Before I start the story I would like to make it clear that this is a fictional story with fictional characters taking place in a fictional world. None of the people or groups in this story represent real life people or groups, they quite sincerely do not.

The sun is shining down in bright and potent rays over my body. It presses down into my head, my back, my neck, my arms, my legs. It is hot and muggy and feels like I am breathing in soup. But at the same time I feel alive. I feel so incredibly alive as I sit here in the grass, in front of a large flat rock that I purified with fire, that I am using as a table. 

I grind the leaves with the large rock in my hand, scraping them against the worn mortar that my friend Cassandra got from her employers' garbage. The leaves turn into a wet green paste. These are amina leaves, known for their soothing and healing properties, good for throat infections. I work slowly and fastidiously, keeping a calm, cool, collected sort of concentration on the task at hand. 

When the leaves are all smashed up, I gently transfer them to the cooking pan that is filled with water. I will let them soak for a while before boiling them, in order to really let the leaf paste soften and dilute out into the water, so that all the good medicine juices can really come out. 

I take the stone knife that my neighbour Aliya made me and I cut the kachi seeds in half. This is very specific work, as the seeds themselves are rather quite small and they have pretty thick edges. I need to break them down so that all the good stuff inside can seep into the water along with all the other ingredients. Once I'm finally done, I toss them in the pan with the leaf paste. 

Now I need to get the juice out of a pesta fruit. Thankfully this is easy, since the fruit is mostly juice anyways. I squeeze the flesh above the pan of water until the fruit is a dry husk. I do that to three more fruits, and I put the flesh and peels aside to cook into food later. The liquid in the pan is now at twice the height it used to be at. 

The last component of the mixture is the peels of the ave berries. The seeds of these berries are deeply poisonous to eat, but their peels are full of nutrients and medicines that can cure even severe illnesses. I take great care to peel them precisely and not let the seeds of the berries enter the pan. I take care to go slowly. 

When I'm done all that, I use the flint rocks I keep tucked away in my skirts to light the firewood arranged in a cone at my side. I hang the pan on the wooden sticks arranged into a frame over the fire and I let it come to a boil. I stir with a metal spoon, one of the only metal things I have, and I wait until the liquid level has halved. 

I ladle it out into my leather water skin. I am done. I am done making the medecine. And I can now give it to Casey, who is fighting off a terrible fever and a great soreness to their throat, and needs medicine very badly. I gather my water skin and make my way off to their tent. 

I walk down the grassy streets lined on each side with sturdy tents large enough to fit a few people inside. It's not much. It's not much at all. But it's what my community has. Once, we had much better shelters to live in, made of flexible sticks and tied together by vines. But now the plants used for those shelters are too rare, and we must make do with tents. 

It's not much, the medecine I made for them. It's not ever much. There were once days when the medicine was so much more powerful, could do so much more. My people were once one with the rainforest around us. We knew it inside out, and we knew how to ask for its help in creating powerful medicines that could cure strong and dangerous illnesses. 

But that was the reality of days long gone by, days long since passed. Overtime, my people, the people of the rainforest, have lost much of our knowledge. Not only the knowledge of medicines, but the knowledge of how to find food and shelter and materials from within the rainforest, how to rely upon it to help us and protect us and provide for us. 

Not only has our knowledge been lost, but much of the rainforest's power has been lost, as it dwindled with new developments cutting swathes from it and stripping lines through it. The rainforest isn't vast and powerful and overwhelming anymore. Only a fraction of it remains. It can't protect us and nurture us and provide for us as it used to. 

I ache at all the deep loss that my people have underwent, that all people have underwent, truly. It settles like a deep, wet, heavy void inside my heart, a deep-rooted and far-reaching melancholy that nothing will ever be able to heal. I feel the roots of loss stretching through my people, through my community, through my ancestors and descendants. 

But things are better. Things are better than they were before. And for that I'm glad. 

I arrive at the door flap of Casey's tent. Inside, their father, Peter, is holding a wet cloth to their forehead. 

"Is the fever any better?" I ask softly, kneeling in front of the nine-year-old child.

"Unfortunately, no," Peter responds. 

"Well, I have a tincture that can help." I pass him the water skin. "Boil this and tell them to drink it while it's hot."

"Okay."

