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It was a little funny, how the panda cub would follow Tigress like a shadow. The Five would look on in amused bewilderment at the sleeping babe in the tiger’s arms. Sure, they talked about the idea sometimes, that Tigress had an almost motherly relationship with the girl. The idea made them laugh at first, and then a strange feeling settled on them all like a lead blanket. The thought became sobering. They looked to each other in silence, recognizing the glint in each other’s eyes.
It was as wonderful as it was frightening. And as they watched Tigress smooth a calloused paw down the cub’s sleeping head, they studied their friend’s face in the light of the setting sun. Her head was haloed by golden light, and her face blazed with a terrible fiery glow.
That was their Tigress. The one with light shining from her eyes. That was their Tigress healed.
It was like they had been seeing a different version—the crippled version—of their friend the whole time. They were only seeing the parts that were slipping through her defenses. This was the part they had forgotten, and she was right there in front of them.
They said nothing to Shifu, wanting to see him realize it for himself. It took him a little longer to figure it out, but when he did, it was obvious. He seemed to look at her longer when she sat at the table for dinner, he lingered in the room when she slept beside the cub, and even he himself seemed to change.
He was softer now. Not in battle, but in everything else. He smiled more, laughed more. The Five thought that he had gotten better after Po came, but he never stopped getting better. And he thought the whole thing was quite amusing, though he kept quiet. If any of them were to mention it to Tigress, she might deny anything of the sort, but then, Shifu had been the same with Tai Lung. So, between the Five and himself, it was their secret.
The tiger and cub were spending so much time together that the girl began to develop the traits of her new mother. It was endearing, they thought, when she would act like Tigress in little ways.
She would growl at people as they passed, a soft little rumble compared to the tiger’s, but loud enough to turn heads. Not that it was all that threatening, Lei Lei was often smiling when she did that. Everyone accepted it as the girl’s friendly greeting.
The growling evolved over a few weeks into a display of teeth. Barring not-so-menacing baby teeth at people looked a tad funny when a panda was doing it. She would sometimes clench her teeth when she got angry, and apparently, she didn’t before. Her little face would go all wrathful and her jaw would set with raised lips showing off her flat-topped pearly whites.
It looked uncannily like Tigress when she did that. She only put on that face when someone had seriously crossed the line. Most of the time though it was proper child anger, squealing and whining.
If those didn’t work when the other children were being mean, she would take up Option 3. Being around Momma Tigress had taught her a lot of things, and one of the big things it taught her was how to fight back.
It was all too easy. Tigress only had to hold the jombies down while the girl beat them senseless. Other children were fair game. Some of the naughty ones made grabs at Stripy Baby clutched beneath her arm. Once, they managed to swipe the doll from her, and they made off with it squealing happily to themselves about their victory.
When Lei Lei caught up with them, all bets were off. She was getting Stripy Baby back no matter what. She wrestled them down with ease, and they came running back to mommy with bruises and hurt feelings. Even when Lei Lei was only playing, she managed to take down some of the children bigger than her. It had gotten to a point where she was getting some bad attention from it.
Tigress saw it too, and she thought for a long time about it. Lei Lei was only a toddler, and a panda toddler at that. She didn’t have claws or sharp fangs or deadly strength. She was just a little girl.
Tigress had been just a little girl once too.
Maybe it was time to explain a few things to her little shadow.
“Sweetheart, can I talk to you?”
Lei Lei giggled happily and crawled right into the tiger’s lap. Her lavender eyes glistened up at the tiger’s glowing amber. Stripy Baby was cradled between the two, and the toddler laid her head against her mother with a sigh.
“Grandma Panda says you’ve been mean to the other children,” she said, voice level and calm, “Is that true?”
Lei Lei stilled from nestling her face into the striped arms. She looked like she was thinking something over in her head before she spoke in a small voice.
“They were mean,” she whispered, “They took Stripy Baby.”
“And they would not give her back?” said the tiger.
“Nuh-uh! They wouldn’t!” the toddler whined, clutching Big Stripy Baby’s arm and the doll in her image tightly.
Tigress knew how important that doll was to the toddler, and to its maker. It was cruel to steal such a treasure from either, let alone the babe who didn’t know better. She had talked Po down from his fretting about losing his action figure. She saw how he’d taken care of it. It was obvious that he loved that thing, and the real deal even better. Lei Lei did the same.
“Well, I am glad you got her back. You take very good care of her,” she commented, looking down at the wooden figure in the child’s hands with all its painted details. “But, Honey, I need you to know something.”
Lei Lei turned her wondering eyes up at the tiger’s face.
“You shouldn’t play so rough with the other children. You cannot keep hurting them.”
“Why, Stripy Baby?” she asked, her voice was sweet and innocent of any malice. It was an honest question.
Tigress thought of her answer for a moment. She reminded herself of a few things in that time.
Lei Lei was just a little girl. She was not a tiger. She was not her.
Tigress held her breath for a moment when an idea came into her head.
“Because you are patient. You wait until you’re not angry anymore before you fight back. Because you have courage. Fighting for what’s right takes bravery. Because you are compassionate. The other children cannot fight back near as well as you. And because you are confident. When they cross a line, and you can do nothing to stop them, I will be there.”
Lei Lei held her gaze for a second longer, and then she looked down into the face of the wooden tiger who was smiling back mutely. She rubbed its little shoulders softly with her little thumbs.
“Does that make sense, sweetheart? Can you do that for me?”
Her little cheeks tinted pink as her eyes lit up with joy.
“I can, Stripy Baby. I can do it.”
And Tigress, in that moment, realized that she was a mother.
And she loved the feeling.