by R.J.K. Lee
There’s loss that never leaves you, that drains life of color, sound, and feeling. It’s like a sheen of cloying gray moss muffling everything in a blinding symbiosis. Loved ones who haunt you with their lingering hopes and dreams, snapping from branches in the humid jungle.
For me? My gibbon friend, Suso. Her furry limbs, playfully swatting my feathers as I flew. Her singing as if to taunt me. Golden gibbon hoots, beauty deeper than birdsong. Golden gibbon hoots, swinging vines for so long. Golden gibbon hoots, at rest on branches and roots.
Before that, my parents and siblings. Their vibrant plume. Familial comfort gone forever. Sometimes not just my species of parrot, but every avian ghost chirps a chorus in my tiny heart, leaves me shuddering in a corner, beak tucked against my breast.
Around the full moon, diverse animals gather on Hope Plateau for seasonal moots. Each moot is a three-day intended for negotiating the path our cross-creature community will follow in the next cycle. Even after disasters wiped out most tribes, the tradition sticks to us.
But no agreement has been reached yet. Maybe not at all this time. An increasing issue as glossed-over despair worsens like the spread of blight under bark, feather, fur.
Like aching pains in my fragile bones.
Among the shattered ruins clinging to Hope Plateau, trees and ferns tower over the graves of billions. Creatures of all types, many extinct, such as the humans much of my tech is derived from. Roots dig and tear apart evidence of civilizations, of mistakes, of blinded pride and selfishness, of failed symbiosis, of how fruitless were the moots of previous generations.
It’s been a year since I retreated inside the confines of a capsule among the ruins. In its network of chambers, I’ve become a parasite nesting on history’s hubris, lurking in the shadows of my family’s death, tracing their lives left behind as nothing more than scratches and graffiti. I habitually send out bots to fetch food and supplies while I watch the community fester and fight.
Outside of my capsule, a mist-filled dawn graces the foliage with a shimmer. The moon bobs above jungle fronds and rocky peaks. On the edge of the opposite horizon, the sun glowers, not yet pushing its oppressive heat on those eking out lives here.
Beyond my hermit home gather the haters, the hated, and the in-between. Nut-stealing, back-talking, guilt-tripping, red giant flying squirrels. Brutish golden gibbons with heavenly baritone voices, who bash invasive nests out of their expanding treetop colonies. Black-and-white Goliath beetles restlessly shake mandibles, skittering in the bark, rubbing wings and legs in stridulated mockery.
And me, only surviving parrot orphan. Ruffling my feathers at the thought of flight, of freedom from this broken community, of independence. Oh, how I want to leave here forever.
Everyone locked in a pointless debate that circles the windows of my hideout. So much destroyed in the disasters of our youth. We are the trash that lingers on, bickering over and mutating from the soured remains.
I try not to engage. Try to focus on practical repairs. But they’re so chirping loud.
The golden gibbons beat their silver-and-black streaked chests. Their long limbs swing foolishly as they stomp out territory, the largest branches and discs of plateau rock at one end of the moot arena. As a group, they chant, “Goom, goom, goom, all of you, move, move, move!”
Goom, reigning gibbon leader, is much smaller and angrier than his sister Suso (how I miss her), and he bellows for attention. “Thieves!” he shouts in his quavering baritone. “Get your greedy paws off our supply. We gave you your rightful share already.”
“Already,” the black-and-white speckled goliath beetles stridulate in chorus.
“What you gave us was disease-ridden fruit,” Rikrik chitters, as spokesperson for the red giant flying squirrels. His puffs of reddish-brown fur shiver in obvious irritation. “You only blame us for theft to displace your guilt for the hundreds dead and dying.”
“Dying,” the goliath beetles stridulate.
I want to tell them that none are to blame, that there’s no stopping the disease, that we should share and figure this out together. But I remember how the gibbons tried to murder me. The squirrels only laughed, and the beetles only burrowed and mocked, when I lost my family, my friend, and nearly my own life. Why bother? I’m safe inside, and I have a plan that I can manage on my own. I’ll leave behind their bickering nonsense.
