The Most Humane of War

Fallen,
I'm staring down the throat of forthcoming death.
Why do you want to live Mr. Jaguar?
Gripping the rifle at my side, I wonder who has more to live for.
The white long teeth and red tongue.
I wish I was home at dinner right now
feasting on the cooked carcasses of creatures I didn't have to know,
back there in my mother's arms.
Its tongue whips the air, and the jaguar snarls.
Walking down to me
through the earth's green and dusty rubble.
Marks are left by its paws.
Mr. Jaguar, do you know what it's like to be human?
To be enslaved to society because of a mind?
I never fit in!
Mr. Jaguar, I have nothing to lose.
But why would you deserve to live?
 
"You are not as great as me child. You can't fight a war.
You don't know what it is to be a man and use your muscle."
Is that what you're snarling Mr. Jaguar?
"You've got nothing to lose. Nothing to gain. So why live against me?
I have family. I have a pack to protect. I will return, and you will die here."
Mr. Jaguar, don't come any closer.
 
Here I am escaping into the wild, and Nature won't give me her chest to fall in.
The world is squeezing me in... into nothing.
Mr. Jaguar, why are you so mean?
Why do you kill for territory?
"You can't be afraid of war."
You divided the land and I entered it,
and I posed no threat.
"This is instinct."
 
Why did I bring a rifle?  
Did I know that I was going to run into danger?
Then,  
why did I come here still?
Could it be that I have been wanting to see you?
Have I been wanting to see a jaguar?
Out there in the human dimension, I'd be dead by now.
Are you fighting with honor?
"I don't know what honor is. This is just instinct."
You have no bombs, no swords, no weapons. Just those marvelous teeth.
 
If I am a human, and I do not benefit the world,
and this jaguar promises to maintain this world's diversity,
then am I worth less to this world?
Should I die?
 
Slash!
A claw swipes at my leg, and I bleed and feel pain.
Bang!
I was scared. I was scared. I was scared. I was scared.
I didn't want to die.
I limp back to the human world, and I have not saved anyone.
What was I supposed to do?
Let my life cede itself over to an animal's instincts?
The jaguar never saw it coming.
Neither did I.
I didn't know that I was so strong.
It was the gun.
 
I think I saw a jaguar cry.
He believed in war, and I didn't.
Yet, who is dead, and who remains?
Hahaha.
Wait no, I'm sad.
Maybe if I believed in war, the jaguar would now be alive.
Maybe if I believed in war, I would have protected something.
If I believed in war, maybe I wouldn't have brought a killer rifle,
but a stunner
because I would have consciously accepted war as a possibility.
 
Mr. Jaguar made war by instinct and was better than me.
But if I could combine intellect and moral code with instinct, could I be a better fighter?
When you choose to not believe in war yet hold weapons to your side,
you choose to  
wait for fear to wipe away what might scare you someday
that might have been fighting for instinct and needed to be pacified
to be shown intellect and moral consciousness.
Otherwise, an endangered creature will die.
And at death, almost nothing can be what I called "a monster".  
Keep faith you warriors of the Forest of Tribulations.
Stay awake and guard the front lines.

I have come to understand
that war is not evil.
It is just less than ideal.