Against her soft, surprisingly warm skin, the gentleness felt amplified, almost alien. Yet, even as I focused on the physical damage, that faint, persistent resonance I’d sensed earlier seemed to thrum just beneath the surface, a low hum beneath the sharp notes of her pain and fear. It complicated the simple act of tending to the wound, adding a layer I couldn’t yet decipher.
I selected a flat, water-smoothed stone from the shelter floor, its surface cool against my palm. Upon it, I placed the native ginger leaves and crushed their fleshy bases just enough to release their sharp, clean scent—a green, almost spicy aroma that cut through the damp air—and activate their cooling properties. Then, I added the dark, cold clay, mixing it with the crushed leaves. A trickle of water, dripping persistently from a fissure in the rock ceiling above, provided the moisture needed to bind it all into a thick, smooth paste.
The most difficult part came next. I needed to lift her lower leg to position the padding.Hold still, I think, the sound barely audible beneath the waterfall’s roar. My hands closed gently around her calf and just above the injured ankle. As I lifted, ever so slightly, a sharp intake of breath hissed between her teeth, and her entire body went rigid, coiled like a spring. I paused, holding the minimal elevation steady, just enough to slide the thick, soft pad of sphagnum moss beneath the joint, cushioning it from the hard earth.
Then, working quickly but with deliberate care, I began to layer the cool clay and ginger mixture over the swollen, heated skin. I molded it carefully, ensuring it covered the entire injury, conforming to the contours of her ankle and foot. The coldness of the poultice against the heat of the inflammation seemed to offer some immediate, if small, relief, as the tension in her leg eased fractionally.
From a pouch woven seamlessly into the substance of my own form, I drew out several long, flexible strips of paperbark inner lining, peeled earlier from a nearby melaleuca and kept supple. These pale, fibrous strips were strong yet pliable. Starting below the injury, I began to wind them around the poultice and moss, overlapping each layer, creating a firm but gentle binding.
My movements were practiced, efficient, and secure, ensuring everything was in place without causing further pain. A neat wrap. Stable. It would hold the poultice against the skin and provide some support to the damaged bone. Yet, performing this familiar task, this act of mending, onher, felt like tracing patterns on shifting sand. The purpose was clear, the actions known, but the context remained deeply unfamiliar, tinged with that persistent, unsettling echo.
The binding was secure, the poultice beginning its work against the heat and swelling. But shock and pain leach the body’s vital moisture, leaving it weakened and vulnerable. The metallic tang of blood in the air was overlaid now with the faint, dry scent of dehydration rising from the small one. She needed water.
Near the damp entrance of the shelter, where spray kept the rocks perpetually slick, grew a cluster of broad-leaved taro. I selected one large, intact leaf, its surface naturally cupped, the veins forming channels, its waxy coating repelling water perfectly. It was an ideal vessel.
Stepping briefly back out into the full force of the cascade, I held the leaf beneath a section where the water fell clearest, away from the churned earth below. Cold, pure water quickly filled the natural bowl, brimming over the edges, droplets clinging like tiny jewels to the dark green surface.
Returning to the shelter’s dim interior, I moved with the same deliberate slowness as before. I kneeled again, not too close, holding the leaf-cup steady before her. The water trembled slightly with the minute movements of my hand. Her eyes, still wide, fixed on the offering. An offering of clean water, essential for life. Yet, extending this felt significant.
Another deviation from the expected path, another ripple disturbing the ancient stillness of my existence. I held it there. Waiting. The roar of the falls, her ragged breathing, andthe unspoken tension between predator and prey, healer and patient, ancient guardian and fragile newcomer. And beneath it all, that persistent, quiet hum of somethingelse.
She drank the water hesitantly at first, then more deeply, her throat working as she tilted the taro leaf. The simple act seemed to cost her enormous effort. Setting the now-empty leaf aside, I watched her lean back against the stone, eyes closed for a moment. The pallor of her skin and the slight tremor in her hands confirmed she was depleted. Healing required energy, a fuel her small, injured body desperately needed. Weakness invited despair, a shadow that could cling tighter than any physical ailment.
Just outside the shelter’s mouth, partially shielded from the relentless rain by a rocky overhang, hung clusters of lillypilly berries. They glowed like pale pink jewels against their dark foliage, swollen and ripe. Sweet, watery, easily digested. Safe. I reached out, my thick fingers surprisingly deft, gathering a handful, careful not to bruise their delicate skins.
Nearby, scattered amongst the leaf litter, lay the remnants of a bunya cone, cracked open weeks ago by the powerful beaks of cockatoos. Most kernels were gone or spoiled, but I spotted a few sound bunya nuts, hard and nutritious, exposed within the debris. I selected two or three, their dense energy was a good counterpoint to the light berries.
Returning, I placed the small collection of the soft pink berries and the hard, pale nuts onto another clean taro leaf. Simple sustenance, freely offered by the forest. I held this leaf out to her, just as I had the water. Another offering. Another step onto unfamiliar ground. Providing sustenance to another creature, one so unlike the usual inhabitants of my domain felt like setting a stone rolling down a hill, unsure of the path it would take or what it might dislodge. The air remained thick with the waterfall’s roar, but now it was also charged withthis quiet offering, a bridge tentatively extended across a vast chasm of difference and fear. And still, that low, resonant hum persisted, a question mark hanging unseen in the damp air between us.
She stared at the leaf laden with the small harvest, then her gaze lifted slowly to meet mine. Her eyes, the color of a storm-tossed sea, narrowed slightly. The sharp, acrid scent of fear still clung to her, potent in the enclosed space, but now it was overlaid with something else, a thread of bewilderment, confusion twisting the lines of pain around her mouth.