“Just be quiet! All of you.” I beg through the external speakers installed in the trees and rocks, and my annoyance echoes within the tinny walls of home. “I’m trying to build here.”
I’m working on strengthening the walls of my capsule. Installing a proper engine. Two projects at once. Each of them leads to my goal of an exhaust pipe and thrust that will blast me into the sky. My goal of getting away from the three tribes I despise. Through the clouds to the moon, the stars. Or at least to another corner of the island where they’ll never find me. I’d be alone without the tension draining my intelligence, fraying the ease of my spirit, barring me from what blessed enjoyment I can scratch out of my minuscule life.
Gibbons hoot and raise their fists. One almost punches the camera I use to monitor them.
Goom, with leaves and twigs entwined as a crown upon his upside-down pineapple head, stomps forth to dominate the conversation. “We apologized about your family. Many times. It was an honest mistake. We believed the fruit was fresh. Nutritious. All of you must join us in preparing our trees for survival. For without them, we’ve nothing.”
“Nothing,” the beetles click.
“Liars,” I chirp. I should shut up and never engage, but sometimes it’s hard to hear the hypocrisy. Fluffing my feathers, I peck the controls of my robot mechanic. Focus on progress.
Rikrik points a paw at Goom, directing five other squirrels to heave chunks of bark and stone at the gibbons. “Your apologies are insults,” Rikrik chitters. “Excuses to pave the way for more clumsy murder. Excuses!”
“Murder,” half the beetles repeat.
“Excuses,” echo the other beetles.
Goom and his bodyguards swat at the thrown debris. A third of it slips past, hitting some of the gibbons in the face and chest. Goom bellows, commanding his kind to close their ranks. He leans over his family and friends, inspecting the damage.
A lull of silence. Nursing wounds. Mounting tensions.
I look away from the cameras. I take the opportunity to poke the mute button with my beak and set the viewing screen to sleep. Settling into work, I set the robot on wall strengthening duty to continue for another hour, and I direct another robot to inspect the cameras. Then, I crawl into the depths of the capsule to secure the initial connectors for a proper engine, chirping a poem to keep anxiety at bay.
* * *
One of the big, cruel storms took Mom. Better than being poisoned, I guess. I often recall her singing. Her talons curled round the metal ring of the crashed capsule where we had nested peacefully during the initial year of my youth. The rest of her body flapped wildly in the vicious gale. And yet, her song persevered. A song of comfort and endurance, of soaring great heights.
Wind feathers whisper
so we follow children’s dreams.
Hear them chirp and sing.
Clutch memories like warmed eggs.
Nest close and glide far.
So much more we need to feel.
Then came the pestilence and poison that killed Dad, my siblings, and many creatures. Every avian but me. Probably would’ve done me in, too, if it wasn’t for Suso.
Suso nursed me back to health. Her upside-down pineapple face. Pointy chin. Dark eyes. Bushy golden brows. Glistening curls of silver hair. She still looms over my restless sleep. When she later died of the poison, but I didn’t, her species blamed me. Her deceptively smaller elder brother, Goom, punched and screeched his rage.
The army of gibbons Goom amped up would have murdered me. If they weren’t distracted by the incidents afflicting the island, I might not have slipped away to cower in the capsule my family once thrived in.
Mom and Suso. Their singing sticks to me. I chirp about loss, inserting pieces of them.
Golden gibbon hoots, beauty deeper than birdsong.
Tugging my flight back, though I thought to nest
stung by sickened jungle death. Shed feathers.
Plucked smooth. Harsh seasons give. Take.
I twitch, alive. But she sighs, slumps.
Quiet rest in the brown roots and leaves.
Nest close. There was so much more
we need to feel. Don’t glide so far.
