The Cheetah's Spots

I used to be golden, flawless. I used to run with the antelope, my coat more pure than theirs. Faster than all, foe to none. I ate the fruits of the trees and the stems of the grasses, leaving my pelt and my soul free of the sins of the carnivores, spotless. It was the Angels' Death that made me who I am.
In the dry, hot air on the burning ground I walked, the grasses crunching, dead, beneath my feet. The trees, the bushes, the shrubs-- all were bare of fruit and leaf, shriveled and thirsty. Our kind walked with prominent ribs and glazed eyes, even as the deer and wildebeest did. Gore crows circled day and night, picking at the starved animals' corpses and the remnants of the loins' easy kills. It was the ear to be a lion, their manes thick from the souls of their omniscient prey. In endless lines we filed across the savannahs in search of food that wasn't dead and dry, in search of water that didn't steam off your tongue.
It was during those dry days that the fire occurred, one that raced across the land quicker than even we could. Fattened lions and cats of the hunt slipped easily into the flickering arms of the yellow flame, even as the starving and weak were. We led the race against the wildfire, the fastest of all creatures. We ran until each blade of crumpled grass was burned and only dirt and sand remained. We were starved, and even our vast strength was depleted. It was on that day of sorrow that the Angels' Death occurred.
We could stand for this no more, and to the cries of the sobbing angels, we bent to the roasted bodies of our sisters, the antelopes, our brothers, the wildebeest, and we partook in the consumption of meat. The tears of the angels rained down upon the earth then, lending the savannah the cool water it needed to survive. The trees grew fruit and the grass grew green, and the plains were alive once more.
But on our coats, the tears left black splotches, a curse for all to see. We were no longer angels, those with golden coats, or without manes, in the lions' case. Every deer, every leopard, every beast on the plains could see the ragged black stains of the angels' tears as we became the hunters the hyenas and the tigers were, with spots and stripes the color of ours. Just like them our coats were marked, and our own tears ran down are faces. Today our backs, our faces, our tails are forever marked with this sorrow.