The Second Jungle Book: Man's Ways of Courtship

An Encounter With Beauty

The woman-cub's singing started to get closer. Baloo and Bagheera were hiding in the bushes when the woman-cub seemed to absent-mindedly cross the river over the bridge. However, Mowgli was in plain sight when she passed him by. Luckily for the boy, this girl did not seem to notice him. That was she did not notice him until a couple of young civets which were just playing around and actually meant no harm to anyone accidently pushed Mowgli into the girl, with his face landing just a few centimeters above hers as he tried to hold his body up, even if only a little.

Mowgli and the girl met in the most awkwardly embarrassing situation possible. "Are you gonna pin me down onto the ground forever?" the woman-cub seemed to ask Mowgli.

Mowgli realized what he was on top, or rather who, and he pushed himself up, blushing furiously at his own indecent action, be it by accident or on purpose. "I am so sorry!" Mowgli tried to apologize.

The girl accepted his apology, though. "It's alright. I know it was an accident, and it was kinda my fault, too. I should've been paying more attention to my own surroundings. Instead, I was singing about my silly little dreams for my future. I swear, I can be such an air head sometimes. But enough about me. Tell me what's up with you," the woman-cub said to Mowgli.

The only problem with her rather sudden request was that Mowgli was suddenly rendered speechless, breathless, and maybe even a bit brainless by this girl looking directly at him when she said this. This unbelievably beautiful young woman-cub who looked like she was around his exact age, and who had a voice like an angel's, Mowgli just could not bring himself to not vacant-mindedly stare at this girl. "Hello? Earth to boy I met just now! Are you in there?" this girl may have a bit silly in the head, but she was just trying to get Mowgli to speak.

She waved her hand in front of his face, which snapped Mowgli out of the trance he seemed to be in just looking at the girl. "Wha? What'd you just say, woman-cub?" Mowgli finally said after waking up from what seemed to be a trance-like daydream.

This girl was not impressed by what Mowgli called her. "What's with the weird name you're calling me?" the girl asked. "I was right!" she now looked as though she was about to start crying. "I should learn to be more aware of my surroundings. Maybe then and only then, I won't constantly be called mean nicknames by the other villagers that define me as a dumb girl, like 'air head' or 'space cadet' or even a really weird nickname by a total stranger like 'woman-cub', which I bet is still a nasty one. I'm going home."

Mowgli tried to go after her, but his fear of the man-village's red flower held him back. Luckily, he succeeded in grabbing the girl's wrist before she could walk away from him. "Let me go, you loinclothed jerk!" she said in retaliation for his actions.

"I know you're angry with me about what I called you, but I promise you, it's not what you think," Mowgli said to justify his term for this very, very, very, very, very pretty girl. "Just give a chance to explain."

Mowgli was lucky the woman-cub was open-minded enough to listen Mowgli's reasons and let him explain. "Alright! Let's hear what you have to say," the girl said. "By the way, my real name is Shanti, just so you know what you can call me." At least at that point, Mowgli finally had an actual name to go with Shanti's beautiful, enchanting, breathtaking face, and her equally lovely, hypnotic, intoxicating voice.

"I-I'm M-M-Mowgli," the nervous man-cub revealed his name in return. He explained his entire background story to his pretty little Shanti; where his journey of life began, by whom he was raised, the friends he made along the way, even how he and his friends defeated his enemies.

When he finally got to when he first saw her, he started to get extra nervous about talking to her. "Woman-cub was just the only word my friends had for you because I'd never seen another human-cub before now, and I've never seen the man-village during the daytime," Mowgli finally finished and turned around, not wanting bring up any embarrassing revelations, like the sudden feeling of love at first sight he now felt towards Shanti, for example.

Shanti, trying not to be too judgmental, approached Mowgli and gave him a reassuring touch to the shoulder. "I'm sorry I didn't give you the chance to explain at first, Mowgli," Shanti said in apologetic humility. "I was letting my usual air-headed anxiety overcome my ability to think before I speak and act. It's just_ people in my village call me mean names like 'air head' and 'space cadet', and they always assume I don't know what such names mean. I may catch a fever or get dizzy just from thinking too hard, but..." she was in the middle of her sentence when she started to, in fact, get dizzy from thinking too much about how the village treats her.

It was a good thing for Shanti that Mowgli caught her in his arms while she was falling to the ground during her fainting, with help from Baloo and Bagheera who had run out the bush they were hiding in just in time to help their man-cub friend with his new crush.