We Are Both Mammals
Page 10
Never before have I paid so much attention to the floor or to my feet. Toro-a-Ba, for his part, has to be aware that I cannot always see him, since he is so far below my line of sight, and he must behave almost like a human’s small pet dog: always keeping close, but not too close, and being aware of sudden relocation.
It can be exhausting. After a few hours of moving around, both of us are pleased to sit still and relax for an hour or two.
We have been able to complete a few small, gentle hikes on the rolling hills around Runa-ii, with Toro-a-Ba sometimes walking and climbing and sometimes resting in the backpack; and I am hopeful that we will be able to complete more strenuous ones in the future. If I could stand on a mountaintop, even a low one, after all that I have survived, and after all that has been done to me, I think I would feel …
Stronger.
Braver, perhaps. More powerful.
More real.
Toro-a-Ba has even managed to persuade me to climb trees – extremely carefully – with him, so that he, semi-arboreal mammal that he is, can at last feel branches under his body again. The risk that one or other of us will slip and tear the hose out of the other’s body is real: but, although in many ways our ‘tetheredness’ is a disability, I have no intention of living like one who is infirm. I for one am living on borrowed time anyway, and Toro-a-Ba knew the risks when he volunteered.
Despite the fact that we have no real need to, Toro-a-Ba and I agreed that we both wanted to work, if only part-time. Leading a life of idleness and self-centredness suited neither Toro-a-Ba’s mighty altruistic desires nor my distaste for inefficacy. Toro-a-Ba suggested that we engage in volunteer work, so we selected a bird sanctuary here in Kivi-a and are currently volunteering there. We spend a lot of time cleaning out cages and aviaries, but we also get to handle a few of the tamer birds, and we have assisted with two releases of birds who were recovered enough from their injuries to return to the wild.
As a laboratory technician, I find more fascination in birds’ flight and anatomy than I thought I would.
And there is something magnificent about watching a creature that was damaged and broken take flight again, reclaiming its freedom; to become its own master once more, and to return to its home or find new territories. If such a thing was denied to me, perhaps I can triumph vicariously.
As the months turn into years, I have come to realise that the thurga to whom I am attached – the creature who gave his life for mine – is the most compassionate, most gentle personality I have ever met. There is a most extraordinary tenderness and empathy in him; and there are moments when, as he displays this quality, I am almost moved to tears. If all the universe could be half as gentle and compassionate as my thurga, there would be no more wars and no more violence. ‘First, do no harm; second, do as much good as is in your power’ seems to be the beginning and end of his credo. He hates no one, bears no malice, and can scarcely conceive of acting violently.
At the same time, he is mentally strong, and will not be swayed in his convictions. He acts according to his beliefs and his nature; and if firmness or defiance is required in order to see good triumph, he will employ it; but when is firmness ever required from one who is the soul of gentleness, and before whose tender gaze the most aggressive, most sullen and bullying of characters soften and bow like wilting flower-stems?
I have found that, in any confrontation or dispute, it is wise to let him lead. I remain quiet while he speaks softly and reasons. Of the two of us, the furry, large-cat-sized quadruped is more powerful than the six-foot-tall human who walks beside him.
I am thankful that he is so even-tempered, patient, rational and serene. A flighty, talkative or very emotional companion would be beyond my endurance.
I sometimes fear that he thinks I view him as a necessary evil, and I try to ensure that I do not treat him thus; but on the few occasions when I have tried to tell him that I appreciate him and the magnitude of what he has done, my tongue knots itself and sticks in my mouth.
Perhaps I will never have the words.
Toro-a-Ba’s family members have been very welcoming and accepting. There is no hint from them that they are shocked or repulsed by what Toro-a-Ba has done with his life, nor disappointment that this is what he has condemned himself to. They are calm, matter-of-fact and accepting where I can only imagine a human family being shocked, horrified and repulsed. If anything, they seem approving of Toro-a-Ba’s pioneering self-sacrifice. They are gracious. They understand that I am part of Toro-a-Ba’s life – indeed, part of Toro-a-Ba’s body – now, and that this will most likely never change, and that I must necessarily, therefore, be included in any plan or event that includes Toro-a-Ba. For all practical purposes, I am ineluctably part of their family.
Incidentally, Toro-a-Ba’s and my visit to his family was the first time I heard Toro-a-Ba truly laugh. It surprised me. I had heard thurga-a laugh before, but to hear that deep-bellied, thrumming sound coming from Toro-a-Ba for the first time in four months surprised me.
While Toro-a-Ba was lying in a hospital bed beside me, his brother and that brother’s wife had a ‘litter’ – yes, that is the English equivalent of the Thurga-to word – of three, so Toro-a-Ba is now an uncle. The cubs treat me for all the world like another uncle, and now that they are old enough to run around, they seem to delight in bouncing around on my lap like kittens or puppies, playing around my feet, and climbing my back and arms, often sitting on my shoulders with their soft, furry little tails curled around my neck. It has been made very clear to them by their parents and other older relatives that they must never touch the hose that joins Toro-a-Ka and ‘Avari-Ka’, and they obey. They will grow up finding it completely normal that Uncle Toro-a and Uncle Avari are joined together, and that one of their uncles is a human.
