4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
A Language Without Words
Jerome Smith's Thursday at the wildlife sanctuary brings Taryn Papathanasio through the door late, furious at Adelaide's bus network, and ready to talk her way through every enclosure cleaning on the roster. Between possum faeces and carrot chopping, she draws him into a conversation about Ghost that cuts closer to the bone than Jerome intended. Then a school group arrives, and Jerome finds himself in front of thirty children with a blue-tongue lizard — surviving the performance, but quietly undone by one boy who reminds him of someone he used to be.
The morning shifts from solitary rounds into shared labour when Taryn arrives with her bus-fuelled grievances and a talent for turning complaint into connection. As they clean enclosures and prep macropod food, the conversation circles back to Ghost — the imprinted frogmouth who can't be released — and Taryn lands on the core of it with blunt precision: good intentions don't undo the damage. Jerome says more than he means to about why the work matters to him, and Taryn sees it clearly enough to name it back.
The second half brings a school group and Emily's request that Jerome handle Bruce the blue-tongue lizard for the presentation. The performance costs him — the self-consciousness, the awareness of being watched — but the biology gives him solid ground, and Bruce cooperates. Among thirty excited children, one quiet boy at the back of the room watches with a focus Jerome recognises from the inside. The boy touches Bruce with deliberate gentleness, already knows about thermoregulation, and afterward asks Emily what subjects he'd need for zoology. Jerome doesn't know what to do with the feeling that leaves him, except carry it quietly back to the reptile house.
