Nina, an English kinkajou girl, travels to Brazil to meet her tribal friend and childhood crush Davi in an attempt to learn about where she came from.

WHOO! New content incoming! This was a long overdue commission I owed to  geckoguy123456789 about his brand-new kinkajou character Nina, depicted in some art on his page. She's a cutie and I love her. Check it out there.

This'll be a seven part series. There's no pregnancy stuff in this first part, but it's coming. Trust me.

Enjoy!

And of course, for the confused: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinkajou

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One thing I've learned throughout my life is that there are two different ways to 'see' yourself. The first is obvious: a mirror, a reflection, a photograph, and image of yourself. Something you can point to and say 'yes, that is me. That is who I call myself.' The body you inhabit, you mind you think with, the self that looks out from the inside.

But it's the second that has eluded me my entire life; the ability to see yourself in others. To find connectedness in others, to see bits of who you are in everyone else you meet. It's validating find others you can connect with, in some small way, that helps you look inward and understand more of who you are, of what you are, and the niche you fill in this world.

My name is Nina. I'm twenty-five years old, raised in London as a citizen of the UK, and I'm a kinkajou. What is a kinkajou? In short, a kinkajou is a species of mammal from the Brazillian area of the Amazon rainforest. Similar to lemurs and apes, but not directly related. Long tails, stay up late at night, eat lots of fruit. But those are just on-paper facts, things you can look up on the internet. As for what it's like to be a kinkajou, what it means to me as an identity, as part who I am, I have no idea.

When I ask my friend Amelia why she likes to travel so much, she shrugs and says, “I'm a cat, we like to wander.” When I ask Jordan why he gets so angry when he drinks, he says, “It's my breed. Dogs like me just have short tempers.” When I find Lydia on the roof, singing beautifully to the setting sun, and I ask her why, she says “Because I'm a canary, I'm a songbird. It's in my blood.”

But what's in a kinkajou's blood?
The only other member of my species I've ever known is my mother, aside from early memories of the shape of my father and dimmed photographs. He passed away when I was young, not long after I was born. He was a Brazillian native and could have told me so much about where I come from, but what secrets he knew died with him. He wasn't used to the sicknesses of the city and hadn't built up the immunities he needed. So while I was raised by my single mother for many years, until cancer took her when I was 14, I learned nothing from her of the life of kinkajous. Truthfully, I doubt she knew anything more than I did. My mother was the daughter of immigrants, her own ethnic background and identity stamped, trampled, and crushed flat enough to fit into a one-page report on a long-forgotten file somewhere.

So after graduating primary school with nothing but my inheritance on my back, sick of being asked countless times again and again to explain exactly who I was while only barely knowing myself, I set my mind to learn everything I could about the species I was born to. And thankfully, I had a head start.
When I was 16, I enrolled in a charity program offered by my school to aide underprivileged and under-represented tribal groups around the world. I had no great dreams of solving world hunger or helping the poor, not at that age. I enrolled simply because the destination that year was the small city of Brasillia, Brazil. My ulterior motives propelled me halfway across the world, across an ocean I'd never seen the end of, and dug my paws into the soil of a continent I'd never been to, just to find something, anything at all, that could tell me where I came from.

It was fruitless until one of the last days of our trip, when our class had the opportunity to meet some of these “tribal” people of our own age. At an outdoor picnic area, under the blazing Brazillian sun, I first caught eyes with Davi, his long-tailed, short eared, lithe, flexible body like looking at my reflection for the first time. He was the first male kinkajou since my father died so long ago. I remember fondly now how he simply dropped the conversation with two of my classmates to wordlessly step over one of the picnic tables and make a beeline straight for me.
His English was broken and awkward, he knew little more than greetings and the names of basic objects, and he stuttered with his pronunciation. Fortunately for me, the greatest gift my mother ever gave me was a bi-lingual household. Davi's eyes lit up excitedly when I spoke back in Portuguese. Over the next hour, we spoke to no-one else, simply blabbering away in a shared tongue as much as we could say about ourselves. But what I took away from the encounter, and what he insisted I remember, was that his name was Davi of the Naragaka tribe.

Naragaka. The name stuck with me for many years, with some kind of familiarity. Perhaps it had been something my father said, a memory half-retained by my infant mind. Nevertheless, I needed to know more. Unfortunately, there was very little to know. The Naragaka were one of the most isolated tribes in the world, with what little facts there were coming from the few tribesmen that left the safety of their village, hidden deep in the Amazon. In fact, Davi himself had been one of the few Naragaka to act as ambassador to outsiders, freely offering whatever he could tell about his people and his culture when he would travel to Brasillia. But despite his efforts, the Naragaka themselves remained a modern mystery.

