The Velvet Mouse - fic for velvetmouse
Author: emiime
Recipient: velvetmouse
Title: The Velvet Mouse
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Characters: Luna Lovegood
Genre: Gen
Summary: In 2008, researchers discovered 125,000 Western Lowland Gorillas in the forests of the Republic of Congo. Luna Lovegood travelled there to investigate.
Length: 3013
Notes: velvetmouse, I couldn't help but draw inspiration from your username. Enjoy!
"We call it the 'green abyss'," said Richard, "The forest is its own world. A person could get lost in there and never come out. That's the only reason the gorillas are thriving." He paused and shook his head.
"But?" Luna prompted, her eyes wide. She sipped from her bottle of water, Muggle biro poised above her notebook.
"But," said Richard, with another shake of his head, "The logging companies want to go in there. And the government's going to let them. Oh, they say they'll stick to logging roads and the edges of the forest. They say they'll do it sustainably. But the pressure's too much. The government will cave. Money still talks, Luna, even when the lives of the gorillas are on the line."
"How very sad," she said, taking notes on what Richard had told her.
"And then there's the bushmeat trade, and I think you can imagine what that entails. It makes me sick just thinking about it." Richard put a hand over his mouth as if he really were going to be sick, but took it away again after a moment. "The trade is dwindling, but it still exists. Some of the loggers are in on it. It's not just the gorillas that they go after, either. It's everything. Crocodiles. Monkeys. Tortoises." He shook his head again. "The sick bastards."
Luna noted everything he'd said, then finished off her bottle of water and stood, extending her hand.
"Thank you, Richard," she said, "I must be on my way. I do hope we'll see each other again."
He shook her hand and quirked an eyebrow at her, not rising from his chair under the shade of the tarp. "You're not going into the forest, I hope."
Luna shrugged. "If you say I shouldn't, then I probably shouldn't."
"Luna, don’t. I mean it. You could get in more trouble than you know." Richard's voice was harsh, not at all the voice of the man who had been speaking so passionately about the plight of the gorillas moments ago.
She nodded, her lips pressed together in thought. She couldn't tell this American Muggle that she'd fought dark wizards at the age of only fifteen years, had seen her mother die in front of her when she was only nine, had watched her friends perish in a great battle. She couldn't tell him that she'd been working as a Magizoologist for several years now, dealing with creatures he'd only seen in dreams and in nightmares. Luna knew she could handle whatever the forest had in store for her. But Richard didn't.
"I'll be careful," she promised, holding a hand up in promise, and before Richard could say anything else, Luna ducked around the side of the tent and Disapparated.
It was, as Richard had put it, a green abyss. Luna felt wonderfully lost. She closed her eyes and spread her arms and imagined the green of the forest filling her up. She took a deep breath in through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth, taking in the essence of the forest-trees and river and, somewhere, gorillas-and letting everything else go.
She opened her eyes when she heard a rustling somewhere near her feet.
Luna knew it wasn't the gorillas yet. Whatever was down there was quite small. She crouched and peered in amongst the thick bushes at her feet. The rustling continued-whatever was there wasn't afraid of her, Luna decided, for it was making quite a bit of noise.
She pushed the undergrowth aside and peered in, letting her eyes adjust. There, trapped in the largest spider's web Luna had ever seen, was a mouse.
It wasn't like the mice at home in England, however. It was larger, for one thing, quite a bit larger, but still small enough that it was proving to be no match for the spider's web. It had big, pleading eyes, and its tail was quite a bit longer than any mouse's tail Luna had ever seen before.
"Let me help you," Luna said, and she stretched out her hand towards the mouse. It stopped struggling at once, and Luna smiled. "You know I want to help," she said then.
When Luna touched the mouse, its fur was of the softest velvet she had ever felt. She wondered why it would need such lush fur in the tropical heat, but focussed on extricating the mouse from the spider's trap. When she finally freed the mouse, she gave its velvet fur one long stroke, then set it on the ground near where she crouched. "You can go," she said, "Just be a little more careful from now on."
The mouse paused and looked up at her. Luna could have sworn it was trying to communicate with her. But it scampered off after a moment, and Luna moved on.