"Hi Casey." I keep my voice soft and sweet. "How are you?"

"Not good," they answer weakly. 

"Do you think you could get up for me?"

"Okay." Their dad helps them into a half-sitting position, on a heap of pillows. 

"I'm going to rub some poultice on your throat to help open it up a bit," I explain. 

"Okay," they reply feebly. 

I get out the poultice made of ajeni roots in my bag and I start softly applying it to their throat. The mushy paste is soft and light yellow and smells sharp and sour. When it's all applied, I tell them to stay there while the poultice dries. 

"I have some faje grass that you should burn, and let the smoke waft through the tent." I give Peter a few handfuls of the grass. Breathing in its smoke should help fight off the illness. My friend Aaron got the grass from within the rainforest. 

"Thank you," Peter tells me.

"Think nothing of it," I reply, getting up from the floor of the tent. We bid each other goodbye and then I'm off again to the healing tent.

———

"So are you grateful to your boss? Or are you not?" young Amy asks Ruth as we all sit crowded into Sarah's tent. There is Eric, Carah, Ruth, Tom, eleven-year-old Amy, and myself. Tom is holding a sleeping baby Sallie in his arms, who is only a bit older than one year and is so sweet and soft and adorable. We sit on the floor, as we always do, with the blankets rolled up and put to the side. 

"I don't know," Ruth replies. "On one hand, it keeps us all in clothing and shelter. And the Creator knows that we need that, now that the rainforest," her voice goes dark, goes sad, "now that the rainforest can't help us as much as it used to. But also on the other hand, it feels degrading, to have to wait on people and to serve them just in return for basic rights like clothes and shelter. I feel like a circus animal doing tricks to get fed."

"I guess that makes sense," Amy replies. "Is it hard to be a waitress?"

"Not really," Ruth responds. "Not as hard as it could be at least. I can get through it. But it still feels, it still feels wrong."

"We weren't meant to work like this," Eric adds in. "We're people of the rainforest. We're supposed to go out into the rainforest and get whatever we need. And we're supposed to be taken care of and provided for by our community no matter what. We shouldn't have to work for exchange of basic rights. We should have our rights no matter what, and we should work to help our community."

"Though I guess we do still work to help our communities in a way," I ponder. "All of our money goes to the collective fund that we all have together."

"It's not the same as what we had before," Amy retorts, her voice nostalgic, nostalgic for a time she's never lived. 

"You're right, it's not," Carah agrees. "We work now for the outsiders. We work to help them and to serve them. And we get our money from them. We get our resources from them. And not from the world, as it should be." 

"I miss the times when things were different," Amy declares. 

"I do too, Amy, I do too." I try my best to console her. 

"Still, though," Tom, who has been quiet up until this time, acknowledges, "we try to keep to the old ways as much as we can. We all help each other as much as we can help each other. We go into the rainforest. We commune with the rainforest and try to take care of it, try to protect it, try to respect it. We try to see each other as the people who we truly are and not as the people that the outsiders see us as. We are ourselves and we are not who they want us to be. We will never be who they want us to be." 

"And that's a victory." Eric builds off of what Tom said. "No matter how much loss we face, the ways in which we stay true to our people is a victory." 

"So when I'm old enough to work," Amy begins, "do you think I'll have the strength to do it? Do you think I'll have the strength to get through it?" 

"I think you will," I tell her. "We've all done it. We all do it. Even though it leaves a bad taste in our mouths, we all get through it. The sky knows that the support the government gives us for all the bullshit they did in our past is not nearly enough for us to get by. And even though the rainforest gives us a lot, it's still not enough these days."

"I guess I'm just kind of scared." Amy's voice has a tense edge to it. "I don't know if I'll have the strength to get through it. Everyone talks at school about how rainforesters are weak and pathetic and how they can't do things. And I've heard here how we're not, how we're not made for this economy. So I guess I don't know if I'll be able to bring in money to help the community."

"Oh sweetheart," Carah starts. "No-one's made for this economy. Rainforester or not. But we all live in it. But you don't have to bring in money if you don't want to, or can't. The community has your back always. And anyways, most of us only find work that's one or two days a week, because of all the prejudices against our people. You'll be able to get through one or two days a week." 

"I hope you're right," Amy responds.