+Soft
early morning light filtered through the trees, small birds darted quickly from
branch to branch. A cockroach scuttled into leaves littering the path under
Lenshu’s feet.
Lenshu
is weighted by bags of water attached to a long pole carefully balanced across
his shoulders, as he pauses to guide a small spider from his hand to a nearby
branch, he hears Que running through the forest and turns to see her come to a
halt at the rivers edge several metres away.
‘Hi
Sunni,’ he calls.
Que
looked around slightly startled and returned the greeting.
‘Hi,’
she smiled, unable to recall his name.
‘Finlee
and Koyan weren’t sure if you were coming back,’ mentioned Lenshu across the
distance.
Que
shrugged and looked at the water. ‘I said I would, they were so kind taking me
in and making me feel welcome.’
Lenshu
rocked on the heel of one foot and glanced towards the village way, unsure
whether to approach her.
Que
looked up as he was looking away, taking in Lenshu’s features properly for the
first time. The facial features on his oval face seemed softer than most
Amacites, closer to that of a Tekah Ahn. She watched the way his undreaded
raven hair fell across his forehead when he leaned forward to reposition the
pole across his shoulders.
‘What
are you carrying?’
‘Fish,
for Jeln.’
Que
throws a puzzled look.
‘I’m
carrying them in water to keep them alive,’ replies Lenshu to her puzzled look.
‘It’s one of Tephio’s ideas, Jenl’s skills are needed.’
‘Stone
walls? Oh. I better let you go then, that looks heavy.’
‘Not
really, it’s okay.’
‘They
might die.’
‘No,
I’ve got them.’
‘Right.’
‘I’ll
catch you later.’
Que
nodded earnestly as Lenshu turned to continue his relaxed stroll along the
rivers edge before veering off into the trees out of sight.
Que
resolved to learn his name as quickly as possible through eavesdropping.
~
Jelna
was tending to the stonewall of the pond Tephio had helped her dig before they
broke down a mud bank and flooded it with water from the nearby stream. A
bamboo screen was being secured into place to make what Tephio called a gate.
It was intended to stop fish from escaping.
Lenshu
found Tephio and Jelna arguing over the bank as he approached.
‘You
won’t be needing those plants with these rocks here,’ insisted Jelna.
‘But
the roots will help strengthen the bank. If a single stone comes loose, the
banks will hold because the roots will of grown through the entire wall holding
it together.’
‘Bah!
No stones going to come loose how I’ve stacked them,’ derided Jelna looking to
the clay mortar she had unusually applied at Tephio’s request. ‘That’s the
strongest wall I’ve ever made.’
‘I
don’t doubt you, but you must understand,’ said Tephio picking up a rock and
clutching it in his fingers, ‘the spaces you have made between each of your
fine rocks will surely wear away over time. One day the rocks you have so
carefully placed and joined together with this other matter, will no longer
rest where you have placed them.’
‘No
it’s okay, I have still placed stone to stone, as Thea moulds reed against reed
and Rechk plys wood against wood. I’ve not changed my way.’
‘Great,
the roots will help hold it all together and when the trees grow the fallen
leaves will feed the fish. The big fish.’
‘Should
we of made it bigger?’ wondered Jelna out loud.
‘If
this thing works we could certainly make more,’ interrupted Lenshu as he
entered the clearing. Tephio hurried towards him and untied one of the water
filled bags from the pole slung over his shoulders.
‘Careful,’
said Lenshu as he reached for the other.
Jelna
watched as Tephio and Lenshu took a bag each, opened them and lowered them into
the water of the stonewall pond.
Two
fish swam from Lenshu’s and four small fish from Tephio’s. They circled for a
while and two inspected the bamboo screen but did not try and force their way
through. Tephio smiled.
‘That’s
nice,’ smiled Lenshu. ‘What are they to eat? Oh I see.’
Some
plants Tephio had embedded into the floor of the pond quickly became food and
shelter.