Luna progressed through the forest for nearly a full day before she caught sight of the gorillas. They had congregated in a wide, shallow valley, shaded by monstrous trees. She held her breath as she watched them. Two females sat closest to her, one picking the nits from the other's back. Another rolled in the grass quite near to them, holding her toes. Still others lounged around the valley-Luna counted eight grown females, three infants, two very young males, and the biggest silverback she ever could have imagined, surveying his kingdom.
She kept absolutely still as she watched through her omnioculars until a rustling at her feet made her look down.
"It's you," she whispered, "However did you find me again?" It was, indeed, the same mouse that Luna had freed from the spider's web nearly a day ago. She crouched and held out a hand toward it. The mouse sniffed her tentatively, put one paw forward, then another, and came quite close to her hand. Luna held her breath.
But the mouse's ears perked up as a roar came from the silverback in the valley. Luna thought the mouse had been frightened, but instead of scampering away from the noise, the mouse ran towards it faster than Luna knew a mouse could run. She watched the undergrowth wave as the mouse ran through it, and soon it was too far away for her to see.
She went back to observing the gorillas in the valley, then, taking notes as she did, and then the most extraordinary thing happened.
It was the mouse-she was sure of it. Luna lifted her omnioculars to her eyes again. She was right. The mouse had made its way to the silverback and seemed to be communicating with it. Luna scribbled furiously in her notebook, hoping her writing would be legible enough later that she could transcribe her notes.
The mouse should have been fearful of the great silverback, but they seemed to be friends.
"Astonishing," Luna whispered, and she kept scribbling.
Luna camped near the valley that night, not wanting to risk losing sight of the gorillas. If those fourteen were in the valley, then, Luna reasoned, there must be other groups not too far away. She was truly in the heart of the abyss.
She woke to the rustlings of the mouse. It had somehow made its way into her tent. She opened her eyes and rubbed the sleep-crust from them and smiled.
"Good morning," she said, and she sat up and stretched.
The mouse watched Luna as she dressed herself and put her hair in plaits. She tried to feed it a part of her breakfast, but it just sniffed at the bit of toast and then backed away again.
"You don't like jam, is that it?" she asked. "Tomorrow I'll make the toast without."
It was good, Luna thought, to have company. The mouse was still wary, but it had sought her out, and Luna was glad of it.
"I want to know more about the gorillas," she told it as she picked up her knapsack and exited the tent, "And I think you can help me with that."
The mouse did.
Luna decided that the mouse somehow knew that she meant no harm. It went ahead of her towards the valley, stopping every few metres to turn back, as if checking to be sure she was still following. Luna walked as silently as she could, placing her feet precisely, stooping to avoid low-hanging branches and vines.
Within a quarter of an hour, they were perched on the edge of the valley. It wasn't even a valley, Luna noted, though the shadows had made it appear as such from her vantage point. It was more of an indentation in the earth, a haven for this troop of gorillas.
The silverback snorted and turned his head towards her, and Luna froze, eyes wide, breath still.
The mouse, however, took no notice, and it kept on, heading straight towards the great male gorilla. It paused after a few more feet and turned back to her once again, and when she didn't move or take notice, it emitted a loud shriek. She snapped her head towards it, plaits swinging. That sound, she decided, could not have come from that little mouse. It was too big. But the mouse opened its mouth and made the noise again, and Luna felt compelled to follow.
They walked right up to the silverback where he was perched on a moss-covered boulder, and Luna trembled. She didn't dare speak, didn't dare breathe. It locked its fathomless eyes onto hers, and the two of them regarded each other for what felt like an eternity. Luna knew that the great ape could kill her with one swipe of his mighty arm, but somehow she was all right with that. The chance to be in the presence of the huge silverback was enough.
She sucked in a breath as the silverback shifted and reached out its enormous hand towards her. It moved slowly, however, and without aggression, and Luna exhaled, trembling. The silverback placed its hand on her head, palm down, and it felt like a benediction.
Luna fell to her knees, and the silverback moved from the boulder to crouch in front of her. The mouse scampered up the vacated boulder as if to get a better view.