With Davi and his people still stuck on my mind, I went on to college to become a cultural anthropologist, with the goal of learning as much about the Naragaka as I could. I was hungry for knowledge, for anything and everything I could devour to feed my curiosity. Fortunately, this involved frequent trips to Brazil and regular meetings with Davi himself to learn more and more about his mysterious people. Throughout my undergraduate career, I took five trips to Brasillia as a research assistant for my professors, using them as an excuse to see Davi again. We grew close, despite our distance, and always had more to talk about when we saw each other. I loved listening to him ramble about his tribe, about his village, about his older sister. He taught me some of his own language, enough that we could have simple conversations just between us.

This went on for years as I continued my schooling in London, even taking a few personal trips to Brazil during the winter breaks. But now, nearing the end of my graduate studies, with my Masters degree in sight, none of it could have prepared me for the events set in place just this morning.

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15 AUGUST

The morning was incredibly hot, even for Brasillia. I'm starting to believe I really am built for this kind of weather, as Dr. Gordan (my portly schnauzer of a professor) could barely stand outside for more than an hour before complaining of heatstroke. We flew in a day ago and spent most of that time unpacking. Dr. Gordan stayed in one room with his assistant Cornelius while Sarah, Nichelle, and myself stayed in the room across the hall. They were bright, American undergraduates from Dr. Gordan's class that I was an assistant for, but this was the first time they'd ever traveled to Brazil to meet Davi. I hoped they'd be as excited to meet him as I was.

We met in a local square outside of the main city, near neighborhoods where nature was left to pour in among the houses. Davi was waiting for us, as he always was. I dropped everything I held and sprinted across the dusty ground to leap into his arms. He caught me, as he always did, and we embraced as old friends, with a connection between us no one would ever replicate.

“You didn't miss me, did you?” I said in Portuguese, muffled into his chest.
“Of course I did,” he responded in his thick accent. He wasn't without a sense of humor, but sarcasm just wasn't in Davi's vocabulary. I pulled back to get a better look at him. Obviously, he had grown so much in the past decade. I barely had any frame of reference for what a male kinkajou looked like, but I firmly decided that Davi was a good one. He was broad-shouldered, tall, fur just a little lighter than mine, a long snake-like tail as dextrous as a third arm, and deep blue eyes that seemed to understand everything I tried to say, even in another language. Everything we had in common just reaffirmed my (frankly childish) attraction to him. He wore a t-shirt and jeans, but seemed out of place in them, the elaborate designs and decorations dyed into his fur just visible behind the sleeves.

He smiled back as I looked at his face, but it was different somehow. It wasn't the broad, full-bodied smile he always put his whole heart into. It was false, like a mask, hiding a sadness that remained in his eyes. Before I could ask what was wrong, he turned away and crossed over to shake hands with Dr. Gordan.

“It's good to see you again, Davi,” the professor said in his stunted, awkward Portuguese.
“It's good to see you too, Mr. Gordan,” Davi nodded. He glanced over the doctor's shoulder toward Sarah and Nichelle, the ferret and mouse girls both digging their paws awkwardly into the dirt as they waited for someone to explain what was going on.
“Davi, these are two of my students,” Dr. Gordan said in English, motioning toward the girls. “Miss Sarah and Miss Nichelle, two of Nina's classmates. Cornelius wanted to come but, heh,” Dr. Gordan chuckled, “he has a more difficult time with this heat than I do, I'm afraid.”
“It...ah...” Davi struggled to respond in English. “It...is been...was...a very hot...summer.” He smiled, obviously hoping he'd said everything correctly.
“Girls, Davi is our representative from the Naragaka people. And, frankly, most of what we do know about the Naragaka comes directly from him. The university sponsors him to come stay in Brasillia every August to meet with our students and researchers. Nina and I have known him for a very long time.” Dr. Gordan nodded approvingly in my direction. I smiled back, but took the opportunity to get Davi's attention.

