There were many things Tantor found pleasure in. He enjoyed a brisk walk through the lined walkways of the jungle, where the trees were sparser and allowed for his abundantly generous size. Shafts of sunlight beamed through the grooves, illuminating the jungle in all its glory for him to admire. He enjoyed taking the time to skin the bark from a particularly thick trunk, crunching the wood with deliberate languidness as he savoured the simple flavour. He enjoyed chatting with his good friends Tarzan and Terkina, both casual conversation and heated debates.
However, as if to counteract every small thing in which he found joy, there were also many things that left him quaking in trepidation.
With every step on dry land, he could think of nothing but the thousands upon thousands of insects that lay beneath his gargantuan feet. Crushed under his weight, endless flecks of dirt compacted into mush and coated the soles of his feet, squirming between his toes and infecting every part of him. In the dirt lay the remains of wasted food, spoiled and rotten; the disintegrated remnants of faeces, odious and revolting; the remainder of corpses, slain and decaying. All compiled into one singular mass, smeared onto him like a second skin.
The mere thought of it filled him with such dread he could barely move.
And yet every day he stepped forward.
With every sip of water from the watering hole, it was like hot acid slunk down his throat. The water was utterly rancid. Like the ground, it was filled with the forgotten waste of the jungle, teeming with bacteria. Worse still, he was expected – had no choice – but to swallow this nasty filth. He was forced to willingly bring it into his own body, his own trunk, his own mouth, so that it may become a part of him and fester. The idea alone made him feel sick with revulsion. In his eyes, it might as well have been poison.
And yet every day he drank.
It was with these emotions that he braved through every day of his small, unassuming life. Every day was a battle and every night was a victory. Proof that he had once again outran his fears.
Yet to others, he knew his triumphs held no such meaning. In fact, they held the opposite; his victories were failures in every possible manner. While he congratulated himself for every ascendancy over his formidable foes, his family and herd named him a mockery. They scorned his apparent 'difficult' behaviour, claiming it to be strange and alien. When they caught his breath of preparation or muted gasp of horror, they scoffed and rolled their eyes skyward, as if pleading strength from above. He knew for a fact that several mothers wanted him gone years ago, so as to keep their own children from being influenced by his oddity. He only remained thanks to his own mother's insistence that he was too young and too vulnerable for a solitary life in the jungle.
But his mother wouldn't hold them back forever. He was thirteen soon, in the midst of puberty, and was expected to become more independent over the years. He would only become more isolated from the herd as time passed, until he was expected to leave altogether, either to join his fellow bulls in a loosely knit herd or lead a life of solitude.
Neither option appealed to him for various reasons. Left alone, he would surely perish. He was a mite bigger than his cousins, but that meant little. Above all, he was a pacifist and pacifists did not survive against the merciless pursuit of a hunter. Setting off alone would be suicide. Even so, the idea of leaving this herd only to exchange it for another one - less understanding than the last, disgruntled him. He would not stand with strangers who disparaged him.
That left him in a difficult situation, with little sigh of resolution. Regardless, he was doing his best not to think on it too deeply. When the time came, he would find a solution, but for now…for now, he wanted to rest. To enjoy the last wisps of his childhood, before more expectations piled up at his irrevocably soiled feet.
One such enjoyment was time sent with his friends. Tantor sometimes wondered how he had ever been so lucky as to acquire friends who held him as dear to their hearts as he held them to his own. They had met at the age of seven, the three of them, a group of misfits wholly rejected anywhere else. Unexpectedly, they had clicked together like a crocodile's teeth; perfectly aligned and made to compensate each other's short-comings.
Terkina was brave, brash and utterly uncaring of how the world viewed her. She approached each day with wit and an unsung challenge, heard only by fate's ear. Nothing frightened her, and he suspected nothing earthly ever would. By her side, he had gained a new attitude to how he approached others, a 'who-cares?' attitude, if you would. Thanks to Terkina, he no longer feared the eyes of others, a small blessing in its own right. However, Terkina was also rash and prone to heedless actions. By his side, it was evident that she had learned the value of caution and careful planning. Different though they were, there was a certain harmony between the two that balanced out their respective natures.
Tarzan was quiet, enduing and more capable of loving emotions than any elephant he had met. Though he said little, his actions spoke louder than a thousand lions roaring in unison. If he was asked to pick an attribute, he would say that Tarzan is the embodiment of determination. He had spent each and every day of his life fighting for his place in the world, forcing himself to learn what only a gorilla should know. He had scaled the figurative cliff face that was life and was still climbing, still straining for the top with bloodied hands and blistered feet. By his side, Tantor had soaked up a smidge of that determination, and it was enough to pull him though endless days of struggle. However, Tarzan was also filled with desperation and prone to fits of alternating rage and depression. By his side, he liked to think Tarzan understood he was never without a friend. With Tantor, he would never have to struggle for acceptance or understanding, and so could rest easy, and simply enjoy being himself.
Though in retrospect, Tarzan had taught him more of acceptance than anything Tantor could convey back. Anything Tantor knew of caring, it was something Tarzan had given him. He was like a mirror; Tarzan cared, and that care was reflected back, with the full force in which it was conveyed.
It wasn't an exaggeration to say that meeting Tarzan was a changing point in his life. At first they had chatted casually and he had thought nothing of it. He assumed the acquaintance would peter off over time. But Tarzan continued to visit, until their fragile friendship, delicate as a flower bud, thrived into an unbreakable tree, firm and unyielding to even the fiercest of storms. Scarce things even threatened to scratch their bond, let alone break it.
He knew that if Tarzan wasn't the person he was, their friendship would have died long ago.
Many, many animals entered Tantor's life, and all swiftly fled once they learned of his everyday battles. He expected nothing different when Tarzan caught him grimacing at a half-eaten fruit, offered to him by Terkina (a fairly new addition to their outings). A simple question led to his admission of oddity, after which he wearily anticipated looks of distaste and a hasty departure. Terkina had followed the usual procedure, but Tarzan had deviated. He had uttered a quiet affirmative and went back to peeling his fruit. Bewildered, Tantor had asked if he was leaving soon.
Imagine his surprise when Tarzan turned around and said, "Why?"
Why.
This one word turned his life around. Why was he staying? Why wasn't he running? Didn't he think Tantor was weird? Why was he still here? Why, why, why?
It took months for him to understand Tarzan's words. Months of continued conversations, curious questions and unwavering loyalty for him to finally understand that…Tarzan was his friend. And he…didn't care about Tantor's battles. He didn't care that he struggled with everyday tasks. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he cared, but in a positive way. He made an effort to understand Tantor's struggles, he empathised with his pain and he tried to make things easier. He didn't always succeed, but the effort was enough.
He didn't understand what Tantor was going though. But he tried to. For Tantor, that was tantamount to a vow of friendship, which nothing could ever harm or taint.
Tarzan had opened his world to an entirely new perspective. He only hoped that one day, he could return the favour, even if only by a minuscule amount. He hoped he could help his best friend the way Tarzan had helped him; with the blind loyalty for a friend.
Hello all,
Chapter 3 is up, this time about Tantor. I think Tantor is so sweet, and this is my interpretation of him and his relationship with Tarzan. Let me hear your thoughts; is this your idea of Tantor? Or something completely different? TTFN; Ta-ta for now!
Katunei999 x