The silverback placed its hand on Luna's head again, and she kept still this time. The great weight of the hand felt as if it were weighing not just on her head, but on her soul, and Luna took deep breaths, drinking in the experience.
She was no longer afraid.
She no longer trembled.
Luna spent the day in the gorilla encampment. After the silverback had bestowed his blessing upon her, he had moved away, back to his boulder, and commenced eating fruit from a low-hanging branch. She hadn't moved for quite some time, but eventually dared to, opening her knapsack and extracting her notebook and biro and starting to take notes. Eventually, she got up and wandered among the gorillas, never venturing too close. The females and the young mothers watched her with idle curiosity; the infants took no notice of her. It was as if she were one of them.
When the sun was high in the sky, filtering through the canopy, Luna's stomach began to growl, and one of the females who wasn't looking after an infant brought her fruit. Luna smiled, surprised, and held out her hand, which the gorilla clasped in her own.
At dinner time, there was more fruit, and as dusk gathered, the gorillas moved in closer to the centre of the valley. Luna stood and brushed herself off. She needed to make her way back to the tent before darkness fell.
She was still gathering up her things (though one of the young males had made off with her hat and another had confiscated an unfilled notebook) when she heard a low rumbling that quickly grew closer. She whipped her head around to find the silverback, but he was already in action, moving up the edge of the valley towards the sound.
Luna's mouth dropped open when the truck's headlamps came into view, cutting a swathe of light through the forest. How had it reached them so deep in the abyss? There must have been inroads that Luna didn't know about, that none of the researchers knew about. Or had the logging progressed this far? Either way, Luna felt her stomach drop and her mouth go dry. This was it. She could do nothing to save her gorillas.
Something brushed against her ankle, and Luna let out an involuntary yelp and looked down. It was the mouse, running after the silverback. It reached the edge of the valley and didn't pause, but ran straight up the back of the gorilla and perched on its shoulder.
The silverback let out a battle cry, beating its chest. The young males gathered behind it, and the females and their babies were huddled somewhere behind Luna-she had heard them moving away from the sound of the truck. This left Luna standing in the middle of the valley, unprotected and frozen in place.
Another great roar came from the silverback, and the headlamps came closer still.
Just before the gunshots rang out, Luna heard a high-pitched shriek.
There was a flash of light, and then blackness.
Luna awoke, disoriented, in the arms of a mother gorilla. The beast cradled her and ran a thick finger over her face, and Luna smiled and blinked her eyes. It was odd, she thought, waking up like this, and then she remembered why she was there.
The poachers. The lights. The guns. Luna lifted her head and glanced around the valley, counting.
There were thirteen gorillas there in the valley. Eight grown females, three infants, and two very young males. She scrambled up. Where was the silverback?
Luna felt hot tears spring to her eyes, and she wiped them away. This would not do. She was a serious researcher, not some child. She had fought dark wizards at the age of only fifteen years, had seen her mother die in front of her when she was only nine, had watched her friends perish in a great battle. She could handle this.
She looked up at the mother gorilla who had cradled her in the night, and the ape looked back down upon her with a look of wonderment and confusion on its gentle face.
"Do you know where he is?" she asked out of desperation, "Is he all right?" She didn't really expect an answer, but had no one to ask.
The mother gorilla looked up, then, to a ridge on one side of the valley, where Luna hoped to see a great black silhouette blocking the glow of the rising sun.
But there was nothing.
The truck was not a truck at all, but something Luna had seen once or twice in her time working with Muggle researchers: a squat all-terrain vehicle with thick tires, something that could manoeuvre through dense swathes of forest where there were no roads. It lay upturned near the valley, its tires slashed beyond recognition. Three guns lay broken into pieces on the ground nearby. There was no sign of the poachers.
Luna approached the vehicle with caution, her wand drawn, but nobody appeared. The forest was silent around her, save for the rustle and coo of a peafowl.
"How did this happen?" she wondered aloud. She circled the vehicle, inspecting it, then sat in the grass to make some notes.
The little velvet mouse interrupted her, clambering up onto her knee.
