to the rescue
pswumā:
@geumum
āwhat do you mean, you canāt?ā
sheās either hard of hearing or in denial. he repeats himself for the fourth time. āi donāt know how to climb a tree, maāam.ā
with one indignant hand on her hip, she spits, āisnāt this part of your job?ā
āiām sure youāre thinking of something else, maāam,ā like a coconut harvester, or firefighter. he frowns, thinking back to grey-tinged days when heād scaled fence after fence like an olympic hurdler. back then, it might have translated. he might have dared to try. today, his joints are achey, heās run out of cold-hot patches, and heād rather just sit this one out. āanyone here who can help?ā
a face emerges from the small crowd of onlookers. sung already knows where this is going.
hero complex? nah. you can imagine the joints on this officer being a little loose with every step he takesāthereās no way in hell someone of his age nor stature would pass this up otherwise. he just seems tired. in the meantime, everything else about this is straight out of a show/comic/movie elijahās never properly sought through, a fever dream when he finds himself in front of the tree faster than the rest of them can make another comment just as cliche, if not fitting.
elijah raises his hand, meek. wordlessly, increasingly at a loss, he clears his throat and nods up at the cat in one of the higher branches. god damn, whose feet dragged him here? he refuses to look down, the cat doing a lot more in that regard though not with much enthusiasm.
me too, buddy. me too.Ā
he pinches the bridge of his nose, unaware his pose is alike to the woman opposite of the cop tending to this situation oh-so-professionally. āyou wanna try calling it first?ā no eye contactās his own thing, evasion just as strong as that of the next person. ās not a crime so far to have the time.