Harsh memory cloys to sour remains. What’s already decayed. The poetry helps me endure, though it’s a sad sign that I can never move on.
Can never depend on anyone but myself.
* * *
I’m circulating a wrench, tightening screws, when a cascade of rapid banging explodes against another corner of the capsule. Bang clunk. Buh-bang thunk. Thunk-thunk bang.
“Gibbons,” I mutter, and hop out of my work to check the monitors.
I flip visual and sound back on. A crowd of twenty squirrels gather below a camera, lifting stones in their paws. “We know you’re in there!” Their chittering erupts in a communal scream. “We know you!”
They swing their paws, tossing stones against the side of my home. Another series of bangs, clunks, and a shatter. I flinch at that last sound, wondering what damage I’d find. But for now, I have to convince them to stop. Several are scrambling about for more stones.
“Wait! I’m on your side. What do you need?”
They commence a whining chitter.
Then, the entire world explodes with a crack. A flash. A rolling rumble of thunder.
My screens go white. I lose all visual, though the audio stays strong. Chittering and squeaking. Paws running about, nails clicking on wood and rock.
Another scratch and knock against my home.
“Stop!” I chirp, before I think it through. I shouldn’t tell living creatures to get away from their nearest protection in sudden squall. But if I let them in, will I survive? Will they bring sickness? Violence? Will they take over the last home I have? Desecrate the memories of my family, my species?
More scratching and thumping, then another world-breaking crack.
The screeching of terrified animals.
I dive for the controls and peck the unlock for the entrance door. The squeaking of machinery as the door slides open. The entrance ramp lowers.
I flap down into the lower floor to greet them.
Another crack. A rumble. A frenzy of flashes.
No one’s at the door.
* * *
I freeze for a second, thinking it’s a prank, thinking I cannot go out there. One step and the wind will take me like it did Mom.
The ramp quivers in the howling wind. Leaves and twigs shoot past. Hard rain pelts the metal surface of the ramp, a punishing percussion. A chain attached to the capsule somewhere on the ramp whips and snaps at the air.
A squirrel screech rises in volume then abruptly ends with another crack of thunder. If Mom was here, she’d swoop out of the entrance and save the others. No hesitation. This freezing up nonsense was passed on to me from Dad. He knew how to fix junk, but confrontation and horror could pin him to his trembling talons.
In the end, I lost them both, so what does it matter if I take the risk? I duck my head and descend the ramp, keeping my talons and wings close to the surface, ready to hold on tight if the wind tries to tear me loose.
The wind punches me like Goom returning to exact revenge for the loss of Suso. I crumple onto the ramp, clinging to every dimple and crevice and screw. The wind relentlessly nudges me to the side, emphasizing how little my efforts matter.
Off the edge of the ramp, I spot the red giant flying squirrels clinging to the tails of their friends and families, clumped around one leg of the capsule. Best defense against the onslaught they could find, though the wind still slaps them as they screech in terror.
Rikrik is bravely at the front of the group, trying to shield the weaker ones from the onslaught. A darker brown squirrel, Rikrik’s partner, is trying to hold his tail, trying to keep him as safe as everyone else, but she loses her grip, and Rikrik shoots into the air.
Paws reaching out for help, the membranes between Rikrik’s limbs usually used for gliding only make it easier for the storm to inhale him.
To suck him into oblivion like happened to Mom.
Rikrik smacks the side of the ramp. He grabs the metal, one paw bouncing off. His other paw hooks on the rattling chain. He slips to the end of it but holds.
Membranes flapping in the wind, he’ll soon lose his grip. If I jump out to catch him, we’ll both be snatched into the storm. Pointless.
I snap my beak, though, resolutely inching forward, shuffling down to snag the chain, letting my talons slide forward along it. The chain stretches beyond the capsule, and there is a risk I won’t be able to climb back, but I’m on a beeline to snatch Rikrik. The thrilling promise of success sings in me and conquers my terror.
I open my beak. Spread my wings. Gingerly tighten my talons on the loops of chain.
