Chapter Text
The mandrill couple crept through the unfamiliar Zambian landscape in the hush of night, feeling vulnerable outside the cover of the rainforest. They stayed close to trees and thick vegetation, but it was paltry compared to the lush home they had taken for granted. The hilly grassland did little to hide their presence. Instead, it created obstacles.
The large male was hovering close to his mate, ready to shield her from any attackers. He was grateful for the cloudless sky which allowed the full moon to guide them on their mission. Their situation could have been a lot worse, and he recognized that. Still, the darkness was unnerving.
The female breathed heavily with exhaustion. She was still weak from childbirth. To her chest and belly clung not one, but two newborn boys, completely unaware of the danger that the four of them were in, and that the two of them would soon face.
"At least take the Pili one if you refuse to carry both," she grunted at her mate.
"No. This is your role. My role is to guard you. I'm not sure infants even know how to cling to fathers. He would fall right off," the male replied. After a moment of thought he added, "I thought we agreed not to name them."
"Don't be ridiculous. Pili is not his name. It is a description. I carry the first one, the Mosi one, you take the Pili, second one."
"You know which of them is the first?" the male asked with curiosity, still not making a move to take either of his children. "Because maybe we can keep—"
"We talked about this!” she raised her voice, and quickly regretted it.
Plants rustled from all sides and the mandrills turned in every which direction in a panic. Without thinking twice, the male grabbed the infants and boosted his mate up the nearest tree. He climbed right after her, making it into the branches with just three upward bounds.
"Looks like they cling to you just fine," the female observed grumpily while her mate scanned the ground for danger.
Hogs. It was a family of hogs. Not a direct threat but best to wait it out and stay out of their way.
"We discussed this," she repeated in a safer volume. "Twins are bad luck. And we are not going to introduce bad luck into our horde."
The mother mandrill clutched her forehead and breathed heavily. The father reached out a calming hand. She made a move to shrug it off, but changed her mind and allowed him to soothe her.
"I just figured..." he hesitated, but pressed on. "The firstborn, the Mosi one, he wasn't a twin until the Pili one came out. If you can remember who was born first, maybe he is not a curse, and we can..."
"What, keep him? Then how do you explain lightning hitting our tree, and a crocodile carrying off one of our own - all while I was birthing?" she hissed between her teeth, trying to keep her volume down despite her anger. "How many lives are you willing to trade for these two? I knew the girl who was snatched up and eaten. You didn't, so maybe you don't care."
The female knew she was being unfair and acting somewhat cruel to her mate, but she could no longer hold back her mixed up feelings and frustration. "Even if I could tell who was born first, I wouldn't tell you. Because it's not you who will be caring for them, is it? It will be me and my sisters and my cousins. It will be the females who get the worst of the curse while you just get to boast to the males about having a son!"
"And will you be able to give me another child to boast about?" her mate clenched his teeth to keep his anger under control. "At your age?"
The female mandrill reached around and slapped him, only remembering at that moment that he was holding the newborns. "You didn't even know infants can cling to fathers. Don't you lecture me on the subject! We had a plan! Why do you insist on changing it up at the last moment? When we've come this far?"
The father looked down upon his wide chest, avoiding meeting the four large eyes studying his face.
"I don't know," he replied tersely and began his descent. "Hurry up, will you?"
The mother made her way down after him. With all four limbs on the ground, she felt something under her palm. Her fingers curled instinctively, not unlike her infants' grasping reflex, and picked up a tubular object.
"Mume, what is this?" she whispered sharply, holding up the root. "You dropped the suckling roots!"
The slight female desperately felt around in the grass for the second one. Her mate said nothing, just stretched his arm out behind him to take them back.
"No." She swatted away his hand. "You keep the babies. I'll hold on to these. Can't trust you with anything important."
The pair walked on, exhausted, rattled, morose. Hints of dawn tinged the eastern horizon before them.
"We'd better find a spot," the male said.
He gestured towards a dwaba berry bush up ahead, and she nodded in approval. The two mandrills sat down, groaning in relief. The male passed the infants one by one to his mate. She took them half-heartedly and positioned them to nurse. They latched on immediately, and as they suckled, the female's eyelids drooped in sync with the babies'. The male gazed at the three of them with a deeply regretful expression. Regret over that which they were forced to go through with, but more than that, regret over not allowing his mate to get some much-needed sleep. It was too dangerous. They needed to go through with the task and hurry back home.
"My mke," he spoke into her ear while gently tapping her cheek with his open palm.
She gasped awake and looked down to see that the babies had drank their fill. She placed them under the dwaba berry bush on their sides, facing each other, and reached for the suckling roots.
In the rainforest where they lived, there grew a plant which they called Kulala, for it had a special compound that helped infants sleep. Parents would make a paste of its leaves by grinding them down with their teeth, and use it to quiet down their little ones when predators were nearby. Just a dab on the tongue would turn a dangerously whining baby into a still and quiet one. And for every drop of sleeping compound in the leaves, there was ten times that amount in the roots. The healer of their horde warned all the parents and caregivers to only feed small doses of leaves to their children. Never the roots. Never. A root from the Kulala plant would put an infant mandrill to sleep - forever.
The mother continued feeling around for the Kulala roots and started to get a little frantic when she couldn't find them immediately. Her mate placed one large hand on her shoulder, and ran his other one through the grass and littered foliage. He located the vegetables easily and handed them over. In his mind he had a snide remark about who's untrustworthy with important items, but he bit his tongue.
The twins' mother very gently parted each boy's lips and placed the tip of a root in their mouths. She watched to make sure they latched on. The infants flexed their little fingers around the pacifying offerings and began to suck on them as they slept. Their father gently covered the twins in fallen leaves to keep them hidden from predators. If the circle of their lives must be broken before they could even see their first sunrise, the least he could do as their father was ensure that it happened peacefully.
The mandrill couple stood up wearily and trudged back home without looking back. "Sondela," the male said and wrapped one strong arm around his mate's back. He gently pulled her close to him to support some of her weight - as well as the weight on her mind and soul - and they headed in the direction of the rainforest with the rising sun at their backs.