The girl had been a platypus for as long as she could remember. Ever since the first faint sense of forest had throbbed in her breast. Ever since her small sticky explosion from the soft rubbery egg of dawn. Ever since the cyclic river had washed away shell and membrane from her mindseye, she had been drawn by the water for sustenance.
The nearby platypus colony hadn't minded. They had been preoccupied by subteranean channels, undiscovered by adventurous picnicers and zoologists for years. Although an ancient she-platypus had told of a time, when thousands of each of them were shot and trapped for fur. Of a time when troubled streams ran pink with fear and death, full of wild blood and curlew calling to the distant sea. Only One began to fear the roadside and the two legged beings remotely similar to herself.
Only One began rock-stepping at an early age. Often she eyed the other platypus from behind the tree roots, close to her being. Often frightened and weary of the fighting males in mating season. Avoiding the turbulent water as poisons from the spurred feet of combatees were used to drive off rivals. This riverside world into which she had struggled wasn't as peaceful as the egg.
Only One began root-searching after stepping the rocks. Giant moss wet trees cradled her. They stretched into daylight. Telling her stories of splitting branches and gliders and lizards and fledglings falling by the thousands from the sky. Of heart wrenching emergents thumped to the forest floor. They told her of the curlew calling to the distant sea.
Only One began to crouch around the buttress roots. Feeling instinctively different from the community squabbles of other platypus. She was fearful of stories of the dying environment around her. She would not stand straight like the two-legged beings. For she knew that they had been near, when the great trees and animals had fallen from the sky.
Often she received little shocks from the water when she dipped her toes in, and although she was an excellent swimmer, she rarely went in. Instead she began to watch the sky for signs - and listened closely to the strangling vines for anything they might tell her. Still the silver stream of her being and the cyclic river were there for her. She would never be too far away.
Platypus shifted through the pebble waters with their instinctive bills, sending tiny currents along the moving surface, that tickled and shocked her bare flesh. She coughed as a playful shellfish slipped through her fingers. She prefered to feed on fern fronds and huge rotting figs that dropped to the forest floor in moulding clusters. Always careful to plant the seed deep in soil nearby to parent tree.
More and more she began to cling to the edges of the waters, where it was peaceful and warm. Buttress roots at the place of her being held her together. Thirsty leeches embedded themselves in her armpits, gorged until they were swollen balloons and plopped into the stream again. The munching, gulping, hovering, zipping, twisting, insects entered her senses and were her only music as the still night crept in beside her. She shivered. The forest felt her nakedness and began to grow on her skin.
But forest systems within her were disturbed and restless. An ill dry wind invaded her spirit and inner animals stirred uneasily. This creature of change inside her, calling her closer and closer to the edge of The Dwindling Forest. To where the flat grey land was winding and burning. Where the crack, crunch, slop, slide, snap and separate of the boots of beings, two-legged like herself, dwelled.
FLEE FLEE, the platypus signals rippled in sharp currents along the water's edge. DON'T LET THEM SEE YOU. DON'T LET THEM SEE. She felt weary and of age. She spent her final morning close by the place of her being. Buttress-crouching and tree-hugging. She rocked-stepped close by the world of platypus, but they were busy upstream cracking yabbies and excavating currents. Slowly she set her mind ahead of her and began her second struggle, towards the roadside.
