Eleven - Tarka

"What?!" I thought to myself in surprise. "Now a Brackin man, too?" Still up in the tree, I crouched down even further on the branch I was on. I was even more determined to keep myself out of sight as much as possible. Who knows what they might do to me?

I looked back down to the Brackin man. He was very large, large enough to squash either I or the Palkin. There was something about him though, that made me not as afraid of him as I could have been. I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Standing over the Palkin, he scratched his head with one of his very wide fingers and looked around. Probably didn't know what to do about him. With the meat still in his other hand, he kneeled down to the much smaller Palkin and tried to gently shake him as much as possible. However, his way of being gentle was still considered pretty rough by me as he shook the Palkin a bit too violently. With no response from the Palkin, the Brackin looked around again. His eyes finally caught a large jungle leaf that contained lots of water from the rain storm. He stood up, and plucked the leaf from the tree trunk it was attached to. He stared at it, then at the Palkin. What was he going to do with it?

I didn't have long to figure that out as he walked briskly towards the Palkin and splashed him with the water. The Palkin awoke with such a start, I had to stifle my giggles. I shook my head at myself. I'm laughing? I haven't laughed since before . . .

The Palkin's breathing slowed down after a bit, while he and the Brackin stared at each other for a few minutes. They didn't speak for the longest time. Then, finally, "How long was I out?"

"Not very long."

"Oh." Then silence again.

Oh, how intelligent these two men seemed to be . . .

The Brackin lifted up the meat he had in his hand. "Want some? Or is it still too much to handle?"

The Palkin shrugged. "It's the only food that's been offered to me since . . ."

"Since when?"

"Since I was banished."

"You too, huh?"

The Palkin raised his head towards the Brackin as he was given some meat. "What do you mean 'You too'? You weren't banished because everyone thought you were a traitor to your own people, were you?" He took a huge bite of the meat, his eyes from even up in the tree were large from hunger.

The Brackin lowered his eyes to the jungle floor. "Well, not exactly that, but it might as well have been."

The Palkin raised his own eyes, mid-bite. "What did you do?"

"I killed someone."

The Palkin slowly stood up, on guard now. "How?"

"I hit him in the head with a rock." The Brackin looked up at the Palkin man again. "Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. It doesn't happen a lot, the one I killed was not meant to be killed. He taunted my people. I threw a rock in a fit of rage, and it just happened to hit him. But even the Brackin people as a whole know that it is not right to murder someone, ever."

The Palkin relaxed his shoulders. "My brother was killed a few days ago." Now it was his turn to look down at the ground.

The Brackin raised his eyes. "This is getting really interesting," I thought to myself, still sitting on the branch.

"What happened to him?"

"He was a Palkin scientist and went on a mission. All I know was that he was killed." The Brackin's face turned a ghostly white. "That's . . . awful. I'm sorry for your loss."

"He was the only one of my people that ever remotely cared for me."

The two of them stood in silence again. Then, the Brackin finally looked the Palkin in the eyes. "I don't even know your name. If we're both banished from our own lands, we might as well get to know each other; it seems we already have a bit."

"I'm Alden."

"Well, Alden, I'm Tristram. Glad to put a name to a face." He shook Alden's hand vigorously, forgetting that he was more than twice Alden's size.

"I'm glad to finally know some names, too," I thought to myself.

Alden looked up towards the now clear sky. The stars were out in their full glory, and the moon was no exception. "Well, we should probably get some rest. We've got to start gathering food and make ourselves a more reasonable shelter if we're both going to live here for a while."

Tristram nodded. As they both laid down on the moist jungle floor, I held my breath as everything seemed to fall silent. Once I finally heard them snoring, I climbed down from the tree as quietly as I could. "Maybe I should try to find them some food . . . Wait, why am I trying to help them? What does it matter to me?" I thought to myself. Maybe it was because I recognized their loneliness, their outcast status in their own land.

I was just like them.

Careful not to make any loud sounds, I tiptoed back to my village in the moonlight, making my own plan of action.