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Lazaro

One gaze. One accidental gaze was all it took for my soul to fall to an enigma.

From the eyes of an outsider, it was all just a coincidence. A moment that was going to be forgotten in no less than a second after we met.

But this was different. This was the moment I knew my life was going to change.

It was in the middle of the day, and my father and my brothers asked me to get some yantok in the mountains.

The mountain rainforest allowed little sunlight from the overcast clouds to get past their green high canopies. No strong winds penetrated past the thick tree trunks, all except for its soft whispers carried only by insect and bird songs living on their branches, in the hollows, or in hidden homes.

When I thought myself to be lost, I heard a voice pierce through like an overheard secret.

"How many times have you fallen off the tree?"

I briskly walked to the source, curious to find who it was, afraid to lose that which I caught in such a transient moment.

And then I found him. An anthro black feline with his knees to the ground, a feral chick nestled in the cusp of his hands.

The clouds in the sky parted, and rays of sun followed after, managing somehow to penetrate the crowns of trees.

It was as if destiny wanted me to meet him when the light bathed his raven black fur like a limelight, which swayed in the cool, mountain winds. His thin, cloud-white whiskers, the round shape of his face...

That flower. The flower that rested just beside his right ear. I've never seen that flower in my entire life. The top petals were pink, darkening to a purple red on its bottom half. The orchid flower shook with his every move, clinging with its life, desperate to stick by him.

I hid behind a tree, afraid that by some strange sight of a lost, green dragon in a camiso de chino like me so deep in the woods, he'd run away in fear.

"It is as if you desire to see me, young one." His voice, evidently male, just as young as me. "Fall off one more time and a predator just might have you in between their fangs."

He put the chick back on its nest on a branch and smiled. "If that happens, not even Mother can save you."

I stepped forward, just wanted to say, "Hi," but the feral snake below my foot said otherwise. It hissed at me, and I yelled before tripping down to the ground.

His tail flicked, furry ears turned in my direction.

When I recovered, he was gone, just like that. As if he was but a whisper of the wind. As if destiny brought me their child, only to drag him away from me, just to confuse me, taunt me that people so magical as he could ever be real.

---

A few hours passed, and I was back to my mission, picking up the yantok from wherever the mountain rainforest offered.

Is it bad that I couldn't get that feline out of my head? Was he just an illusion of my eyes, made from my insanity of long walks in the rainforest?

I shook my head to take those thoughts all out of me. Real, or not, he was gone, and that was the end of it...

In one sudden second, I felt eyes. Out of nowhere, from nowhere, hidden in secret. I put down the basket hung on my arm down to the ground, light in spite of the foraging I've done. The intuition I've had couldn't be wrong.

A drastic change in the wind's taste. A shift to silence from the birds up high. A hold of breath of the leaves all around. "Who's there?" I said out loud.

And then I saw it, a butterfly resting on a red wildflower's petals.

A black furred claw.

The butterfly followed, and the paw raised up to the pink orchid of the feline's head.

The butterfly, undeterred, rested on the bottom red petals.

"I- I am."

The rustle of grass beneath my feet, the fading chirps of even the crickets. It was as if the entire rainforest respected his presence.

His eyes. Those damn eyes. Pink irises, just as the orchid on his head.

"Are you lost?" he began, his gaze avoiding mine.

"N-no, sir."

"You are," he cleared his throat, "beyond the natural boundary."

His voice intermingled with the winds, tickling my ears just as his gaze tickled my cheeks red. When he spoke, it was just like the Karabawenyo townspeople. That fluid, formal, and deep grasp of the local language. He didn't speak like the others, who spoke with such casualness. Was it a new dialect?

"I-I... Should-" No coherent thought formed in my mind, and I grabbed a black horn behind my head in anxiety.

His ears drooped. "Is something the matter? D-did I offend you?"

"No, not at all!" Each word, woven with panic. Laced with desire. Perhaps the first confident thought that reached my mouth.

I took a step forward.

He gasped, and took a step back. "Please, do not come closer." He lowered to a whisper, body tensed, all eyes on me.

"Woah, why not?"

"You might bite."

"Bite?" I frowned. It was a strange thing to say. He was strange. His erect tail, sharpened eyes. As if I was danger, by fang, horn, and claw, never by mind. "You're scared that I'm going to bite you?"

