Preview
Click here to purchase the paperback, or download from Kindle.
She lay on a great branch high above the rain forest floor. It was her favourite, a bough as solid as the ground she seldom walked on, with smooth green bark that cooled her through her thick fur. Not that her fur was really thick on her belly; it didn't need to be because she always curled up into a tight ball when she went to sleep, the thick fur on the outside keeping her warm. No, the hair was really quite thin there, but nice. In fact she thought that there wouldn't be finer hair anywhere. Not on possums, anyway. Although the more she thought about it, the hairs on her tail were pretty good, too. There they were now, ruffling as the breeze passed through them, all crowded along her dangling tail. What a tail! It was like a rudder when she leapt across and down to other branches, great and small. And, talking about hair, what about those whiskers! Prickling out from around her nose, as good as eyes in a tight spot. She was, she had to admit, as she rolled over onto her back, a splendid possum. Her eyes (beautifully dark, naturally) gazed up through the smaller branches and gently stirring leaves to hundreds of tiny white points in the blackness of the night sky over the tree. She didn't know what they were, though she was sure they weren't something to eat, so they didn't matter much. Lots of things didn't matter to her. Most things didn't matter to her. Only trees, and food (which was almost the same thing), and sleep (which was almost the same thing, too, but don't ask me to explain that). And, of course, snakes. Especially pythons. But it was night-time, and it was cool, and not many pythons worried about possums when they were cool. Pythons, that is; possums were always warm, because they were hairy.
She'd seen lots of pythons, hundreds, actually. Perhaps more. She didn't really know how many, because she couldn't count. Usually they were lying along a branch, mainly round and around it, their pointy tails at one end and their flat heads at the other. Waiting for lunch. She'd even seen a possum or two disappearing along a python, on the inside, a bump that got smaller. They'd probably thought that the python was just a jungle vine. And once she'd seen a python laying eggs, but she'd thought that it was doing something else, so she'd looked away. *** Vines were everywhere in the forest, netting the trees together, dropping to the forest floor, climbing up the trunks, twining round the branches. Green and motley. Like pythons. She stretched, her great brown eyes bulging in the darkness, stars flecking in them, a pair of tiny night skies. Never had she done this before. It was the first time, and she was enjoying it. What was more, she'd never seen any other possum do it, either. She decided that she'd lie on her back more often. The branch was wide, so she wouldn't fall off, even if the wind blew very hard. If danger came a quick arch of her back would flip her over onto her paws and see her flashing up or down the trunk, or leaping across to another tree. Her eyes closed. She dozed, ears flicking as bats silked past in the airways around her bed. Above, not far above, a vine moved. Just a little. Not enough for anyone to notice. Ribs caterpillering inside a skin. No sound. Movement without movement. Growing like a vine, but just a little bit quicker. She stirred, whiskers twitching. The wind blew cooler, and all was quiet, and all was still. *** Plop. Her paw brushed something off her chest. The tree trunk shone in the moonlight, a silver highway for possums. When they were awake. Plop.
Her paw didn't move. Why bother? It didn't matter. She'd hardly felt it, so it didn't matter. But she was starting to get hungry. That mattered. Slowly she sat up, things falling off her, or rolling down her belly, or slipping into her pouch. She moistened her paws and washed her face, scratched her back, sitting up there like a kangaroo without a joey. Then she moved off to feed, an elegant black shadow in the darkness, scampering silently towards a treeful of ripe, juicy figs. Leaving the vine, stiller than still.
Click here to purchase a wonderful rainforest story, where things are truly splendid, or download from Kindle.