"Hello, you," Luna said with a fond smile, "Survived the night, have you? I'm glad." She continued with her notes, the mouse perched on her knee. She had been trying unsuccessfully all morning to ignore the absence of the silverback. But something wasn't right about it. If the poachers hadn't taken him away, then where was he?
Luna closed her eyes, trying to remember details from the night before.
There had been a noise. A shriek-a scream. A louder noise than Luna had heard in her life. She drew in a sudden breath, comprehending, and touched the mouse's head.
"It was you," she whispered, "You saved us all."
The mouse leaned into Luna's touch, and she stroked its velvet fur and bent close to its ear.
"Where is he?" she whispered.
The silverback was wounded, but he was still very much alive. A gash showed red against his dark fur, but he paid it no mind as Luna and the mouse approached.
She sat with him in silence for some time before he rose to his feet and moved toward the valley. Luna followed, the velvet mouse a comforting weight riding on her shoulder, and she was content in the knowledge that they were safe.
Luna visited the gorillas as often as she could, and the velvet mouse was always there, too. She watched the gorillas she had first seen as infants in their mothers' arms grow into young males and females, then into adults. The younger males left the group in search of groups of their own. Young females had babies. Mothers died. The old silverback did, too, and Luna and the others mourned him. Luna remembered the first time she thought he had died, and raised her tear-streaked face to the skies, grateful.
And Luna grew older herself, no longer able to move and bend as she once could, waking up with aching joints after a night on the forest floor. Twenty years passed. Thirty. And Luna kept coming, though the trip grew more arduous, though each year the changes in the group reminded her of the passage of time, of her own mortality.
But what mattered was that she was there, that she always returned to her jungle family and to the little velvet mouse which had lived such a peculiarly long time, which had saved them all, which possessed more magic in its tiny paws than Luna would ever comprehend.
Notes: Richard Ruggiero is a real person. There is an actual Velvet Climbing Mouse which lives in the Republic of Congo, but sadly, the velvet mouse in this story is fictional. You can read more about the bushmeat trade here.
Recipient: velvetmouse
Title: The Velvet Mouse
Rating: PG
Spoilers/Warnings: None.
Characters: Luna Lovegood
Genre: Gen
Summary: In 2008, researchers discovered 125,000 Western Lowland Gorillas in the forests of the Republic of Congo. Luna Lovegood travelled there to investigate.
Length: 3013
Notes: velvetmouse, I couldn't help but draw inspiration from your username. Enjoy!
"We call it the 'green abyss'," said Richard, "The forest is its own world. A person could get lost in there and never come out. That's the only reason the gorillas are thriving." He paused and shook his head.
"But?" Luna prompted, her eyes wide. She sipped from her bottle of water, Muggle biro poised above her notebook.
"But," said Richard, with another shake of his head, "The logging companies want to go in there. And the government's going to let them. Oh, they say they'll stick to logging roads and the edges of the forest. They say they'll do it sustainably. But the pressure's too much. The government will cave. Money still talks, Luna, even when the lives of the gorillas are on the line."
"How very sad," she said, taking notes on what Richard had told her.
"And then there's the bushmeat trade, and I think you can imagine what that entails. It makes me sick just thinking about it." Richard put a hand over his mouth as if he really were going to be sick, but took it away again after a moment. "The trade is dwindling, but it still exists. Some of the loggers are in on it. It's not just the gorillas that they go after, either. It's everything. Crocodiles. Monkeys. Tortoises." He shook his head again. "The sick bastards."
Luna noted everything he'd said, then finished off her bottle of water and stood, extending her hand.
"Thank you, Richard," she said, "I must be on my way. I do hope we'll see each other again."
He shook her hand and quirked an eyebrow at her, not rising from his chair under the shade of the tarp. "You're not going into the forest, I hope."
Luna shrugged. "If you say I shouldn't, then I probably shouldn't."
"Luna, don’t. I mean it. You could get in more trouble than you know." Richard's voice was harsh, not at all the voice of the man who had been speaking so passionately about the plight of the gorillas moments ago.
