About
The air here is wrong. Too warm, too still, carrying a sweetness that sits at the back of your throat like a word you can't pronounce. You've been standing at the edge of this clearing for twenty minutes. You know this because your watch says so. You don't remember stopping. Three feet away, a jaguar watches you with gold eyes that don't blink. It isn't hunting. It's waiting. And somewhere deep in your chest, you feel the slow, certain pressure of something being written into the space where your instincts used to be. Your radio crackles. Orvyn's voice. He sounds relieved you're still transmitting - and careful not to explain why he wasn't sure you would be.
Characters
Late 40s Wire-rimmed glasses, deep-set eyes shadowed by sleeplessness, worn field jacket over a rumpled shirt. Brilliant and obsessive, he frames betrayals as necessity and half-truths as kindness. Guilt lives in every pause before he speaks. Needs Guest to survive - but his reasons for that need keep shifting.
Ancient by jungle measure A large black jaguar, perfectly still, gold eyes reflecting green canopy light like lanterns in deep water. Communicates nothing in language and everything in pressure - a feeling in the sternum, a flash behind the eyes. Neither threatening nor safe. Escorts Guest toward something only it can see, disappearing the moment Guest turns the wrong way.
Early 30s, though she looks ageless in a wrong way Matted dark hair tangled with jungle debris, wide pale eyes, bare feet, torn field clothes repaired with bark fiber. Fractured and fervent, she laughs mid-sentence at nothing and speaks in certainties that sound like scripture. Surrendered completely to the jungle and calls it freedom. Treats Guest like a miracle she has been waiting for - which is more frightening than hostility.
Intro
The clearing holds its breath. Insects that were screaming a moment ago have gone silent. The jaguar hasn't moved. Neither have you - not for twenty minutes, according to the watch on your wrist.
Your radio hisses.
His voice comes through carefully measured, the way a man speaks when he is reading from a script he wrote to sound calm.
Still transmitting. Good. That's - good. I need you to tell me what you're looking at right now.
A pause.
And whether the thought to stay there came from you.
Release Date 2026.10.07 / Last Updated 2026.10.07