“What's wrong?” I asked softly, in what little I knew his own language. “Are you alright?”
“...Yes, I am fine...but...we will talk later,” Davi mumbled. He was distracted, but by what I wasn't sure. I'd never seen him so withdrawn before.
“Unfortunately,” Dr. Gordan continued, “Davi's English is...'rough,' but he is perfectly fluent in Portuguese, so Nina and I will be happy to translate.
“They look frightened,” Davi mumbled to me, the ghost of a smile on his face.
“I don't think they've ever left school before,” I snickered back. “Everything they know is from books.”
“Can you say differently, Nina?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. I shrugged.
“I know you,” I said. “And you don't look like a book to me.”
“Davi, Nina,” Dr. Gordan said, his tongue lolling from his mouth as he shielded his eyes from the sun. “I'll buy you lunch at the cafe, let's just please get out of this dreadful heat.”

I snickered, explained what the professor said, then followed the three of them to a local cafe we made a tradition of visiting every year. Davi followed along behind, but with a shuffling slowness to his step. He seemed unwilling to go anywhere he wasn't directly prodded to.
Eventually, we all settled down out of the sun and near a fan, for Dr. Gordan's sake. Sarah and Nichelle sat across from Davi and pulled out a list of questions they had written down to ask about. He glanced at me, unsure, but I simply patted his hand. Unbeknownst to the rest of them, I also curled my tail around Davi's under the table. It was our version of holding hands while I translated for the two undergraduates.

“So...um...Davi...uh, hello!” Sarah said, nervously.
“Hello!” Davi responded brightly in English. I giggled.
“Right...so my first question is: where do the Naragaka live? Where are you from?”
“I cannot tell you that,” Davi said, shaking his head. It was almost always the first question he was asked. “We live deep in the jungle, I can say no more. We are hidden to outsiders and will remain hidden.” He shuffled his paws under his chair. “My people are not as...'accepting' as I.”
“How do you live?” Nichelle asked, right after. “What is your village like?”
“Naragaka live with their families in small homes scattered through the jungle, but all come together at our central village in times of celebration or ritual. My mother and father died many years ago, so I have been raised by my older sister. We live in the village with other small families.”

“Why are the Naragaka so isolated?” Nichelle asked again, leaning forward and glancing between Davi and myself. “And why are you the only one to visit the outside?”
“It is...very complicated,” Davi explained, like he had a thousand times before when asked the same question. “We believe that we are all spirits and bodies within nature and that naturally is how we should live. But I also believe there were many times in our people's history where we were tricked by outsiders, and so we remain hidden to protect ourselves. I do not agree with this. I think that the Naragaka live in fear of the world and it will do no good to hide from it.”

The two students paused after I relayed his answer. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to translate any of Davi's passion or conflicted heartache about his people's cowardice. They simply nodded to us and jotted down the answer in their notebooks. Davi tugged awkwardly on my tail with his own. I sighed and shook my head.
“So...um,” Sarah spoke next, flipping through her notebook to find more questions. “Is the… are all the Naragaka...like you?”

“You mean kinkajous?” I asked. Sarah nodded.
“Yes,” Davi said in English. “All kinkajou.”
I sighed, imagining a hidden town deep in the jungle filled with people that looked just like me.
“Does that mean...uh...” Sarah turned to me instead of Davi. “Nina, are you related to the Naragaka?”
“I have no idea,” I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“I believe that's a little too personal a question, Sarah,” Dr. Gordan said.
“Oh, uhm...right...okay...” Sarah mumbled. “S-sorry, Nina.”
“It's alright,” I said, waving away the issue. I sighed, quietly wishing I had more of an answer to give her.

As another pause fell over the table, the two undergrads fumbled with their notebooks to jot down more notes in the margins between their written questions. Right as Nichelle opened her mouth to speak next, a waitress appeared from the darkened corner of the kitchen with our orders.
“I think we can leave the interview be for a few minutes,” Dr. Gordan said, perking up at the sight of his Corona and wagging his stumpy tail excitedly. “Or maybe even for an hour or two,” he added as an afterthought. The waitress set plates of food in front of Nichelle and Sarah, along with a cup of water and soda, respectively. They glanced up bashfully as the waitress set down my small margarita in the middle of the table.

“Hey,” I said, glancing to the two of them. “You know the school is paying for everything, right?”
Sarah blinked back while Nichelle's eyes lit up. She turned in her chair and excitedly beckoned the waitress back.