She nodded, her lips pressed together in thought. She couldn't tell this American Muggle that she'd fought dark wizards at the age of only fifteen years, had seen her mother die in front of her when she was only nine, had watched her friends perish in a great battle. She couldn't tell him that she'd been working as a Magizoologist for several years now, dealing with creatures he'd only seen in dreams and in nightmares. Luna knew she could handle whatever the forest had in store for her. But Richard didn't.
"I'll be careful," she promised, holding a hand up in promise, and before Richard could say anything else, Luna ducked around the side of the tent and Disapparated.
It was, as Richard had put it, a green abyss. Luna felt wonderfully lost. She closed her eyes and spread her arms and imagined the green of the forest filling her up. She took a deep breath in through her nose and exhaled slowly through her mouth, taking in the essence of the forest-trees and river and, somewhere, gorillas-and letting everything else go.
She opened her eyes when she heard a rustling somewhere near her feet.
Luna knew it wasn't the gorillas yet. Whatever was down there was quite small. She crouched and peered in amongst the thick bushes at her feet. The rustling continued-whatever was there wasn't afraid of her, Luna decided, for it was making quite a bit of noise.
She pushed the undergrowth aside and peered in, letting her eyes adjust. There, trapped in the largest spider's web Luna had ever seen, was a mouse.
It wasn't like the mice at home in England, however. It was larger, for one thing, quite a bit larger, but still small enough that it was proving to be no match for the spider's web. It had big, pleading eyes, and its tail was quite a bit longer than any mouse's tail Luna had ever seen before.
"Let me help you," Luna said, and she stretched out her hand towards the mouse. It stopped struggling at once, and Luna smiled. "You know I want to help," she said then.
When Luna touched the mouse, its fur was of the softest velvet she had ever felt. She wondered why it would need such lush fur in the tropical heat, but focussed on extricating the mouse from the spider's trap. When she finally freed the mouse, she gave its velvet fur one long stroke, then set it on the ground near where she crouched. "You can go," she said, "Just be a little more careful from now on."
The mouse paused and looked up at her. Luna could have sworn it was trying to communicate with her. But it scampered off after a moment, and Luna moved on.
Luna progressed through the forest for nearly a full day before she caught sight of the gorillas. They had congregated in a wide, shallow valley, shaded by monstrous trees. She held her breath as she watched them. Two females sat closest to her, one picking the nits from the other's back. Another rolled in the grass quite near to them, holding her toes. Still others lounged around the valley-Luna counted eight grown females, three infants, two very young males, and the biggest silverback she ever could have imagined, surveying his kingdom.
She kept absolutely still as she watched through her omnioculars until a rustling at her feet made her look down.
"It's you," she whispered, "However did you find me again?" It was, indeed, the same mouse that Luna had freed from the spider's web nearly a day ago. She crouched and held out a hand toward it. The mouse sniffed her tentatively, put one paw forward, then another, and came quite close to her hand. Luna held her breath.
But the mouse's ears perked up as a roar came from the silverback in the valley. Luna thought the mouse had been frightened, but instead of scampering away from the noise, the mouse ran towards it faster than Luna knew a mouse could run. She watched the undergrowth wave as the mouse ran through it, and soon it was too far away for her to see.
She went back to observing the gorillas in the valley, then, taking notes as she did, and then the most extraordinary thing happened.
It was the mouse-she was sure of it. Luna lifted her omnioculars to her eyes again. She was right. The mouse had made its way to the silverback and seemed to be communicating with it. Luna scribbled furiously in her notebook, hoping her writing would be legible enough later that she could transcribe her notes.
The mouse should have been fearful of the great silverback, but they seemed to be friends.
"Astonishing," Luna whispered, and she kept scribbling.
Luna camped near the valley that night, not wanting to risk losing sight of the gorillas. If those fourteen were in the valley, then, Luna reasoned, there must be other groups not too far away. She was truly in the heart of the abyss.
She woke to the rustlings of the mouse. It had somehow made its way into her tent. She opened her eyes and rubbed the sleep-crust from them and smiled.
"Good morning," she said, and she sat up and stretched.