Sliding, then…
Impact.
I hit Rikrik, knocking the air from my lungs. I close my beak gently around his puffy red arms and encircle my wings round his body. He hugs me, trembling uselessly. I try to snap a command but can’t with him shoved in my beak. I shake him, instead, and he seems to understand. He clambers down to my talons and grabs the chain.
No idea how I’ll get back. But at least Rikrik should have a solid grip with four paws, enough to make it to the ramp.
For a while, I focus on mere survival, squeezing my talons round the chain while the gale swings me haphazardly. The storm slaps me against the treetop and shakes me in the air.
I distance myself from the violence by floating through fuzzy memories. My brothers and I playing with the chains for fun. Swinging each other. Diving into the jungle depths. Our mother telling us to stop before we scare our father, only to join us for a round of dives. All of us singing an apology to Dad, only to have him dive down with us for a spur of the moment snack on the jungle floor. We nearly died that day when panthers chased us through the vines.
But after escaping, we chittered excitedly, foolishly, in the thrill of survival.
I’m singing like Mom. Like she’s here with me singing and dancing like a force.
Wind feathers whisper
so we follow children’s dreams.
Hear them chirp and sing.
The gale winds slam me against the capsule, knocking me from memory and song.
My talons lose their hold on the chain.
The force of the blow blasts me down to a capsule leg. I roll to the metal, and tuck in tightly against a surface that’s…soft? Warm? Rumbling?
A lone gibbon curls in on itself against the capsule leg. I’m pressed against him now as he grumbles to consciousness with large brows and a pointy pineapple face.
Like this one, most gibbons have golden fur traced with lightning bolts of silver and black, but Suso and Goom in particular have large brows and pointy chins that make their heads look like upside down pineapples.
While the dark pools of Suso’s eyes swam with love, though, the hatred in the eyes opening to glare at me now belongs to Goom.
“Get off,” Goom barks, uncurling. His fur bristles.
Thunder cracks. A flash turns the lanky Goom into wildfire that leaps out to scald me. His burning fist closes around my neck, lifts me, swings me against the capsule.
“I can help,” I squawk painfully.
Goom’s laughter pairs with staccato thunder, thrusting ripples through my body.
“I can get us inside,” I squawk. “We can all get inside. I—”
Sparks shower the ramp. A shock shoots through my back. Everything is pain and brightness and spinning bolts of electricity.
* * *
I can’t see. I’m crushed under a weight. The smell of burning moss. Wet rocks, charred trees, metallic grease. I hear a roar like the river, like the capsule engine will roar one day.
Itchy tendrils in my beak scratch my throat.
The weight of the thing on me sings softly, a voice as broken as I feel. As I am. Singing like the gibbons sing, like Suso sang before she died.
Golden gibbon hoots, beauty deeper than birdsong.
Golden gibbon hoots, swinging vines for so long.
Golden gibbon hoots, at rest on branches and roots.
It’s as if she’s calling me from the other side, from wherever our spirits go. The sound settles over me. I accept death, that I’ll be the last bird. I’ll take that honor then move on forever.
But first, my family on the jungle floor, steam thick and cloying, berries mashed in a purple mess that we tap our beaks into, flapping our wings in a flurry of joy before the preening, predatory jungle cat pounced, and we flew…
The singing booms and expands and reaches an ascending melody until it comes to a high note and holds it like a question. I try to respond like I used to sing back to Suso, but I can’t. I’m screeching through the tendrils in my beak.
The singing fades. The weight lifts. I’ll float into the storm. I’ll rise into the sky like my capsule’s fixed. I’ll escape the struggle and arguments on Hope Plateau.
“Mom, Dad, brothers, friends, Suso, I’m here. I’m done. Ready to go where you went.”
“Stop chirping.” The bark and boom of a gibbon. “We’re going to move you.”