‘Here,
give them some of this,’ encouraged Tephio, handing Lenshu some foreign plant.
Lenshu
sat down at the edge and dropped some leaves on the water, the fish came up to
inspect them.
‘Hey!
Wow, if I were fishing you would be so easy to catch.’
‘Well,
we better look after them now that we have control over their food supply,’
pondered Jelna.
Lenshu
and Tephio were lost in thought momentarily.
‘I
mean we don’t want them starving, or getting aggressive with one another,’ she
added, misunderstanding their silence.
~
Barbuak’s
sister Thea is carrying a basket woven of reeds, filled with wet clothes.
Leaving the riverside, she walks past Tephio and Rechk watching Persuu and
Yahnin fussing over a new twill weave on the hand loom attached to a corner of
the Long Hut. As Thea approaches Barbuak, he takes the basket from her hands to
carry it for her.
‘Luca!’
laughs Thea as she hands over the basket, ‘if you eat too much more dirt you
will have no room for buko pai.’
The
little boy takes another scoop and hides behind the tree.
‘I
know you’re still there. I hope you’re not disturbing any ant nests over there,
you mustn’t terrify them, reason or not.’
‘What’s
Lenshu being today?’ scoffed Barbuak.
Thea
stopped at a cluster of thin branches positioned for wet clothes to be hung on
and turned to regard Lenshu, standing with his hands in the air beside the
river, as if frozen mid-stretch.
‘He’s
saluting the sun,’ she smiled.
‘What
is he?’ frowns Barbuak as he places the basket on the ground.
‘It’s
something the flowers do everyday, turning to face the sun,’ she explained
while draping wet clothes over the branch. ‘If the marigolds do it, it must be
good. Here, can you lift this when I’m done?’
‘The
boy’s had too much fruit,’ mumbles Barbuak as he wanders over to help Thea lift
up the branch to a higher catch.
Thea
picks up another branch from the ground and places it on the previous catch to
hang the rest of the clothes. As Barbuak goes to leave, he notices two leaf
parcels sitting on a rock nearby.
‘Is
that some of your timja?’
‘Eyes
only,’ ordered Thea, ‘Lenshu’s put them aside for Jaklyn, she’s gone to finish
painting the dry store. Would you mind to check if she needs water.’
‘Why
are you always telling me what to do,’ grumbled Barbuak.
‘Because
you don’t think to do it,’ growled Thea.
‘Children,
children,’ interrupted Lephia as she beamed down at them from Tephio’s garden
above. She has circled her cheeks with charcoal. ‘Is that any way to speak to
one another?’
~
Luc
and Alesandra, Chrifty’s twins, followed Lenshu out of the cavernous food
store, holding small pots of nuts and leaves that Thea had asked for. They
began following the narrow track back to the Long Hut.
‘Why
aren’t you scared of the dark?’ asked Alesandra.
‘Oh
I am,’ replied Lenshu to Luc’s surprise. ‘But I just…manage it.’
‘Mana,
ager huh?’ said Luc.
‘Well,
when I was your age…’ began Lenshu as he picked Alesandra up and put her on his
shoulders. ‘I just pictured what I feared most, right next to me and then I
really thought about why it scared me the most, until I knew why and it didn’t
seem scary any more.’
‘I’m
scared of the…the things that eat babies,’ whimpered Alesandra as she rested
the bowl of yue leaves she was holding on Lenshu’s head. ‘I don’t like their
eyes.’
‘What
about their eyes?’ asked Lenshu.
‘They
look mean,’ insisted Alesandra.
Luc
nodded.
‘Angry
and hungry,’ added Alesandra.
‘Yeah,’
agreed Luc seriously.
Lenshu
resisted smiling too broadly. ‘But you’ve never seen one before!’
‘I
know, but I know what they look like,’ explained Alesandra.
Lenshu
sighed. ‘Don’t worry, they don’t really exist.’
‘But
how do you know?’ asked Luc.
