Chapter Text
🐘🐘🐘
Hmph, and so it begins again, another bunch of newbies who won’t know what to do and won’t have the sense their mothers gave them to avoid being stomped on. They’re all the same. For the most part, their ineptitude is benign. They aren’t looking to hurt or sting or neglect; that was those others, the others from the before of here and the ones before that. The boys of this species are all mean, though, often yelling and hitting with ineffectual hands. Ineffectual to me, anyway, which is why they require the hooks to control me.
Elephants are social creatures for the most part, or at least that’s what the introductory speech says – I should know, I’ve heard it enough. All the other suckers are in an enclosure with one other elephant, for company and discourse throughout the day. Absolutely not, no thank you. Thongin does not share. I’ve run off every elephant they’ve ever tried to pair me up with, and I am proud and thrilled with the outcome that they’ve stopped trying now. I am a solitary old girl and I prefer it that way, thank you very much!
I watch through my gate as new humans are shown around. They pair off, all except one boy who slides a rake into a barrow and moves in the direction of my gate. One of the big locals is there, I suppose to keep an eye on me, although I have no need to do anything. This kid’s performed no infractions so far. I’ll train him, though, show him the best routes and I’ll watch over him to make sure he doesn’t miss a spot during his clean up. He moves off, unhurried, paying attention around him, and I follow at a discreet distance. Discreet as I can manage, at least. When you’re an elephant, stealth isn’t as simple as you’d think.
He’s muttering, constantly, and I pick up my pace just a little to close the gap between us because I’m intrigued. Most everyone else who ever comes in here does so silently, unless there’s another human with them, and then they’re chattering to each other. He’s talking to himself.
“I see you, big girl,” he’s saying. “I know you’re following me, and I appreciate the escort. You going to show me around? If you want to do that, should I pull over a bit so you can get past me, want me to follow you?”
The words are constant, and he’s not waiting for responses when he asks questions, just following the next comment or question right on after the first, but I notice that he is slipping little glances back in my direction. He’s talking to me. I cannot quite fathom this, it doesn’t make sense. Humans do not inherently talk to us. They’ll talk at us, and they’ll talk to each other about us, but for the most part the only ones who talk to us are the men, the mahouts as I’m supposed to call them. I will concede that they’re better than the men from ‘the before’.
This blond thing is talking to me, and he’s gentle. I’ll have to keep an eye on him.
🐘🐘🐘
The man I’ve dubbed Gentle-Nick is back. He’s been in to do the first round, and I know that soon it will be time for our walk. I tolerate these measly attempts to get me out of my enclosure, to stretch my aching legs and move my sore back. The long-battered wild instincts tell me, tell all of us, that we’d typically walk vast distances, to find food and water and generally track the seasons. All that was long ago erased from my makeup, and all I really want is to be back in the privacy of my enclosure, tucked into the brush in the centre where I can hide and sort of forage and be with my own thoughts. I know that they won’t let me skip it, though. I’ve tried simply not coming out when it’s time, but they find me; and if I don’t come willingly then they tug on my ears, and I’m not in the mood for that particular indignity today.
So here we are. I follow Gentle-Nick out of the gate and down the road. He has my usual bucket of corn with him and he’s walking ahead of me, handing me back a piece every couple of my steps. He’s having to almost run to stay ahead of me. I smirk to myself and speed up just to test his resolve to stay ahead.
I soon tire of the game. I really don’t want to be out here today. It’s hot, and I didn’t want to come in the first place. We’re on the road when I pause. I know this is the most inconvenient place for me to do it, and I am in the mood to cause a fuss. I look both ways down the road and see vehicles approaching in both directions. Now’s the time. So I plant my feet and I stop altogether.
Gentle-Nick looks concerned. He sees the approaching vehicles, and then me in the middle of the road, and he’s looking around for support for how we can move on. The mahout who’s with us apparently does, for once, read me better than I expect him to, as I watch from the corner of my eye. His only reaction is to go and sit down in the shade under a tree and tip his hat over his eyes. That makes my blood boil. At least part of the point of this whole stance was supposed to be to annoy him, to get him to actively work on trying to get me to move. I swish my ears in the heat, and do rather wish that I’d decided to have my moment when I’d been at least somewhat in the shade.
But Gentle-Nick apparently wants to do some chivying, and he does what he’s done since he arrived. He starts to talk to me. I refuse the corn that he tries to hand me. Who does he think I am? I’m in the middle of a strike, and he thinks I’m going to accept a snack?
“I think I understand, big-girl,” he starts. “I really do. I know that there’s so much you’d rather do instead of walking around this same circle every day. It’s not that far, but it looks like your back must hurt, and you’ve trudged around in circles for so many years that, even without the chair and a family of tourists, this must just be a bit too close to before. Am I right? You don’t have to answer, I’m pretty sure I am. I do think, though, that you might be pushing this a bit far, don’t you think?
“Look over there. Kai’s just sitting down and taking a rest. The owners of the jeep and the motorbike have turned their engines off because they know that we can’t rush you. I suppose what I’m wondering is whether you’ve considered beyond that? Really, that the longer you stand here in the sun, the further away you are from your shower and the rest of this bucket of corn.
