Sustenance from Above

Day seven. Or perhaps eight. The sun, a molten coin, had risen and fallen enough times for the counting to blur, a watercolour wash across the canvas of my days. The hunger, a dull ache that had first been a gnawing beast, now felt like a familiar companion, a shadow clinging to my ribs. But the thirst… the thirst was a sharp, insistent needle. I’d licked dew from leaves until my tongue was raw, a desperate, futile act. Today, however, a new whisper of possibility had brushed against my consciousness.

It began with a subtle shift in the air, a coolness that wasn’t born of the wind’s caress. I’d been tracing the gnarled veins of a broad, waxy leaf, its surface slick with the morning’s moisture, when I noticed it. A faint, almost imperceptible dampness seeping from a knot in the bark, a dark hollow nestled high above my usual sleeping perch. It was as if the tree itself had decided to weep, a single, precious tear of life.

With a surge of renewed urgency, I scrambled higher, my hands and feet finding purchase on the rough, familiar skin of my captor. Each upward movement was a testament to a desperate hope, a silent prayer whispered to the indifferent sky. The hollow was just as I’d seen it, a dark, shadowed eye in the vast expanse of the trunk. And from its depths, a slow, steady drip… drip… drip…