‘Yeah,’
demanded Alesandra.
‘We
made them up to keep you from straying too far away from home, they’re just stories.’
‘You’re
just saying that to make us feel better,’ accused Luc.
Lenshu
laughed softly. ‘No it’s true. Imagine if Kaa bit you in the forest and we
didn’t know where you were. Okay. Then picture this. Your monster isn’t mean,
angry at you or wanting to eat you…your monster is being chased by another
monster and is scared and hungry and doesn’t know what to do. Your monster is
trying to scare you because it is really scared of you!’
Luc
and Alesandra thought about this for a moment before Alesandra burst out with,
‘Well how many monsters are there?’
Lenshu
shook his head and wiped his forehead, nearly knocking the bowl Alesandra was
holding over him.
‘Why,
we’re all monsters you see, aren’t you! Raaargh!’ growled Lenshu as he feigned
a swing at Luc and flipped Alesandra down from his shoulders to begin eating
her arm.
Luc
was screaming with fake horror as he pulled his sisters arm out of Lenshu’s
mouth, then Lenshu grabbed Luc and started chomping his leg.
The
bowl of leaves Alesandra was holding spilled to the ground as she now took turn
defending Luc, but they were all too busy laughing to care.
Lenshu
licked his lips and rubbed his fattened tummy with a satisfied smile as the
twins laughed.
Kneeling
to the ground, Lenshu began picking up the spilled leaves. Luc and Alesandra
began to help him, still giggling.
‘I’m
going to be the best monster ever!’ announced Alesandra. ‘It’s going to be
awesome.’
~
Sunni
is grinding the nipji seeds against the stone with a circular motion, lost in
thought.
‘You’ve
been doing that for ages now, are you trying to make dust?’ asks a familiar
voice behind her. Sunni pauses and glances a familiar tattoo more closely. She
also notices, for the first time, a scar on Lenshu’s calf.
‘It’s
a hearth,’ explained Lenshu, assuming Sunni had been looking at his intended
markings. ‘That one’s me,’ he smiled, pointing to a slightly uneven mark.
Sunni
grinned and resumed grinding seeds.
‘What
are you making?’ asks Lenshu.
‘I
don’t know. I tasted this kalua bread Lephia made ages ago and I’m craving
something like that.’
‘Don’t
forget to swap hands.’
Sunni
throws a questioning look.
‘So
you grow even,’ explains Lenshu moving his hands in concert with a circular
motion.
Sunni
is captivated by his gracefulness.
Lenshu
sits down beside Sunni to inspect the unfamiliar leaves of a yeu shrub and an
assortment of seeds and berries sitting in a bowl made out of a denwar shell.
A
caterpillar is slowly walking around and around the rim of another bowl
decorated with blue dots and filled with water.
Behind
them is the village long hut and in front of them is the river. Children are
swimming and jumping into the water on the opposite side of the river. Women
are rinsing fabric in the shallow water by the reeds as Barbuak animatedly
shares a story with Rechk, Tephio and some other men under the tree of songs.
Holding
up a small branch of yeu, Lenshu asks, ‘would you like me to…?’
Sunni
is momentarily confused. ‘Oh, yeah, if you want to. Just put them in there,
thank you,’ she replies, pointing to the bowl with her lips as she was adding
water to the seed mix.
As
Lenshu picked the first leaf and threw it into the bowl, Sunni was struck by a
memory of sitting with Pretty Shield as a child, arranging leaves for drying.
The stone pestle slipped from her hand and fell to the side.
‘Are
you getting tired? Do you want me to do that instead?’ asked Lenshu.
Brushing
her hair aside, Sunni smiled. ‘No, I’ve got it.’
She
started adding water and more seeds from the bowl to the slab of stone,
crushing them with a hitting motion.
‘Looks
like you’re making enough to share,’ commented Lenshu as he continues picking
leaves.
