rhinoceros

And here… lumbering, deliberate, as if time itself has bones… comes the rhinoceros. A beast that looks less “designed” than remembered. As if the earth once had dreams of tanks and gods and split the difference. Skin like ancient parchment, wrinkled with purpose. A horn like a warning, pointed forward, never backwards, because rhinos do not regret. But watch—really watch— and you’ll see the trick. They do not stomp. They do not thunder. They tiptoe. Yes. Despite their mythic bulk, these titans are ballerinas of the veldt. Odd-toed ungulates, distant cousins to horses and tapirs— which makes sense, if you’ve ever seen a warhorse and thought, “what if it had a tank’s anxiety?” They walk on toes. All that weight, all that prehistoric heft, balanced—daintily—on the ends of three digits. When they run (and yes, they run) at 40, 50 kilometers per hour, they’re not crashing. They’re pirouetting in a performance choreographed by evolutionary absurdity. And what do they run from? Nothing, really. Except maybe us.