F Trope: Comic
Fantasy – “…literature that is parodic, lighthearted, wacky, snarky, or just
plain buffoonish.”
Current Event: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131023101349.htm,
(old event): http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/1212-tree_tracker.htm
ADVENTURES OF
THE ONLY GUM TREE WIZARD ON EARTH
Dural Jungkarara
stopped on a ridge, and shading his eyes from the early-morning sun’s glare,
looked down into the valley. He said, “This is it. The oldest gum trees in the
world. I can’t miss.” He started down the trail. Bushwalking for days in the
forest, talking to other walkers he’d meet and surreptitiously on the lookout
for the Tarkine’s oldest sites, it had taken him three years and working some
of the worst jobs he’d imagined to get here.
A reddish
mountain dragon – (He’d once commented, “You sure don’t look like any dragon I’ve
ever imagined”) – Oolah Wadjari, clung to a thick, quilted pad on his shoulder.
She said, “To get an idea of exactly how much we can miss, may I remind you of
The Great Canberra Disaster?”
He just grunted
and headed down the trail. Twenty minutes later, he said, “The only thing that
can activate my powers is ‘a tea from the leaves of prehistoric trees’.”
“So says an
elderly woman who couldn’t even speak English,” said Oolah.
“Hey! That’s my
nanna you’re talking about!”
Oolah replied, “No
insult intended, Boy. I was her familiar for sixty years before I came into
your service!”
“Yeah, but I
never heard you talk to her like you…”
“Oh, I did, Boy!
I did! Ask her about the time she and I crossed the Great Desert when she was
fourteen! Two years younger than you and she had wild visions of changing the
world...”
Dural turned
abruptly and dropped to his backside, sliding down the embankment between the
switchback trails.
“Hey! You’re not
supposed to do that, Boy! It’s lurk! You could get a fine!”
“Maybe they’ll
confiscate my pet,” he said, stopping only two trails downhill.
“I’m not your
pet – we’re partners.”
“Partners in
what?”
The lizard
snorted and a puff of smoke popped from each nostril. “How easily your forget.”
“I didn’t
forget.”
“Then why not
say it?”
“Bonza, then, gecko.
Where's my nanna?"
"You sound like a four-year-old when you say it that way," said the lizard.
Dural ignored the reptile, saying, "...and how? That’s what I’m here for.”
"You sound like a four-year-old when you say it that way," said the lizard.
Dural ignored the reptile, saying, "...and how? That’s what I’m here for.”
“What about me?”
“I don’t know
why you’re here. Maybe to see the country? You sure haven’t been much help to
me so far.”
“What about...,”
the lizard began.
“Not that again!
More to the point, what about Canberra? I certainly didn’t make that big of a
mess all by myself! If you’d kept your fire-breathing abilities a little more
carefully under wraps...”
“My abilities!
What about you? What made you think you could use an invisibility spell like it
was…like it was…”
“Like it was a
magnification incantation?” The dragon blushed orange in embarrassment as a
silence fell over the Tarkine wood as the boy and his dragon continued down the
side of the hill. Oolah gripped the shoulder pad tighter and Dural rubbed first
one eye, then the other. “I’m not crying,” he said when the lizard stirred on
his shoulder. “I just need to figure out what will make the powers she told me
I had manifest in a way I can use to find her.”
“And when you do
find her? What then? What if she disappeared because she wanted to? What if she
left this world because it was her time to leave – her choice to leave?”
“Did she tell
you she was ready?” Dural shot at the lizard. He knew the answer. They’d
discussed it months ago. They’d discussed it in the juvenile detention center
in Hervey Bay, just before they broke out of there. They’d discussed it
endlessly since leaving Kununarra in Western Australia and hitching and walking
and working south until they finally reached the largest piece of Gondwanan
Rainforest on the planet. “The answer?” Dural snarled.
Oolah sighed a
puff of smoke and finally said, “The answer is that she was not ready. Nowhere
near ready.”
“Then that’s why
we’re here. We need to find her and help her. Save her life like she saved
mine.”
Names: ♀
Australian Aboriginal (= red lizard),
Tribe name (Western Australia) ; ♂
Australian Aboriginal (= hollow tree that is on fire), Tribe name (Queensland)
Resource: http://www.babynamenetwork.com/Baby-Names/8/Aboriginal/All-Genders.htm,
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/indeX.aspX?base=5297
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