‘You
know, I used to help my grandmama make timja cakes,’ he confided. ‘She makes
the best timja cakes in the world but she only makes it on special occasions,
so everyone is always going crazy for it by the time she makes it again. I can
never figure out how she makes enough to go around. Always enough for everyone,
so no one misses out.’
‘That
was good of you to help her,’ said Sunni, adding some berries and water.
‘Actually,
I did it because I was scared I would miss out,’ admitted Lenshu. Sunni
giggled.
‘No,
but really,’ said Lenshu as he picked a handful of leaves, ‘I like the way
things,’ he picked up some of the seeds Sunni had collected, ‘turn into other
things.’
Lenshu
looked around thoughtfully as Sunni began to knead what had thickened into
dough. Lenshu noticed young Alesandra standing beside Lephia. Alesandra was
showing off a picture of a monster she had drawn to the men under the tree,
Rechk starts comparing it to Barbuak.
Sunni
added a little water and took some of the leaves Lenshu had been picking.
‘Water in soil, soil in tree, tree in fish,’ she mumbled.
‘Hmm,’
smiled Lenshu as he smelled the yeu leaves. ‘This tree had good breath.’
‘Who
is your grandmama?’ asked Sunni, adding some flour of the crushed nipji seeds
and looking around.
‘Ah,
she’s not here anymore.’
Sunni
casts Lenshu a look of apology.
‘That’s
why Barbuak is running loose,’ smiles Lenshu, ‘Barbuak is my grandmama’s little
brother,’ he explains.
Looking
over to the men talking, Lenshu sees they are laughing at Rechk. He has tied
something to the soles and ankles of his feet. Barbuak is nearly falling off
his chair as Rechk demonstrates stepping on a hot coal and burns his foot.
‘Hey
look at Rechk,’ says Lenshu.
Sunni
looks up at Rechk and they laugh quietly together as Lephia fans the burnt foot
with Alesandra’s drawing.
‘Here,
you should add some of this,’ said Lenshu suddenly jumping to his feet.
Sunni
watches Lenshu run behind the long hut. His pace catches the attention of the
men sitting by the tree and some men and women weaving inside the long hut.
Within a moment, Lenshu is running back to Sunni with a small piece of bark. He
sits himself back down beside her.
‘Go
on, try it.’
Sunni
takes the bark and smells it. She frowns.
‘Crush
it,’ he urges.
Sunni
grinds it into a red dust. A beautiful sweet musky fragrance fills the air.
‘How
good is it?’ smiles Lenshu as he leans over and presses a fingertip to it. When
he realises Sunni is sitting very still, he looks up to find her with an empty
expression.
‘You
don’t like it? We don’t have to use it,’ said Lenshu hurriedly.
Sunni
stands up and starts walking away along the riverside.
Lenshu
puts a hand to his forehead and overhears Barbuak’s laughter. He looks around
to see people smiling as they sit and pretend not to be watching him.
‘Oh
ah, she’s off again,’ mocked Barbuak’s distant voice.
Lenshu
continues watching Sunni walking away along the narrow path when Finlee appears
to intercept her. He must have been sitting on the river’s edge. Finlee calls
out to Sunni, who stops in her tracks.
There’s
an exchange of words and Finlee returns to the riverside out of sight.
Sunni
remains still for a moment before turning around. Holding her chin up, she
walks back towards Lenshu.
Lenshu
stands up as she approaches.
‘Hey,
I’m really sorry, I.’
‘No,
I’m sorry. I thought I forgot something. But it’s okay,’ replied Sunni quickly.
‘You wouldn’t mind kneading that in while I grab a rolling stone would you?’
‘Sure,
yes. Not at all. I’ll do that,’ said Lenshu enthusiastically.
‘Great.’
Sunni smiled down at the dough and red powder, before turning to leave for the
Long Hut.
As
Lenshu sits down to finish kneading the dough, he hears Rechk and Tephio
clapping and laughing. He looks across to see they are all smiling at him. He
beams back.
