The saffron eyes peered out of the darkness of the jungle and saw the sun-parched plains beyond - they could just make out in the distance, the small figure of a child, barefoot in the baking sun.
There was a sound. The eyes flickered and glanced to the right, from where the sound had emanated - the soft click of wood on wood. The owner of the eyes could not see round corners, but had heard the sound that was croquet, many times. The dark pools of his pupils dilated as a voice suddenly called out, "Tea's ready everyone; we are on the terrace, hurry up or we will have finished the sandwiches".
The sound of the croquet game stopped; the owner of the eyes could hear the laughter and the mummering chat of older children and adults. Refocusing within his mind, he watched intently as the little child began to move slowly towards the eyes, stopping every now and then to bend down and collect handfuls of freshly cut grass, placing it carefully into a little wicker basket. The owner of the eyes knew that the child would already have made small nest shapes out of some of this grass and eagerly would return very early tomorrow morning, to see if birds had laid eggs in any of them, because as the child said to her father "well, you never know - they might".
As the child drew nearer, the eyes noted that the child was not brown, as the eyes had originally thought, when he had spotted the child earlier, but fair-haired with white skin which had been lightly burnished gold by the English summer sun. The owner of the eyes shook his head and sighed, realising that his mind was shifting places, time and memories. The eyes liked it when his mind played these tricks, as for in these moments, he is back in the land of his birth.
The owner of the eyes knew the child well and knew that she loved him, because she told him so every day; and later would bring him some of the grass she had collected to show him, and would sit on a little wooden chair by his head and stroke his ears and perhaps place a daisy chain which she had made for him, on his head. She would tell him about all the things she had done and seen that day. He would listen and then he would tell her stories of the dark jungle, wide rivers and the high plains of his home. He would talk to her about great palaces and temples, which glistened with gold in the heat of the Indian sun and shimmered like silver by moonlight.
The day would fade, and they would be together in the gathering darkness in the hall of an English country house, both lost in their own dreams. The little girl, whose grandparents had sailed to India in the far-off days of the British Raj - and the proud Bengal Tiger - whose head rested on a carved stool and whose skin was pegged to the wall.