Why'd you do it?
Why does the sun shine?

I stalk through a sunset lit jungle with an elephant gun, distant storms to the north. Lightning strikes and the roar of distant thunder clash with the slither of leaves, cricket song, my heart beat. There is a sense of oldness there among the trees, the humid air haunted by the smell of rain and fungal rot, the sharpness of fried air and residual ions upon the warm wind that often caresses this verdant corner of the world blowing south to west.
My hackles rise, it's instinctual, and I search the foliage and orange tinged shadows, knowing deep down that death may be close. Who is the hunter, and who the hunted, asks a whisper from the depths of who I am and all I will ever be.
I don't have an answer, for instinctually I know it will be decided by time. If I have enough to take a shot the Queen of the Rip will die, if she sneaks up behind it will be me, and in a crossroads scenario in which we both have a chance at one another the world will be one less dingo and one less man eating feral tiger.
Of a sudden I enter a clearing, and there she is, licking an enormous paw. It's dripping blood, wounded by a thorn driven so deep she cannot get her jaws around the blunt end. She's seven hundred pounds of muscled radiance, stripes blacker than midnight, the sunset loaning her orange fur a surreal and hypnotic glow, and here also crippled by a sliver of wood.
I raise the enormous gun as she raises her head. A twig snaps under my muddy boot. Our eyes meet.
Time seems to freeze, there in that hot place, in the humid lazy shadow of the monsoon's power. Another flash, closer now, more thunder.
I'm stricken by the fierceness of her gaze. It's golden, hungry and hateful and wizened. Forceful, the regard of an old god. I get slammed with this existential echo. Who am I?
I wonder what she saw in mine, for I felt nothing beyond the prior question, not fear nor anger nor triumph. This was not the showdown I had imagined, it would be an execution. She could not cross the twenty feet that separated us even uninjured at full speed before I could react. A single shot could blow her in half.
Five seconds passed, ten. I slung the mighty gun over my shoulder, cast aside my Aussie hat, and walked towards her. It began to rain.
She looked at me warily, readied herself for a pounce as I approached. "Think ye to do it by knife dog, bragging rights? How foolish."
I took my knife from my belt, threw it down into the mud.
"I've been hunting all my life. I'd be disgusted if one of them ends like this. Flip your paw over and I'll pull that out," I said. I felt sad, hurt and numb, and the words seemed spoken by someone else. Words with a murderer. What next?
The last of the distance gone we were now face to face. The rain pattered down softly, dripping from the leaves, staining the ground of the clearing a deep dark. I had no defense. She could easily knock me down with one swipe, sever my spine with one bite.
She flipped her paw, a deep purr much like the thunder in the sky resonating in my ears. "Pull away dog," she said, our gazes still locked. There was a flat and searching curiosity in those topaz depths now, a glint that filled me with the deepest disquiet I'd ever felt in the entirety of my short and brutal life.
It came out slow and tough, for the spike had a serrated edge, yet the lioness made not a sound. I dropped it on the ground, awaited the death I knew would now come. Why had I done this?
Because you want it to end, something whispered. She is your lightning strike, your dark night gun, your way to finally let go...
She nipped my ear instead, hard enough to draw blood, and as I felt the trickling flow wend its heavy red way down my cheek and across my muzzle like a crimson tear drop she hit me in the chest with the back of her now thornless paw, sent me tumbling through the grass.
By the time I had risen she had gone. I stood there alone, the last slivers of the dying day purple ghosts, felt that familiar hollowness come down.

Thought it would, yet no. So- here. Yes, yet not. Does that make sense.
Vic let it be what it is.

You didn't phrase that like a question Mr. Fox.
No, I did not.