A
minute or so later, Sunni returns with a round flat stone. She looks down to
see Lenshu has moulded the dough into the shape of an animal.
‘What
is that?’ asks Sunni.
‘It’s
a platypus.’
‘A
what? I’m pretty sure you’ve just made that up.’
Lenshu
laughed, ‘You’ve never seen one?’
‘Here,
let me,’ said Sunni kneeling down.
A
few seconds of shaping later, it was Lenshu’s turn to wonder. ‘And that is…?’
‘A
horse,’ explained Sunni.
‘Huh?’
frowned Lensu.
‘You’ve
never seen one?’ Sunni looks around and contemplates the dense forest. She stands
up. ‘They’re this high,’ said Sunni, holding her hand above her head, ‘and
people ride them to travel far and fast.’
‘No,’
laughed Lenshu.
‘Yes!’
insisted Sunni. ‘And how big are these plentyus?’
‘Well,
they’re about the size of Barbuak,’ said Lenshu, raising his voice just loud
enough for Barbuak to hear his own name. ‘And they love Jelna,’ he smiled
brazenly as Rechk burst into laughter at Barbuak’s horrified expression.
~
Feet
rhythmically stamped the dusty floor inside the Long Hut, Handi the doctor and
Lenshu were moving around the fireplace as they performed the story of Ishvu
and Baja.
Aryamo,
Yolanda and Rechk were playing their instruments, though most of the crowd
hummed and clapped with them and their own modest noisemakers causing a
melodious din.
The
hut was filled with people and Que could see nowhere to sit, she stood on the
outskirts until Jacklyn noticed her. Jacklyn wasted no time in getting to her
feet, picking her way over the seated crowd and coaxing Sunni to sit with her
inside on the front edge of the crowd, between Maine and Lephia, closest to
seeing Handi and Lenshu. Que noticed a large feather lying on the ground;
Jacklyn scooped it up and gave it to Que. As she looked around, Que realised
most of the people in the front of the audience were holding different
feathers. She held it awkwardly before deciding to put it in her hair for
safekeeping. She pretended not to be bothered by Maine, seated beside her,
watching.
A
fight was being enacted with Lenshu adorned as Ishvu and Handi as Rai.
During
the dance Que watched as Lenshu began with a heavily adormed skirt from which
he began to remove straps covered with different rocks, feathers, bone and
leaf. Lenshu, acting as Ishvu, retied the adorned straps to his wrists, ankles,
calves, neck and headpiece during the dance. Because of the additions to his
limbs over time, Ishvu’s appearance became more dramatic and dangerous.
Apparently each new accessory possessed special powers that Ishvu could use to
fight Rai, such as leaves for invisibility, feathers for flight and bones that
could sever tendons.
When
Ishvu overcame Rai, Koyan entered the circle as Baja.
While
Ishvu celebrated and Rai lay dead, Baja began to collect the large feathers
people in the crowd were holding. He began adding them to his headpiece, which
was to become greater than Ishvu’s.
Jaklyn
lightly touched Que’s ear as Koyan approached, pausing at Maine.
‘These
feathers belong to Koyan and he remembers each ones story,’ said Jaklyn with
her hands.
Que
removed the feather from her hair and noted its large patch of yellow before
passing it to Koyan’s outstretched hand.
‘And
what of Lenshu’s things?’ asked Que, but Jaklyn didn’t hear her.
When
it was believed all the feathers had been retrieved and Baja’s magnificent
headpiece was restored he raised Rai from the dead.
Baja
refused to kill Ishvu for Rai so, seeking a break from fighting equal and
everlasting opponents, Ishvu and Rai took to playing within their own worlds
which sometimes overlapped.
Moving
around the fire they marked lines in the dirt and when they reached the others
lines they continued marking over them. After three circumambulations they
began to pull people from the crowd to dance and mark with them. Handi summoned
Aryamo to her feet as Lenshu pulled Jaklyn to hers. Together they began to
dance with the others, their footsteps scattering the lines.