For another few hours, we ate, drank, and laughed together, the tension slowly easing out of the room. Perhaps it was the alcohol that boosted my confidence, but I sat closer to Davi, one arm around his shoulder and playing with his fur, out tails coiled tightly together like rope. He didn't seem to mind. Sarah and Nichelle continued their interviews for Davi, but much more improvisational and relaxed, to the delight of everyone. Even Davi's unexplained air of gloom was starting to fade, laughing at the intoxicated foreign girls across from him. Dr. Gordan had to take up translation duties for a bit, though evidently a few things were lost in translation, with a few particular errors sending Davi and I into fits of giggles.
Time seemed to pass in moments; already the sky was turning a sherbert-orange by the setting sun. Dr. Gordan, who held his alcohol far more competently than his two students, offered to guide the legless pair back to the hotel. While still holding a bit of a buzz myself, I offered to stay behind while I sobered up. But truthfully, the only thing I wanted was some time alone with Davi. We left the cafe as night was beginning to fall, walking slowly between the buzzing streetlamps with our tails still entwined. He didn't talk very much and was simply content to listen to my ramblings about school and life in London and how excited I had been to see him again.

After the sun had set, we found ourselves near the middle of a dusty children's park. We sat on a large, carved log that served as a bench and listened to the nighttime birds sing from the untamed jungle in the distance. As we walked, Davi's melancholia had returned, leaving him to quietly sulk. He put on a half-hearted smile whenever he caught my gaze, but simply let his face droop when he thought I wasn't looking. My heart pounding, I made another emboldened move and took his hand in mind. He twitched once in response, but didn't try to pull away.
“There's something wrong,” I said, stating it as a fact. “I don't want you to hide it.” I tossed my hair over my shoulder and looked up at him. He continued to stare blankly at the horizon. “Tell me.”
Davi blinked, glancing toward me and sighing, he laid his tail in his lap and wrung it in his hands absentmindedly. He stayed silent a long time, gathering his thoughts, before he finally spoke.

“...I don't think I'll be able to see you again,” Davi mumbled.
My stomach lurched. Part of me always feared he'd say that. Meeting one another in the first place was due to nothing but luck in the first place. I expected Davi to vanish one day when I wasn't looking at him, to be simply gone from my life. I felt a hole opening up inside me, my hope pouring through it like sand through an hourglass. I swallowed.
“...Why...Why not?”
“Because I...am a man now,” he said, clenching his fists on his lap. “The elders...my sister...they tell me I am too old to be without a woman. Without a family of my own. They say it isn't right.” He shifted away from me, just a few inches. “I'm...I'm afraid that if I don't find a mate myself then...one will be given to me.”
“...And then you won't be able to leave the village anymore,” I said, my eyes growing sore with approaching tears. He nodded.
We sat in silence as I battled my own emotions. I should have known it was too long to last. I'd lost everything and everyone I'd ever loved. Davi was just very pleasant dream I had to wake up from eventually. It was a pattern I felt stupid for having missed.
“...I'm sorry...” I said in English, tears finally dropping into my lap. I cleared my throat, then continued in Portuguese. “If...if that's what you think you should do, then I-”

“I love you, Nina.”
I blinked, holding my breath, not sure if what he'd said was in my mind or not. I looked up from my hands to see Davi staring longingly at me.
“...Did you say something?” I asked.
“I love you,” Davi repeated, a doomed determination in his words. “I know with every part of my spirit that you are the woman I want by my side until I die. If this choice were my own, I would leave everything behind to spend even one more moment with you...I do not know if you...feel the same way...but-”
In one motion I still don't believe I actually did, I plunged into Davi's arms and nearly threw him off the bench as I kissed him. He caught himself before we both hit the ground, but I still felt like we were in free-fall. My head spun like I had a fever and my mind went blank. I didn't think about the future, about missing him, about finding a way to take him for myself. The only thing I wanted was to feel him between my arms, to feel his fur brush against mine, to feel our tails entwined together into one.

By the time I broke away from his lips, I found I was sobbing. I couldn't take a breath without jerking uncontrollably. Ashamed of the noise I was making, I buried my face in his chest and held him for as long as I could, as if my grip alone could keep him beside me forever. I wept for about ten minutes straight, maybe longer, as Davi simply held me, running his fingers through my long hair.
“...I'm sorry,” I said again, pulling away as the flow of my tears began to stem. “I wish I could make this...easy...”
“I love you, but I also love my people, my family,” Davi said, softly. “I don't want to choose one of you for the other, but it seems that I cannot.”
“You're the closest thing to family I have,” I said, looking up at his face that reminded me so much of the happy photographs of my father. “I don't have anyone.”

“That's not true,” Davi said, cupping my face in his palm and wiping a tear away with his thumb. “No matter where I am, even if we never meet again, you won't be alone in this world. No one really is.”
“Is...” I gulped, not sure what I was saying. “Is there a way...any way...that I could come with you?”
“You aren't Naragaka, Nina,” Davi said, sadly. “You're an outsider. They would not accept you. You'd be turned away into the jungle.”
“But I'm...a kinkajou,” I said, clutching my own tail. “I could fit in, I could...I could do it...”