For my part, I can only say that it would be a cold heart indeed that could not melt at the sight of thurga children, especially when they scamper fearlessly over one’s lap and then, weary from playing, fall asleep curled up with their heads pillowed on one’s forearm.
I am closer to having a family than I have ever been before.
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Thurga-a are invariably accepting of us, though initially curious. Inquiring gazes and polite, respectful questions come from them; and many times not, as they are largely content not to inquire after what does not concern them. The stares, the horrified reactions, the revulsion and astonishment, all come from humans. And they are typically directed at me.
Many times Toro-a-Ba has expressed to me his sorrow and pity that I must endure these negative, occasionally impassioned, reactions from humans. Do not humans understand, he asks, that the universe is full of strange things, so that strangeness is therefore normal; and that all life is precious, regardless of how strange it may appear to us? Do not humans perceive that it is clearly necessity that obliges us to be joined like this, and that shock and horror are therefore needless? Why, he asks me in almost pathetic puzzlement, do humans take everything so personally, reacting as though frightened or personally threatened by the sight of a human and a thurga walking together, something that, were it not for the hose between us, would be neither frightening nor threatening? A human, a thurga, a synthetic hose bearing fluids: all of these things are not frightening in themselves; what, then, is so shocking about the three being combined?
And I answer him that I do not know. I explain that humans have learned, through millennia of survival, always to react to the new and strange with suspicion; and he replies that thurga-a have also had to deal with new and strange things, yet their first reaction is not fear or suspicion but calm curiosity, and wariness if it seems warranted. He points out that humans have been the apex predator of the animal world on their native planet for millennia; why then do they retain this instinct to react with fear to anything new?
Perhaps it is that fear that has made them – us – the apex predator, I respond.
And he thinks for a time, and sometimes we discuss it further;
but the discourse always ends with Toro-a-Ba apologising to me for the fact that, because of him, I am frequently treated by my own species like a monster.
If it were not for him, of course, I would be treated like a corpse.
He always introduces me as ‘Avari-Ba’, the Thurga-to equivalent of ‘Mr Avari’; but in private it is always ‘Daniel’, pronounced in that careful, mellifluous, three-syllabled way. Sometimes he will even address me as ‘my Daniel’; or ‘Daniel-chi’, a term of endearment that translates to something like ‘Daniel darling’.
I have never yet been able to bring myself to return the favour; and of that I am somewhat ashamed. I am certain that Toro-a-Ba would be happy for me to address him as simply ‘Toro-a’, or even using his private name; but I honestly cannot stomach the thought.
I cannot … I cannot admit such intimacy.
This person did an extraordinary thing for me; indeed, every day he continues to do that thing, and there is never, ever, a word of complaint from him. A more selfless creature I have never met, and yet I am so selfish in my self-consciousness and reticence that I cannot treat him with the affection and gratitude that he deserves. I can cradle his nieces and nephew in my arms as they sleep, yet I cannot touch him unless out of necessity. I owe him my life; every breath is a gift that he gives me; he gave up everything for my sake in the knowledge that I had nothing whatsoever to offer him in return. And yet …
Sometimes, when he looks at me with those huge, round, trusting, innocent eyes, I have to look away.
And I am honestly not sure if it is because I wish that he had not given me a gift that I can never repay, or because I am ashamed of my selfishness compared to his selflessness, or because my soul recognises that, compared to him, I do not deserve to live: he should have kept his life and used it to serve many others, not just one such as I.
I try not to notice, but I cannot pretend even to myself that I do not see the look in Toro-a-Ba’s eyes occasionally when he gazes at me. It is a look of loneliness; of resigned wistfulness. Every now and then he will do something, or say something, and I would have to be blind, deaf and stupid not to understand that he is trying to reach me, to know me more intimately, to be close to me emotionally even as we are inextricably close physically.
I cannot respond.
To my shame, I cannot respond.
Someday, perhaps, far in the future, if we live that long, I may be able to treat him as he deserves to be treated. I can never repay what he did for me, of course, but perhaps someday I will no longer be in mourning for it.
In the meantime, sometimes, in the dark of the night, when Toro-a-Ba Ni-Ev is asleep beside me, I lie awake with a lump in my throat, and I can hardly stand what he has done for me.
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G. Wulfing.
Written between 7/11/14 and 8/4/15.
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About G. Wulfing
G. Wulfing, author of kidult fantasy and other bits of magic, is a freak. They have been obsessed with reading since they learned how to do it, and obsessed with writing since they discovered the fantasy genre a few years later. G. Wulfing has no gender, and varies between twelve and one hundred years of age on the inside, and somewhere in between that on the outside. G. Wulfing lives amidst the beautiful scenery of New Zealand, prefers animals to people, and is in a dedicated relationship with theirself and hot chocolate.