“I’m not trying to change your mind, darling, because who am I to try that? You know yourself and what you need and how much you hurt. I’ll go and sit with Kai if you want me to, but I did want to just mention that if we go just down there, you can head to your water basin and we can get your shower started. Cool down a bit?”
He says all of that and then has the audacity to do exactly what he said. He stops talking and goes to sit down with Kai, in the shade under the tree, placing the bucket of corn next to him.
I can’t just move now. Then he’d win and I can’t have that. So I stand in excruciating indecision. Itching to ditch this whole endeavour while determined not to cave to their will that I give up and just get moving again. But his words won’t let me go. Water basin. Shower. Corn.
Now that’s just rude.
I feel the determination leave my stance as my legs soften and my head tilts in the direction of home. Then my feet are moving without me fully wanting them to, and once they do, I’m unstoppable. I run. Gentle-Nick and Kai are having to sprint to keep up with me. They all think that because we’re big that we’re slow, but they’re measly in size compared to us, and I can run even with my age and my sore back.
I barrel in through the gate of my enclosure and station myself where my water basin sits, feeling around, pointedly, in the murky water for the corn that isn’t there yet. Gentle-Nick arrives first, gasping, then pulls the thing out of the water basin to let the old water pour out. Kai, on the other side of the fence, hands him the water pipe thing that they use for my shower and the basin starts to fill back up with cool clean water. Once there’s a little in there, Gentle-Nick pours in the corn, and I grab for some eagerly, picking it up delicately with the fingers of my trunk and passing it up to my mouth where it cracks satisfactorily in my teeth.
Then I rumble down my trunk as the same cool clean water hits behind my ears and over my aching shoulders. Gentle-Nick sprays the water all along my spine, making sure to cover me all over before working back around to get all the nooks and crannies. Kai passes him a brush, and Nick stands tall to reach up. The bristles are rough in a way that feels good as they scratch at the itchy dry skin behind my ears and over the top of my head. I close my eyes and nudge my feet around slightly, encouraging him to move the brush to just where I need it.
All the while, Gentle-Nick is talking to me.
“There we go, baby girl,” he’s saying, with that same indulgent lilt and warm tone he always has. “I get it, I really do. So few things here are your choice. You’re on our timetable, our diet, our space, and you want to make some choices sometimes. I don’t know how that one worked out for you, but you held up those folks on the road for an hour, kept us sitting out there in the heat. You stood your ground and you made an impact. I’m so proud of you for being you, for making a statement.”
He keeps babbling as he scratches along my legs with the brush, rubbing along my chest and letting the water play over my back. He’s kind, this boy who talks to elephants like we’re people.
🐘🐘🐘
Gentle-Nick doesn’t only talk about my routines here. Sometimes he talks about his life. He tells me about how he is studying to be a teacher. He tells me about his friends who are here at the Centre with him. He tells me about all sorts of things, but most of all, he tells me about the boy with the curls.
“Thongin,” he says, one afternoon when they had all come back from a harvest. I’m not listening to him particularly, because harvest days mean banana leaves and they’re a treat, so my mind is a little elsewhere. “I did something crazy. I don’t know what came over me, I really don’t know what made me do it.”
I peer at him through my eyelashes, because Gentle-Nick’s usually calm tone is fluttery. I rumble through my trunk and he seems to find this comforting so he continues. That wasn’t my point, but here we are.
“We were on the truck on the way to harvest. I was sitting on the bed of the truck and his leg was just there.”
Ah, he’s talking about Curly-Charlie again.
“I’ve sat next to guys before. I’m quite capable of sitting next to people and not assaulting their ankles, but I apparently just couldn’t hold back and I went mad, it seems. I wrapped my hand around his ankle, right above his boot, and we rode back in the truck like that, all the way. I didn’t have his permission, I shouldn’t have done it. He didn’t pull away, so there’s that, but is that enough? I should apologise to him, shouldn’t I? I mean, it’s really forward, and I’d never done that with any of my other guy friends, and it would be absolutely wrong if I’d done that with a girl friend. Shit, Thongin, I am freaking out a little bit. It just didn’t feel wrong in the moment, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.”
I let the words wash over me after a while, because he really does seem to be in the deep end of a pretty tight spiral. He’d done something forward, and now was freaking out. The nuance of human mating rituals are so far below my conscious level as to be insignificant, but I have observed many of them. Hands on ankles feels innocuous enough, as long as it wasn’t left there after the second human showed a sign that they were not receptive, which doesn’t appear to be the case. A simple sentiment, all in all.
Gentle-Nick is sweet, though, and he’s never once treated me with anything but dignity. He talks to me as an equal and there is something to that that I find rather comforting. I can’t exactly embrace him the way that the humans do with each other, so I do the next best thing.
I nudge his body with my trunk, very gently - they’re fragile beings, even while capable of vicious behaviour. He takes the hint and rests his forehead against my trunk, laying his hands gently on either side. I inhale and then let out a low, deep rumble that resonates down through my face and along my trunk. It’s a sound that I do not make with the humans, not usually; a sound born of contentment and trust, and I don’t trust any of them as far as I could throw them. (Not even Gentle-Nick). It does seem to calm him, though, so it’s working.
“You always know just what to say, Thongin,” Gentle-Nick whispers. I mean, he’s not wrong, but he also has no idea!