Que
realises the seated crowd is being pulled into the growing field of dancers
spiralling around the fire. She shuffles backwards as the person behind her
stands to join the dance.
Jaklyn
eyes Sunni and playfully pushes Lenshu towards her. Lenshu catches Maine’s eye
and nods towards Que shying away on the floor.
‘Like
this!’ beamed Koyan passing with his hands in the air.
Maine
leans down and offers his hand to Que, she looks around and sees everyone
encouraging her to stand up. Awkwardly, she does.
Maine
leads her to the fire as Koyan does Lephia.
‘We
have to lift you up, are you going to be okay?’ asks Maine over the din of
surrounding dancers.
Que
stutters.
‘Come
on Sunni, you’ll be right…go on,’ smiles Lenshu beside them as he turns and
motions to others dancing. Que feels sure hands grip her arms, legs and waist
as she’s hoisted very suddenly up onto Maine’s shoulders. Looking around she
realises Lephia is similarly positioned on Lenshu’s shoulders.
Que
gasps embarrassedly at Lephia waving to her.
‘What
are we doing?’ laughs Que looking down at the sea of singing and smiling faces
effortlessly circling the fire in both directions now.
Lephia
shrugs joyfully.
The
crowd begins to forward decorations to Lephia and Que. More and more trinkets
from as far as the outside edge of the crowd are held up for them to adorn
themselves. Feeling overwhelmed within the crowd under the growing weight of
adornments and considering Maine bearing her weight also, Que hoists herself
down from his shoulders to the ground.
He
turns around to see if she is okay.
Que
is hastily lifting the adornments from her body, dropping them on the ground at
her feet.
‘You
alright?’
Que
looks up at Maine who seems concerned, she laughs and continues removing the
adornments, shaking her head.
‘Yes,
good, go!’ she smiles. Maine smiles and dances away.
Lenshu
nears without Lephia, he spies the look on Que’s face as she stands plainly
with the adornments at her feet.
When
Que next looks up she sees Lenshu walking towards her while still wearing his
extravagant costume. Each suddenly feels self-conscious.
Que
forcibly averts her eyes, looking down she concentrates on an obscure detail
within the clutter at her feet. A feather streaked with blue.
Lenshu
glances the enormous litter of woven crafts below her tan ankles.
Que’s
concentration is broken at the sight of Lenshu’s hand as he hastily leans down
to retrieve some items and hand them to some girls passing by.
When
Que looks at Lenshu, he raises his eyebrows to ask if it’s okay. Que nods up
enthusiastically and quickly begins to help him share the adornments around as
they walk through the crowd.
When
there is nothing left Que beams at Lenshu.
Maine
interrupts by breaking a few odd moves to Lephia’s amusement.
Barbuak
appears and insists Lenshu drink from his flask. Lenshu shakes his head as
Barbuak pushes it into his hands. To Barbuak’s surprise, Lenshu offers the
flask to Que, she declines.
Lephia
comes up behind Que and whispers something into her ear. Que shakes her head
but Lephia insists. Eventually, Que accepts the flask from Lenshu graciously
before Lephia snatches it from her hands and hastily downs its contents.
‘What
the!’ blurts Barbuak.
‘They
say Rai could turn water into white,’ smiled Lephia deviously, ‘Well I can turn
white into water. Just come and see me again in six bottles!’ Lenshu and Que
break into laughter as Lephia hands Lenshu the empty flask and as Barbuak
begins to tell him it’s not funny.
Koyan
interrupts Barbuak’s grumbling to offer him another flask and Lephia drags Que
away. They quickly dart across the circling crowd towards the open riverside of
the Long Hut. Lenshu turns just in time to glance a feather and ivory spine
holding up Que’s raven hair for the last time.
~
Barbuak
has broken a branch from a tree and is sitting on the ground trying to dig down
into the earth, barely scraping it.
