"What the hell do we do?" Tom asks. His voice is saturated with dread. We are all gathered here together in the grassy roads of the village. The whole village. All crowded together at once. All crowded together as one. In one horrible ritual, the ritual of disaster. There is so much tension in the air that you could almost cut it with a knife. I feel nauseous. I cannot breathe. 

"We fight." Sheila's voice presses hard and determined and confident. "We cannot let them take our rainforest from us. We just cannot."

"There is already barely any rainforest left," old woman Sallie speaks. "We are on the edges of one of the last remaining stretches of healthy forest. We cannot let them destroy it."

"We need the rainforest," young Alyssa tells us. "We need it to live. Even the outsiders need it to live. Everyone needs it to live."

"You're right," Derek, a middle-aged man, tells her. "We all need it, everyone needs it. We must protect it."

And we are figuring out what to do right now. We are figuring out how to protect the rainforest. How to protect our people. How to protect all of the people of the world. That's why we're all gathered here together. That's why we are all talking together. Because we need to find a solution, or we need to find something, something that will help us. 

"Can you read the government notice again?" Joss, a young adult, asks Raina. 

"Sure," the teenaged girl replies, holding on tight with white fingers the small, unassuming sheet of paper in her hands. 

"People of Gale Village," she begins, voice shaking, "you have a six months notice to leave the village, and to resettle yourselves into housing elsewhere, such as in the city. Your village life is destructive to yourselves and to society at large." She pauses to take a few shaky breaths. "What's more," her voice sounds almost numb, "there will be development within your area. The Baltsone Corporation will be building an open pit iron mine in the area, and remaining close to this mine will cause health hazards from inhaling or ingesting the chemicals given off by the mine. If you do not leave, you will suffer health consequences."

"I know what open pit mines do," old man Harry tells us gravely and solemnly. "They cut through the forest, tearing through it and destroying it and causing a large, ever-growing open wound within the forest. This open wound, these large sashes of cut away dirt, wounds that keep growing, they make the forest sick and it slowly dies, losing its vitality bit by bit. Not only that, but the poisons that are given off by the mines, they get into the air, into the soil, into the water. And they poison the forest and everything around it. The noise from the machines, constant and grating, it scares away the animals. And there are so many ways that the forest dies. I know this because my last village had to resettle because of the destruction of a mine."

"If the mine would poison us," the youth Emerson begins, "then surely it would poison the forest as well." 

"We are learning about mines in school," Clare begins, voice high-pitched and full of fear, "they cause a lot of habitat destruction. They cut through and destroy a large swathe of the forest, breaking the forest up so that it dies slowly."

"Exactly," the old woman Arielle echoes. "The edges that are made where the mine meets the forest, in those edges, too much light gets in. This causes the plant growth of the forest to become out of balance, and with it the animal life becomes out of balance too. Predators use these edges to over hunt their prey, causing chaos to the intricate interdependence of things. And invasive animals use the edges to hide themselves and cause destruction to the land. The extra light coming in dries out the forest and causes fire hazards. The poison from the mine also makes all the animals, the plants, the insects, the fungi, it makes everything weaker, makes them sickly and dying. The forest will be cut through into even smaller pieces, and animals will not be able to move freely and safely. Everything will die."

"We always knew the outsiders had no respect for the rainforest," Annalese, a woman in her middle years, states. "We all know that whenever they do any kind of 'development' in the rainforest, it hurts the intricate web of life. We have to protect this part of the forest. It's the only good, clean, strong part that we have left."

"We have to fight," the adult Grey restates. "We simply have to. We can't lose this forest. We can't." We all agree with them. 

"Besides," young Gerald tells us, "we need the forest for food and for medicine. We literally need it to live. Without it we would die."

"Well, fuck," Tom declares. 

"And the outsiders need it too," an older person named Armin explains. "The rainforest gives them good air to breathe and clean water to drink. It makes their land fruitful and fertile, making their farms yield large sums of food. It protects them from floods, from storms, from droughts. It keeps them safe from pest infestations and protects against the emergence of new diseases."

"But are we strong enough to fight?" Emmet, an older man, asks us. And he's got a good point. He's got a really good point. The outsiders and their government and their police are very strong. They're well-equipped. They'd be really difficult to go against. They'd be really difficult to take down.

"We tried to go against them in the times long since gone by," the young girl Sarah reminds us. "We rebelled against them. We fought them. But they defeated us."

A lot of the villagers gathered around agree with her. There is discord and disorder for a while, as everyone talks at once. I don't say anything. I can't say anything. I am far too horrified at the news that my people have just received. I can only stare out in horror. I can only listen to my community all around me, the community that I love, as it descends into chaos. 

Eventually the chaos dies down and there is only a tense, terrible stillness as everyone looks around with disturbed, hopeless faces.

"That was a long time ago," another young girl, Gerda, speaks out. "That was a long time ago and things have changed now. Things are better now. The government doesn't try to kill us anymore. The government won't try to kill us anymore. Even if we fight them. They've changed and become less terrible."

There is an obvious sigh of relief amongst the crowd, as many people join to agree with her. 

"But what do we do?" An older adult named Noah asks. 

"We have to try," a little girl named Availe responds. "We have to try our best, with everything that we have." 

