Sayen

The Jungle

Jungle life is hard, but thankfully the very young quickly adapt to whatever life they have, and consider it 'normal'. To a civilized person hearing stories of Sayen's childhood probably sound like something out of a story, or reminiscant of those people one's mother reminds them of when they didn't want to eat their vegetables.

Sayen never questioned why they moved almost every day. It's just what they did. She never questioned why she must never climb down to the ground. That was just normal. The ground wasn't for them. As she grew into ages where one might question these things, she also understood the answers. Under her father's tutelage she learned that constant movement prevented their scents from building up too much on the branches and leaves. She learned that the ground offered too much open space, and that the creatures that lived down there were far faster in such an environment than she, while up here they could always run.

She never asked about her mother. For the longest time it never occured to her she might have one. In hunting social creatures she knew the concept of two parents, but only after she began solo hunting trips did she realize that she'd probably had a mother, at one time. Her father never spoke of it, though, and she allowed that particular mystery to remain untouched, like so many others in the canopy.

Some creatures find safety in numbers, others in camouflage. Some species survive simply by spewing so many offspring that some are guaranteed to survive. For Sayen and her father, survival meant thought and intelligence. "There are always things faster than you, lighter than you, more nimble than you, stronger than you, and more desperate than you," her father would say on a weekly basis, and she took that advice to heart. If a nimble predator caught sight of her, she'd not have a herd to distract it, or the agility to avoid it in a straight chase. She learned to always have escape plans for any situation. Plans, and backup plans if the plans should fail, and backups to those backups in case she missed something, or the predator acted in a way different to what she'd been expecting.

Such is life in the jungle.

Transition

Rarely did she and her father hunt together. They could more reliably catch food separately, and they could ensure the other wouldn't bungle an ambush laid by the other. Naturally, in the chaos of the jungle, one might be delayed from returning to their current nest-site. For such situations her father taught her how to read and write, carving runes onto the barks of trees to direct the late party to the new nest site should it be time to move before they've returned.

Over the years Sayen had to both read and write them. The first time her father vanished for a week she had nearly panicked. She carefully detailed her movements through the forest as she went from nest to nest, each day worrying more that her father had disappeared for good. When he did return, he carried a trio of feathers plucked from the tail of a Bird of Paradise by way of apology, and told her a far-fetched tale involving leopards, monkeys, and an 800-year-old witch.

The next time it happened Sayen wasn't so worried, though she did continue to leave the runes. Likewise, when she found herself unexpectedly in the sights of a green python and unable to move until it found other prey, she simply followed her father's runes to the new nest, and met up with him three days later.

Sayen often teased her father about the duration of his absences, and played a little game with herself keeping score. The longest she'd been gone was 5 days. He, eleven. When he broke through to twelve, Sayen thought about how she would tease him when he returned, what she'd say to gloat about her relative punctuality. By the time that 12 became 30, she decided she'd probably never gloat again, if only she could see him. At 60 part of her realized she never would.

She still left the runes everywhere she went. It was habit, by that point. Mark a tree, move on. Mark a tree, move on. One day she was on the move, hunting for the source of a novel scent, when she heard the crack of a tree branch snapping. She felt it snap in her hand, get freed from the tree. She was mid-swing, and found herself falling toward the Dreaded Ground. But instead of a fall of a few dozen meters, she almost instantly hit the ground, feeling cold and dry. When she looked up, she found the jungle of her home had been replaced by temperate forest.

Finding the city was frightening. Finding people that didn't want to immediately kill her or run from her was jarring. She's still trying to adapt to a life so different from her childhood. So alien. She still writes the runes, where she can, on the hopes that somehow her father can find her. Or maybe she's just getting along while she finds a way back to her real home, brutal as it may be.