The mouse watched Luna as she dressed herself and put her hair in plaits. She tried to feed it a part of her breakfast, but it just sniffed at the bit of toast and then backed away again.
"You don't like jam, is that it?" she asked. "Tomorrow I'll make the toast without."
It was good, Luna thought, to have company. The mouse was still wary, but it had sought her out, and Luna was glad of it.
"I want to know more about the gorillas," she told it as she picked up her knapsack and exited the tent, "And I think you can help me with that."
The mouse did.
Luna decided that the mouse somehow knew that she meant no harm. It went ahead of her towards the valley, stopping every few metres to turn back, as if checking to be sure she was still following. Luna walked as silently as she could, placing her feet precisely, stooping to avoid low-hanging branches and vines.
Within a quarter of an hour, they were perched on the edge of the valley. It wasn't even a valley, Luna noted, though the shadows had made it appear as such from her vantage point. It was more of an indentation in the earth, a haven for this troop of gorillas.
The silverback snorted and turned his head towards her, and Luna froze, eyes wide, breath still.
The mouse, however, took no notice, and it kept on, heading straight towards the great male gorilla. It paused after a few more feet and turned back to her once again, and when she didn't move or take notice, it emitted a loud shriek. She snapped her head towards it, plaits swinging. That sound, she decided, could not have come from that little mouse. It was too big. But the mouse opened its mouth and made the noise again, and Luna felt compelled to follow.
They walked right up to the silverback where he was perched on a moss-covered boulder, and Luna trembled. She didn't dare speak, didn't dare breathe. It locked its fathomless eyes onto hers, and the two of them regarded each other for what felt like an eternity. Luna knew that the great ape could kill her with one swipe of his mighty arm, but somehow she was all right with that. The chance to be in the presence of the huge silverback was enough.
She sucked in a breath as the silverback shifted and reached out its enormous hand towards her. It moved slowly, however, and without aggression, and Luna exhaled, trembling. The silverback placed its hand on her head, palm down, and it felt like a benediction.
Luna fell to her knees, and the silverback moved from the boulder to crouch in front of her. The mouse scampered up the vacated boulder as if to get a better view.
The silverback placed its hand on Luna's head again, and she kept still this time. The great weight of the hand felt as if it were weighing not just on her head, but on her soul, and Luna took deep breaths, drinking in the experience.
She was no longer afraid.
She no longer trembled.
Luna spent the day in the gorilla encampment. After the silverback had bestowed his blessing upon her, he had moved away, back to his boulder, and commenced eating fruit from a low-hanging branch. She hadn't moved for quite some time, but eventually dared to, opening her knapsack and extracting her notebook and biro and starting to take notes. Eventually, she got up and wandered among the gorillas, never venturing too close. The females and the young mothers watched her with idle curiosity; the infants took no notice of her. It was as if she were one of them.
When the sun was high in the sky, filtering through the canopy, Luna's stomach began to growl, and one of the females who wasn't looking after an infant brought her fruit. Luna smiled, surprised, and held out her hand, which the gorilla clasped in her own.
At dinner time, there was more fruit, and as dusk gathered, the gorillas moved in closer to the centre of the valley. Luna stood and brushed herself off. She needed to make her way back to the tent before darkness fell.
She was still gathering up her things (though one of the young males had made off with her hat and another had confiscated an unfilled notebook) when she heard a low rumbling that quickly grew closer. She whipped her head around to find the silverback, but he was already in action, moving up the edge of the valley towards the sound.
Luna's mouth dropped open when the truck's headlamps came into view, cutting a swathe of light through the forest. How had it reached them so deep in the abyss? There must have been inroads that Luna didn't know about, that none of the researchers knew about. Or had the logging progressed this far? Either way, Luna felt her stomach drop and her mouth go dry. This was it. She could do nothing to save her gorillas.
Something brushed against her ankle, and Luna let out an involuntary yelp and looked down. It was the mouse, running after the silverback. It reached the edge of the valley and didn't pause, but ran straight up the back of the gorilla and perched on its shoulder.
