[mark12_30]

Under the trees, Gamba looked up, and often tapped Phura and pointed things out to him. Shapes and colors of leaves and twigs and branches, bugs, and birds, all fascinated him, but the fragrances thrilled him most of all, and he sniffed and savored and brought Phura twigs, leaves, bark, and evergreen needles to smell. Phura dutifully smelled and inspected each one. Finally he studied his brother.

"You like the trees a lot, don't you?"

Gamba's sparkling eyes answered him, and then he siezed Phura's hand and said, "Come on!" Phura obediently jumped up, wondering, and Gamba led him to the pine that he and Cami had climbed. Azraph followed.

Soon they were high up in its branches, and Phura obediently smelled or studied whatever Gamba called his attention to, jumping on the branches and feeling them give way, listening to the wind in the boughs, studying bird-nests and variations in the bark.

Gamba's enthusiam was inescapable, and as Gamba rattled on and on, Phura sadly smiled, knowing that he had been correct. His brother had no great love of the sea for its own sake. He was a creature of the earth and the air and the wood, and there he would find his own happiness.

Phura turned, and gazed out through the pine branches, and glimmers of the sun on the water filtered through the branches. He knew deep within that that surface, that he loved so well, would come between him and the brother he loved so well; he would be at home beneath it, and his brother would be at home above.

"Phura, " Gamba said. "Why are you crying?"

Phura shook his head, and said nothing. Gamba and Azraph came to him in the branches, and he brushed his face dry, smiled, led them down the tree, and changed the subject.

[ November 15, 2002: Message edited by: mark12_30 ]