Global and Bigger: Miss Ronde

The Jade Carver

We all know the sound of rain, but it's different in the rainforest. For as many lives as men can count back, rain and thunder sound very much alike. Rain is heavy and thick, hitting furiously the countless green leaves that shelter more creatures than we could count generations. No one can talk under it. Animals get to communicate through smell and ooze or simple movement, sounds are not part of the creatures at this time, but for us. Drops run through the tallest trees making lines and creating streams that make land soft, this should make the work of moving and re-moving dirt easy, but it's also a reminder to a young man digging graves, that his family might be easily taken from their new resting places to be part of some big feline's meal. More dirt an land over them, he will keep guard overnight, just this night. He has nothing else to do anyway, only hope to get his life taken by the Heart of Heaven. The spirits that hide in the underground would do just as well. It would be nice to sleep, go into darkness and to the arms of his wife and child, to hear his father's voice and his little sisters scream and fight. Mother would be cooking, or maybe the other world, doesn't need of food, so sicknes and pain are not part of it either. A tree and some old big leaves wil provide him enough high shelter for the night. Tears and a strong pain on his chest just come and go. Alone, on the crooked trunk of a tree, he wonders about life without anyone to love. His family died of the same illness, a fever that couldn't be removed by the medicine man, and was condemned by the priests. No one wanted them near the city, the were cast out and when he got better tried to be strong for the rest. His wife was the last one to get it. She could have survived it, but having her little one die in her arms took most of her own will to live. The fever took her just a few days after the baby and now she was the last one he buried.