"And how do we know we can win?" A middle-aged woman named Dhalia asks, voice soft and serious. 

"Because," a young man named Raymond starts, "we have the rainforest. We have the rainforest and all its power and all its protection and all its hope. We have all its love and all its strength. That's enough. It should be enough." There is determination in his voice. There is a sense of awe and amazement in his voice. There is wonder in all of us. 

In all of our faces, male and female and both and between and neither, I feel the seedling of hope, of courage, of power. I see that seedling taking root and starting to grow and starting to blossom into something undeniable. Into something beautiful. I see the way the energy of these streets is shifting, the way the power flowing through all of us is starting to come alive. 

I no longer feel hopeless anymore. I no longer feel like we have to give up without a fight. 

"But can we make it?" I ask into the crowd.

"Even if we can't," old woman Emmaline, with her wise eyes, tells us, "even if we can't make it, we will have tried. And that's what will matter. That we tried. Because the rainforest gave us so much. It protected us so much. We have to return the favour."

"For ourselves, for each other, for the rainforest, and for humanity," a young child, Kadenne, adds, triumphant. 

"I'd rather try and fail than not try at all," a teenaged girl, Laya, speaks out. And she's so right. She's so, so right. We all cheer for her in encouragement. 

"But what should we do?" a little boy, Ryan, asks. "How do we protect the forest?"

And he's right. He's so very right. Now that we have a goal, now that we have all agreed on what we're going to do, we have to find out a way to actually do it. And that is kind of the hard part. We don't have much power. We know that we don't have many resources. So we have to make what we do have work. We have to win somehow from the position that we're in, which is a practically disadvantaged position, even if it's spiritually more advantaged. 

But we have to try. With everything we have, we have to try. Because there is everything to lose. And so we talk to each other. We talk to each other and we keep talking to each other until we have heard almost every type of plan out there. And we keep talking to each other until we've weighed out the advantages and and disadvantages of each plan. We change and add to each other's ideas and we give support to all the creativity of all the people. 

In the meanwhile, people come and go from the group, going to go get food for the village or to get medicine or to prepare food. People eat and drink and children play. 

But the group in general remains, though its composition constantly fluctuates, talking to each other on the crowded street, for four nights and four days, until finally, finally, we all come to an agreement. 

———

Sheila and I are in a crowded corner of the city, doing something we have never done before. The city is so strange. So busy. So hard. So noisy. So sharp. So bright. I will never get used to it but I can bear it. Especially for the sake of saving the rainforest. 

"Hi!" Sheila speaks brightly to a young woman passing by, "are you interested in saving the rainforest from destruction?" The woman passes by, not giving us a second glance. 

"Hi," I speak to a group of middle-aged people, "would you like to save the rainforest from being harmed?"

"No thanks," one of them replies in an apathetic and slightly awkward way. 

"Okay, thanks!" I tell him. I actually have so much hatred for him in my heart, so much hatred for all of these people who are just passing by us like it's nothing, like they don't care at all what is happening to us. But I've got to get through these people. I've got to get through these people so that I can find the people who truly want to help us. 

"Hi," I ask a girl with thick, dark curls and striking brown eyes, "would you like to help the rainforest not be destroyed?" 

She stops in her tracks and gives me a soft smile. My heart warms up. 

"What's happening?" she asks. 

"The rainforest," I answer, "they're going to build an open pit mine within it. They're going to destroy it." Her eyes widen in concern. 

"How can I help?"

"Come to the village, and go to the tent in the middle, closest to the forest. They'll give you tips on what to do. So, basically, we're going to block the road and train tracks leading to the forest for as long as we need to, in order to stop the miners from being able to do any work. We need manpower. We need bodies to stand on the lines with us so that the police can't pull us away."

"That sounds like a great idea. When will this happen?"

"About six months from now. You should go to the village and talk to the people there to get more details. They'll fill you in on everything. Just letting you know though, it will be a long term commitment. Do you think you can help us?"

"Of course I can. I've loved the rainforest since I was a child. We all need it."

"We sure do, sister, we sure do."

"So what else can I do to help?"

"Tell all your family and friends. Get as many supporters to the cause as you can. We need as many people on our side as possible."

"Sure thing. Thanks so much for the opportunity!"

"Thanks for helping us!"

"It's the least I can do." We shake hands and she walks off down the busy streets. 

"Great job, Terry!" Sheila exclaims, smiling at me. 

"Thanks, Sheila. You're doing great too."

"Let's just hope we can get enough people."

"Yeah, let's hope."

We turn ourselves back towards our work, going up to everyone we can and hoping to have good replies. We know there are good people in this city. We know that there are people who care here. It's just that they're rare. They're rare and we need to find them. And that means going through a lot of awkward encounters. That means going through discomfort. It means going through potential attacks even, if that can help the forest be healthy. 

The sun eventually sets and the blue of twilight is upon us. I have managed get ten indoviduals and two small groups on our side so far. Sheila managed to get a few more people than me. We did great. We both did great. And we are proud of the work that we did. We stick around until the street empties, and then we wait for the midnight train to take us back into the village. 

"It was amazing working with you," Sheila tells me softly, tiredness in her voice, in the quietness of the fully-automated bus,

"It was great working with you too."

"Today was so strange. I've never done anything like this before."

"Me neither. But I liked it."

"So did I."