short story #28: Baby Lela’s Adventure – Part 1

Baby Lela was living a perfectly happy life with her parents and the rest of her monkey community. Deep in the forests, they had plenty of trees to climb, swing from, explore, jump, and do anything their hearts wished to do. Although there was always a looming threat of ending up as a predator’s meal, they enjoyed their life to their fullest. As babies, Lela and her playmates were fiercely protected.

But babies will be babies, even if they are monkey babies. One cannot expect them to grasp the extent of dangers in the forest. An otherwise-normal day took a turn for the worse when Lela wandered far from her home. Worried and scared for their baby’s safety, Lela’s parents followed her scent. At last, they saw her perched high and safe on a jackfruit tree. Relieved and overwhelmingly excited, they hurried towards their baby. In their hurry, they didn’t notice the trapping pit in their path. Lela had the greatest shock of her life as she saw her parents fall into the trap, only to be recovered by humans who prodded and poked them around. The chain of events stunned Lela into silence. She waited. And waited a bit more with bated breath. Her parents were lying motionless on the ground as if in a deep sleep. Lela was way too young to have a close encounter with death. In her innocent mind, she thought that they were fast asleep.

(To be continued…)

This post was written in response to Sadje’s What Do You See #41 prompt. Thank you, Sadje for hosting this challenge. The challenge is to use the picture prompt as inspiration to compose an original story, poem, or a caption.

For the visually challenged reader, the image shows a baby monkey looking down from branches of a tree.

Part 2 of this story will be published tomorrow (August 5, 2020) at 12AM IST. I hope I am not breaking your rules by making this into a series, Sadje! I thought it was best to break it up into two posts due to the length!

Image courtesy: Lewis Roberts- Unsplash

Click here to read all my other short stories. 🙂

Follow me on Twitter | Instagram

© 2020 Shweta Suresh. All rights reserved.

Advertisement