyes fixed on the larger chamber beyond the tinted glass, bare save for a large steel chair, and a lone figure.
She remembered once, her father taking her to Moscow Zoo when she was eight. It had opened a hundred years before she was born, he had told her, and he had laughed as she had gleefully pointed out the year inscribed on the plaque at the entrance, 1864. A proud statement of how some institutions stood the test of time. If those institutions are held up by metal bars, boundaries, rules, captivity. She didn't think that at the time, of course, but she thought about it now.
She remembered standing, enchanted, in front of the bars of the Siberian tiger enclosure, watching as the enormous, powerful creature paced up and down, muscles rippling beneath its striped pelt, its heavy exhales clouding in the cold air. She had reached out to touch the bars with her mitten-clad hands, but a larger hand on her shoulder held her back.
"He would have your arm as a snack, if given the chance, myshka." Her father had warned her with a kind smile, as she glanced up at him, her grey eyes wide with childish awe, before she looked back to see the tiger pace before the bars once more, his strides long and agitated.
"He looks like he wants to leave, papa."
"I'm sure he does, but he cannot."
"Do you think he misses his home?"
"This is his home, little Kat." He had murmured in response to her questioning, his own eyes following the obsessive pacing of the creature. "He was born in a cage; this is all he knows. If he got out, he wouldn't know where to go."
"I could show him."
He had laughed at her confident, decisive statement, reaching to take his daughter's gloved hand in his own and squeezing it gently as he led her away from the enclosure; "He would eat you up, myshka, and then what would I do?"
Shaking her head minutely, Katrina roused herself from the near-trance she had been lulled into, watching the pacing on the other side of the glass. Agitated, powerful, trapped. Just like the tiger, seventeen years ago. She didn't know how long tigers lived. Idly, she wondered if he was still pacing.
"Yes, he is real." Her father murmured as he watched her, her arms folded over her starched white shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows, the grease stains at her wrist indicating that she had been working on her newest project even when she had dressed smartly for the meeting he was briefing her for. "Though he is usually more subdued than this, Colonel Karpov tells me he becomes agitated when the arm is being maintained."
"He is off balance." She observed softly, reaching to brush a strand of her dark blonde hair behind her ear - she usually wore it tied back, out of the way, the strands touching her neck were making her feel off balance herself. "It would be enough to make anyone restless."
