Not on my Watch

Chapter 14

"Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there."

Source unknown

                                                                December 21, 2012

                                                    Remote jungle, Peru and Brazil

          Brina was pleased at the progress her patient was making.   It had now been nearly three months since she found him in the tree, and he had started walking on his own, with the help of a crutch.   The bruises, scrapes, and broken bones had healed nicely with the help of the herbs, leaving no scars.  It had taken time to relearn to walk, but he was doing well, and would soon even throw the crutch away.  Damn, but he was handsome, and taller than anyone else she knew.  His dragon, Topaz, was growing fast...about 1/3 of the size of an adult dragon now, and soon would be able to support a rider.  Delphin still couldn't remember anything at all about his past.  He and the tribesmen communicated mostly through the dragons, although the man had learned several words in the dragon people's language.  It was simply easier to use telepathy when they wanted fluency and fast speech.

          He'd tried to remember.  Brina was giving him herbs to assist in brain healing and memory, yet so far they hadn't seemed to help him recover much.  The day after he woke from his long sleep, she'd gotten out all the clothes he'd been wearing when she found him, and showed them to him, one by one.   He couldn't recall ever seeing any of them before, even after running his hands over the thick fabric, so she'd folded them neatly and packed them away again.  He also couldn't remember when he started wearing the object on the chain around his neck, and he couldn't remember what it was called.   None of the dragon people had anything like it.

           He had a vague awareness that there was another life he'd had before, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't picture specifics...though sometimes random images popped into his head, seemingly out of nowhere.  They didn't always appear to be related.   Some of them felt familiar.  One image that came to him several times was of a dry, sandy place with no trees.  He couldn't see any water, or any shelters.   Another image he sometimes saw was of a place that also appeared dry and bare, but in a different way.  The dirt in this one was a reddish brown, and there were many hills with flattish tops, as well as plants.  There were a few trees in this one, though nothing like here.  When he described these images to Brina, she didn't know what to make of them.  Who could fathom a place with few or no trees?  Leopard's Claw said it sounded like a place he'd heard described as a 'desert,' a dry, nearly treeless area with little water. Sometimes he saw images of a strange-looking, but beautiful bird.   It could fly when it wanted to, even though it was much bigger than the jungle parrots.   It had a long neck with a red thing hanging down from the beak, and big tail feathers which stood upright.   It was brown and white, except for the red on the neck and a little bit of black here and there among the feathers.   Brina didn't have a word for it in her language, and try as he might, he couldn't remember what the creature was called in his.  Eventually, he thought the word started with a "T."  Every so often he saw the image of the beautiful lady he'd seen before, or dreamt of her, but still had no clue who she was or how he knew her, or even if she was a real person.

          He was fitting into tribal life quite nicely, probably because he didn't have memories of any other customs or traditions to fall back on.  There had been no further sign of outsiders near the metal bird in which he'd arrived.  Someone from the tribe had been set up to watch the area constantly to see if his people came back, but they'd apparently given him and his friends up for dead.  That was ok with Delphin.   He didn't know any of those people.   He didn't even get to see the three men who had been in the bird with him.  The tribe had taken their bodies down from the trees and buried them long before he woke up.   Brina had taken him out to the crash site once he could walk, but nothing he saw brought back any memories.