I can almost see, but everything’s only dimly apparent beyond a shimmering gray film. A lanky shape laughing. A tiny chittering shadow beside me, touching my feathers, my flesh, my wounds. Pain zigzags through me, a shiver of excitement.
And I escape, I float. Memories buzz. My feathers shiver.
* * *
The sun’s shining in, warming me on my cot, which means the ramp must be down.
I must have dozed off here while watching the haters, the hated, and the in-between, while watching everyone gather before…wait, no. That’s not right.
I was in a storm. I was zapped dead. I was called on by ghosts. By Suso.
“I can hear you,” a gibbon says. The same gibbon who was singing. Goom, who’s laughing now. “You’re not dead.”
“I’m sorry,” I chirp.
“I know,” Goom sings. “I’m sorry, too. I wanted you dead. I did. But…”
Goom’s eyes, dark and soul-searching as Suso’s. His lips fat and sprawling like hers, nothing like the sharp beaks of my family, but I can tell he’s musing over something important, like we’re about to migrate but need to agree on where. Like we’re about to fly up to the moot arena for meaningful discussions to a time when everyone was still alive.
To a time when it mattered.
“We need to carry on,” I chirp, trying to convince myself.
“Yes, we do.” He nods, and it helps my confidence.
I kick my talons at the cot. “If the storm didn’t inhale us and churn us out as sour remains—”
“Then we’re meant to live,” Goom says. “I wish my sister had survived, but I’m glad her friend did. I’m glad you did. When I saw the storm hit you, I thought you were dying in my arms, and I thought of Suso, and I…I miss her. You were there for her. As much as you could be. And she was there for you. So, I’m telling you, I want to be there, too.”
I chirp agreement.
* * *
The next time the gibbons sing, I join them. Golden gibbon hoots, beauty deeper than birdsong. Golden gibbon hoots, swinging vines for so long. Golden gibbon hoots, at rest on branches and roots.
The squirrels don’t. Neither do the beetles. But we’ll get there. Bickering is a persistent part of who we were, but we’ll get past it, and sing together, come what may.
As a start, I work with the gibbons to distribute food and adapt my capsule as a clinic to help the hurt recover from the storm.
Everyone seems grateful. Relieved.
* * *
Forlorn thoughts of missing my family still make my knees wobble and my breast shiver. That sadness used to make me cower and freeze up, living in a worthless metal prison of my own creation, embracing relentless decay and wallowing in false hope.
Goom’s loss used to make him want to punish others, to take, to dominate.
But we’ve both endured. We’ve grown to realize the real hopes of our families in ways they could never have dreamed. A community of friends bearing possibility. A perch of comfort to settle on when we can’t manage it all. At least we have each other to struggle through the storms. To sing about those we lost, to remember them together.
Goom and I sit together, chirping and hooting about memories and survival, so I teach him my poem.
Golden gibbon hoots, beauty deeper than birdsong.
Tugging my flight back, though I thought to nest
stung by sickened jungle death. Shed feathers.
Plucked smooth. Harsh seasons give. Take.
I twitch, alive. But she sighs, slumps.
Quiet rest in the brown roots and leaves.
Nest close. There was so much more
we need to feel. Don’t glide so far.
Goom places a hand on his chest. “Memories in our hearts. They won’t glide so far,” he says, then extends his hand to me.
I set my talon on his palm. “And at least we’ll glide together.”
Goom grunts, and adds, “This will be a better symbiosis than you had on your own.”
On tattered clouds, the moon glimmers. Leaves bend under the weight of ghosts. The wind sighs, and the humidity eases. Trees and vines sway. Broken twigs fall.
With ample measures of respect for their friendship, the simmering jungle cools.
* * *
About the Author
R.J.K. Lee is a queer author based in Japan but originally from Oregon, USA. He writes on train rides while juggling jobs as teacher, proofreader, and voice narrator. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Myriad: Kinship, Space & Time, Tales & Feathers, and DreamForge. More info at www.rjklee.com or https://linktr.ee/rjklee.