She had taken the water readily enough, thirst being an immediate, undeniable master. But food required a different level of acceptance, a deeper gamble against the instinct screaming at her to recoil. Her gaze flickered from the pale lillypilly berries to the hard bunya nuts, to the large, rough hand holding the leaf steady, then back up to my face, searching for malice or trickery.
The silence stretched, taut and heavy, broken only by the ceaseless roar outside and her own shallow breaths. Hesitation vibrated from her, a palpable wave in the air. Then, with a hand that trembled visibly, she reached out. Her fingers, pale and slender against the dark green leaf, hovered before selecting a single pink berry. She didn’t eat it immediately. She turned it over, examining its smooth skin, then lifted it cautiously to her nose, sniffing it with the tentative air of a wild creature assessing bait.
Finally, seeming to find nothing overtly threatening, she popped it into her mouth. Her jaw worked slowly, deliberately. After a moment, she reached for another. Then, her attention shifted to the nuts. She picked one up, her brow furrowed slightly as she assessed its unfamiliar weight and hardness, before tentatively biting into it. The effort required to crack the dense kernel seemed to momentarily distract her from her fear.
Each movement remained deliberate, steeped in caution. Yet, the undeniable act of accepting sustenance, of taking energy from my hand into her own body, felt like watching a hairline crack appear in the thick wall of her terror. Her mind clearly didn’t understand this exchange, couldn’t reconcile the monstrous form kneeling before her with the unexpected care being offered. But her body, driven by exhaustion and the primal need to survive, accepted the offering.
As she chewed the bunya nut, that quiet, persistent resonance I felt around her seemed to intensify slightly, a low thrumming just beneath the threshold of hearing, like the vibration of a plucked string settling into its true note. It was a discordant harmony against the simple scene of providing food, adding yet another layer of unsettling complexity to this encounter.
She finished the last of the bunya nut, licking a stray crumb from her lips with a darting tongue. Her movements were still laced with caution, but the raw edge of panic had softened slightly, replaced by a profound weariness that slumped her shoulders and made her injured ankle seem an impossibly heavy anchor. Her immediate needs—water, sustenance, the binding of her wound—were attended to. For now.
With slow, deliberate movements that barely disturbed the air, I withdrew. Not far, just to the edge of the shelter where the curtain of falling water shimmered like a beaded veil against the gray light beyond. There, I settled my form against the cool, damp rock wall. Stillness came easily, a state as natural to me as breathing is to her kind. I let my shape merge with the shadows, becoming less a distinct entity and more an extension of the ancient stone and the ever-present dripping water. My texture shifted subtly, mimicking the rough-hewn rock behind me.
From this vantage point, I commanded the threshold. My senses, honed over millennia, remained fully alert, extendingoutward and inward simultaneously. Beyond the roar of the falls, I listened to the subtle language of the forest, the drip of water from leaf tips, the distant screech of a black cockatoo, the rustle of unseen things in the undergrowth. I smelled the changing air, the petrichor intensifying as the rain settled into a steady rhythm, mingling with the damp earth, the sharp green tang of the crushed ginger, and the faint, persistent metallic trace of her blood.
My gaze rested on the small creature huddled deeper within the shelter, her breathing evening out slightly, though still shallow. I watched the slight rise and fall of her chest, the way her hand rested protectively near her injured ankle, even as exhaustion pulled at her eyelids. I was a silent sentinel, a living gargoyle guarding the passage between the wild storm outside and the fragile life within. Patience is the oldest lesson the forest teaches. Time flows differently here, measured in seasons and the slow growth of trees, not in frantic heartbeats. So I waited, an unmoving presence at the edge of her awareness, the roar of the waterfall a constant thrumming backdrop to the quiet, unsettling resonance that emanated from her. It was like a low-frequency hum that promised complexity yet offered no answers. The fragile truce held, suspended in the damp, shadowed air.
The subtle tremors running through her small frame began to lessen, the constant vibration of fear yielding ground. Her eyelids, heavy as waterlogged leaves, blinked slowly, then slower still, each closure lasting longer than the last. Perhaps the steady coolness radiating from the native ginger and clay poultice was finally penetrating the sharpest edges of the pain, dulling the signals enough for the crushing weight of exhaustion to claim its due.
Her breathing, once shallow and ragged, deepened, finding a more regular, rhythmic cadence against the percussive backdropof the waterfall. Yet, sleep did not come easily or completely. Soft whimpers escaped her lips, ghosts of pain haunting her unconsciousness. Her injured limb twitched involuntarily beneath the paperbark binding, a testament to the trauma held within muscle and bone. The tension hadn’t vanished entirely. This surrender was an uneasy truce, a temporary ceasefire brokered by overwhelming fatigue and the body’s desperate need for respite, not by trust.
Finally, the last vestiges of conscious struggle drained away. Her head lolled slightly to the side, cheek resting against the cool stone, her features slackening in the dim light. She slept.
I remained utterly still, a silent sentinel carved from shadow and stone at the shelter’s entrance. The echoing chamber held us both—the fragile, sleeping creature and the ancient guardian. Outside, the ceaseless roar of the waterfall continued its relentless song, a churning wall of sound and water that felt like both a barrier protecting this small pocket of stillness and a reminder of the wild, indifferent world beyond.
She was safe here. For now. Suspended in this fragile moment, under my unwavering gaze. And as she slept, that quiet, internal resonance I sensed around her seemed to settle, pulsing with a slow, rhythmic beat, like a dormant power waiting, leaving the unanswered question hanging heavily in the damp air.What are you?