Sitting
in Tephio’s garden, Jaklyn watches him for a long while with Luc and Alesandra
whimpering at her sides. She slowly approaches him and gently puts a hand on
his back.
‘No,’
said Jaklyn. ‘They are home.’
~
Lenshu
heaved the stake holding the bamboo gate in place up and out. He kicked the
gate hard with the heel of his bare foot to loosen it from the clay and tugged
it free.
As
Maine watched from behind him, the fish swam out of the man-made pond and back
into the stream towards the new river that was carving its way through the
remaining mud and debris of the lahar.
‘I
can’t believe it missed them,’ said Maine as he contemplated Jeln’s walls in
the forest behind them.
‘I
can’t believe we trapped them in the first place,’ said Lenshu.
~
Lenshu
woke in light rain, grey rivulets streaming along the ground around him.
Tiredly hoisting himself to his feet, he stumbles over the sodden fireplace
towards a tree out of the rain. Rubbing his eyes and flicking his wet black
hair aside, he reaches up and grasps a branch. Pulling himself up he starts
climbing, feeling his way through the branches with eyes almost closed. Once he
had gained some height he looked out again across the valley. Heavy rainfall
had been slowly eroding the river of mud that had scarred the forest vista and
the foliage was looking greener now that the ash had been cleared in the wind
and the rain. Above the rainforest to the east, a denser shaft of rain is
falling from the centre of a towering cumulonimbus cloud as it approaches.
Lightning flickers in the south.
Lenshu’s
stomach rumbles and he shivers. He hears a hand tapping the tree below.
‘Can
you see anything?’ came a hopeful question from below.
Lenshu
looked down to see Jaklyn holding Sunni’s old carry-shade.
‘No,
nothing. I doubt she would have a fire going in this weather anyway.’
Jaklyn
sighs.
‘Could
we be going the wrong way?’ asked Lenshu again. He looks down at Jaklyn.
Jaklyn
looks up at him with a look to say, ‘No, we definitely followed her tracks the
right way from Aryamo.’
Lenshu
returned to looking out across the valley from the sheer face of the mountain
they had been scaling. Turning away from the approaching centre of the storm,
he looks to a break in the cloud front in the north where a small degree of
sunlight is shining through.
‘Wait
a second,’ mumbles Lenshu.
‘What
is it? Can you see something?’ taps Jakyln.
‘What’s
going on?’ asks Maine as he approaches holding two dead snakes.
‘Well,
what is it!?’ presses Jaklyn, barely resisting climbing the tree too.
‘Umm.
Well, it looks like a bird but, I mean it has to be…’ squinted Lenshu.
‘What?’
asked Jaklyn slapping the tree trunk.
Jaklyn
rested the carry-shade against the body of the tree and began hoisting herself
up into its arms.
‘Phht!’
hissed Maine as he entered the small clearing to grumpily kick the fireplace.
‘Why did you let the fire go out?’ he mourned.
Jaklyn
neared Lenshu as he pointed into the distance for her.
‘What
on earth…?’ stammered Jaklyn.
‘It’s
coming this way,’ said Lenshu.
‘He’s
coming this way!’ signalled Jaklyn.
Maine
sighed heavily as he threw the snakes down on the ground. ‘Have you guys been
eating those flowers again?’
‘He’s
gone down!’ exclaimed Jaklyn, ‘We should go to him. Maybe…’ she shrugs.
Lenshu
looked a little dumbfounded. After a moment he agrees, ‘Sure, anyone that can fly
like that has got to be of some help.’
Looking
up at Lenshu and Jaklyn huddled in the tree, Maine says, ‘Maybe you guys should
have something to eat first.’
‘And
maybe we should consider making s’more things to defend ourselves with in case
we wander where we’re not wanted,’ suggested Barbuak as he appeared with
Chrifty’s children in tow. ‘I can barely cut branches with this wretched thing
anymore it’s so blunt,’ he bemoaned waving Sunni’s Tekahnian axe.