"Yes," was his reply.

"No, I... I don't. I can reassure you of that."

"Are you speaking the truth?"

"Hey, if you don't believe me," I took two steps backward, "I can just give you space."

He exhaled, shoulders loosened, and claws detracted. "I believe you. What brought you so far in the rainforest?"

"Well, my family sent me here to find some yantok deep in the mountains." I grinned. "But, uh, as you can see," I showed him the basket hung on my left arm, light despite the hours of searching, "I'm not having much luck."

"Is that all?" he said, his irises shining brighter. "You are not here to hunt, decapitate the land of its trees, or even pollute the soil?"

"N-no?" I frowned. "I'm just here to do some foraging."

"Honestly?"

"Honestly."

"Then." He turned his back over to me, his head kept down. "Follow me."

We walked across the rainforest, and as I watched his back, I couldn't believe that I was finally following the stranger that I thought was nothing but a mystery of my mind. He was real. The flower on his head was real. His eyes were real. Yet everything about him was still shrouded in mystery. Every time he spoke, he carried the diction of a rich nobleman, yet his gait was akin to a predator prowling through tall blades of grass and bushes, emanating sounds of silence with his every footstep.

"Is this what you mean?" His head rose to the forest ceiling, and I followed his gaze to the one that I was finding for. Yantok atop the treetops, plenty as they were.

I was astonished, it was as if he knew his way around the mountain like a man would know his home.

I climbed the treetops and plucked the fruit away from its tree, threw it to the basket which was still on the ground, all whilst he watched me.

"Wow, thanks! This... This is a lot. You helped a lot." I climbed back down.

He nodded, gently caressed the flower on his head. "Why do you need the yantok?"

"Well, my family needs food, and I could sell these yantok to the markets so I could get my family some money."

"Buy? Markets?" He tilted his head, curiosity glinted in his eyes. "Why? The mountains and its rainforest are full of fruits and meat to pick and eat."

If any other man were to ask me that same question, I'd think of him an idiot. But he asked me with genuine curiosity, and I couldn't help but think to myself if he came from a place so unknown to anyone, from an indigenous tribe undiscovered, or if he was just playing me for a fool.

"I-it's much safer this way."

"Is that true?" One step closer, a bare foot forward.

"Yeah."

"Then." His gaze, his ears, fixed only to me. "Why are you so far in the rainforest?"

"They... could only be found high in the mountains like this."

"Really?" One step closer, a flutter of butterfly wings away from his flower.

"R-really."

"Interesting. Truly interesting, the Civilized." One more step, arboreal whispers colored the winds, ran my heart. "You are willing to cross the boundary, so as to feed your family?"

"What natural boundary?"

"The boundary of the rainforest," he said, his low voice caressing my scales. "That of which the Civilized must not cross."

His curious gazes, talk of rainforest boundaries and Civilized... It was as if he came from another world, spoke another language entirely.

In the horizon, the sun dipped to finally touch the mountain peaks. The skies became a little bit darker, the shadows a little bit bigger.

"Dusk is approaching," he said, turning to leave.

"W-wait!" I called out before he could disappear once more. "Where are you going?"

"To go back home."

I paused. I never asked him for his name, nor did I know of anything noteworthy about him. He looked at me, expectant in his pose of a question I should be asking.

His name, his name. That I wanted to know. But I knew myself to be more than a fool.

"Where can I see you again?"

His head turned, from the sun, to the ground, until it found itself to me. "Do you know of the mountains over there?" He pointed over to the horizon, where the mountain met the sun.

"Yeah?"

"From dawn's first twilight to the setting sun's last, I shall be by the southmost cliff."

When the stars began to glow and the sun was no more, he was gone. Gone except for my memory of his cotton soft voice, and the pink memory of his flower.

---

One conversation. One fateful conversation was all it took for my mind to be running with questions. If one word from him silenced me forever, then the thousand he spoke, and will speak, spelled me dizzy.

Something definitely changed inside me after my encounter with the stranger. Because once I went home, my father told me I was late for dinner, and all my brothers asked me who the lucky girl was.

They had no idea.

---

OST: [Emma Main Titles - Emma]

https://open.spotify.com/track/6yzTuD0fGAMo5KAOeEu65m?si=d5b907880de34a23