He sat on the old sawn-off tree trunk in the back corner of the garden.
He sat upright with pride, eyes shining bright, tail dangling to the grass. He shook his great head, fluffing up his main, and with his head thrown back, he roared. The boy’s bellow brought his mother out into the garden. He was scolded, as he had been so often, for embarrassing her and their neighbours. This time, with him being seriously threatened with a number of privileges coming to an abrupt end, his mother’s angry words had put a stop to it. However, this incident, carrying with it such power in the young boy’s mind, stayed with him through the long decades that followed.
Now, after a life that had a marriage, children, and a working life followed by several lonely years of retirement, he walked again through his family’s decaying garden. The property had never been sold. Despite his aging body, and with obvious discomfort, together with no thought of what his late parents would think or any considerations from now unknown neighbours, he clambered up onto the old tree stump. And regardless of the old man’s passion overcoming any sense of reason, and with any physical distress being surpassed by the exhilaration of the moment, he straightened his back.
His eyes burnt, his tail flicked, and with his great raised head… he roared.