The silverback let out a battle cry, beating its chest. The young males gathered behind it, and the females and their babies were huddled somewhere behind Luna-she had heard them moving away from the sound of the truck. This left Luna standing in the middle of the valley, unprotected and frozen in place.
Another great roar came from the silverback, and the headlamps came closer still.
Just before the gunshots rang out, Luna heard a high-pitched shriek.
There was a flash of light, and then blackness.
Luna awoke, disoriented, in the arms of a mother gorilla. The beast cradled her and ran a thick finger over her face, and Luna smiled and blinked her eyes. It was odd, she thought, waking up like this, and then she remembered why she was there.
The poachers. The lights. The guns. Luna lifted her head and glanced around the valley, counting.
There were thirteen gorillas there in the valley. Eight grown females, three infants, and two very young males. She scrambled up. Where was the silverback?
Luna felt hot tears spring to her eyes, and she wiped them away. This would not do. She was a serious researcher, not some child. She had fought dark wizards at the age of only fifteen years, had seen her mother die in front of her when she was only nine, had watched her friends perish in a great battle. She could handle this.
She looked up at the mother gorilla who had cradled her in the night, and the ape looked back down upon her with a look of wonderment and confusion on its gentle face.
"Do you know where he is?" she asked out of desperation, "Is he all right?" She didn't really expect an answer, but had no one to ask.
The mother gorilla looked up, then, to a ridge on one side of the valley, where Luna hoped to see a great black silhouette blocking the glow of the rising sun.
But there was nothing.
The truck was not a truck at all, but something Luna had seen once or twice in her time working with Muggle researchers: a squat all-terrain vehicle with thick tires, something that could manoeuvre through dense swathes of forest where there were no roads. It lay upturned near the valley, its tires slashed beyond recognition. Three guns lay broken into pieces on the ground nearby. There was no sign of the poachers.
Luna approached the vehicle with caution, her wand drawn, but nobody appeared. The forest was silent around her, save for the rustle and coo of a peafowl.
"How did this happen?" she wondered aloud. She circled the vehicle, inspecting it, then sat in the grass to make some notes.
The little velvet mouse interrupted her, clambering up onto her knee.
"Hello, you," Luna said with a fond smile, "Survived the night, have you? I'm glad." She continued with her notes, the mouse perched on her knee. She had been trying unsuccessfully all morning to ignore the absence of the silverback. But something wasn't right about it. If the poachers hadn't taken him away, then where was he?
Luna closed her eyes, trying to remember details from the night before.
There had been a noise. A shriek-a scream. A louder noise than Luna had heard in her life. She drew in a sudden breath, comprehending, and touched the mouse's head.
"It was you," she whispered, "You saved us all."
The mouse leaned into Luna's touch, and she stroked its velvet fur and bent close to its ear.
"Where is he?" she whispered.
The silverback was wounded, but he was still very much alive. A gash showed red against his dark fur, but he paid it no mind as Luna and the mouse approached.
She sat with him in silence for some time before he rose to his feet and moved toward the valley. Luna followed, the velvet mouse a comforting weight riding on her shoulder, and she was content in the knowledge that they were safe.
Luna visited the gorillas as often as she could, and the velvet mouse was always there, too. She watched the gorillas she had first seen as infants in their mothers' arms grow into young males and females, then into adults. The younger males left the group in search of groups of their own. Young females had babies. Mothers died. The old silverback did, too, and Luna and the others mourned him. Luna remembered the first time she thought he had died, and raised her tear-streaked face to the skies, grateful.
And Luna grew older herself, no longer able to move and bend as she once could, waking up with aching joints after a night on the forest floor. Twenty years passed. Thirty. And Luna kept coming, though the trip grew more arduous, though each year the changes in the group reminded her of the passage of time, of her own mortality.
But what mattered was that she was there, that she always returned to her jungle family and to the little velvet mouse which had lived such a peculiarly long time, which had saved them all, which possessed more magic in its tiny paws than Luna would ever comprehend.
Notes: Richard Ruggiero is a real person. There is an actual Velvet Climbing Mouse which lives in the Republic of Congo, but sadly, the velvet mouse in this story is fictional. You can read more about the bushmeat trade here.