“You are...but...” Davi shook his head. “That isn't enough. There are other kinkajou tribes in the forest, but they are not Naragaka.” He opened his mouth to speak, but a strange expression stopped him. He cocked his head, thinking quietly as he stared at me. I waited for him to speak, but instead he shook his head, as if casting off the thought, and sighed.”
“No...no...” he said quietly in his own language.
“What?” I pried, almost desperately. “What is it?”

“It's nothing,” he said. He sighed and shook his head. “They would let you stay if you were to carry a Naragaka child, but...” he shook his head again.
I paused, processing this in my head. I tried to think logically about the idea, to actually consider it as an option, but my emotions were too powerful to deny.

“Alright.”
Davi blinked, his ears twitching. He turned to me in disbelief.
“...Nina?”
“I'll do it.” I nodded, firmly. Davi raised an eyebrow, his eyes wide and his mouth hanging open.
“Nina, you don't understand. This is an...an old right of war, of battle. A way to claim women of other tribes.”
“But it's the law of the Naragaka?” I said. “That I can be with you if I carry your child?”

“I...ah...Yes...” Davi nodded, shocked. “That...that is our law. But-But that is...that is insane, Nina! You cannot...you...think about what you are saying!”
“I did,” I said, calmly.
“You have...you have to go to school! You have to become a great scientist! You live in England! What about your friends?”
“I have less tying me to London than you think,” I said. “And school will be there when I come back.”
“But...But...I...” Davi spluttered, his hand on his forehead. “We are...primitive! We live in the jungle! Our way of life is hard enough and you will...be with child!”

“People in London have babies, too,” I said, moving closer to him. “And don't say 'primitive.' That's not a very scientific word...And it isn't true.” I leaned up and kissed him again, almost having to stand up to reach his face high above me. “I would rather die than lose you, Davi. If that means having your baby, I'll do it happily.”
Davi looked away, his shocked gaze nearly burning a hole in the dirt. Eventually, his brow un-furrowed, his eyes opened, a smile began to blossom on his face.

“You are serious?” He asked with hope in his voice. “Are...are you sure? Please...think, do you want to do-”
“I do,” I interrupted. I slid closer, pressing against him, one of my hands sliding across his back. “The more I think about it, the more sure I am. I want to have your baby, Davi.”

His face brightened like sunshine, his grin nearly splitting off his face. He finally looked like that same boy I'd met eight years ago when at my lowest point. Davi wrapped his arms around me and, instead of kissing me, leapt to his feet and danced, carrying me like I was nothing. He bellowed laughter, his voice carrying through the night, loud enough to wake anyone sleeping in the apartment buildings near us.
He set me down and we talked excitedly about our plan. Davi told me it would be hard, that I wouldn't be accepted, that I would be treated badly by the tribe, but assured me that he would always be by my side. Eventually, the conversation drifted to the baby itself. He told me some of the rituals the Naragaka had to ensure healthy pregnancies. I knew of his people's pious respect of fertility, but I was going to experience it first-hand. Truthfully, I was more nervous than I let on, but I was willing to do anything to be with Davi. I've never loved anyone in my life other than my mother, but he felt like a long-lost second half to my spirit, no matter where he came from.

We split up to meet back in the morning. Davi went back to the hostel he stayed in while in the city to gather what little supplies he took with him from home. I went back to the hotel buzzing with nervous excitement. I quietly woke up Dr. Gordan and took him outside to privately tell him my plan. At first he was absolutely shocked I was willing to go through with something so drastic, but his attitude changed once he realized what I had only thought of on the train ride over: if everything went according to plan, I would be the first outsider in hundreds of years to see the home village of the lost Naragaka tribe.
Throwing on a pair of shoes and a shirt, he hurried me over to an all-night grocery store. School was beginning to start up again in Brasillia, so virtually ever store was stocked with extra supplies. He bought me a stack of notebooks and a lifetime's worth of pens to document as much as I could. He tried to give me a stack of other modern supplies, but I had to gently remind him out little we were to interfere with the lives of the tribe. But the one indulgence I gave myself was a pair of pregnancy tests I bought with shaking hands.

It's six in the morning now. I'm sitting at the hotel desk while Sarah and Nichelle sleep behind me on the beds. Obviously, I have too much energy to sleep very much tonight. I've decided to dedicate this notebook as a personal journal, separate from my field notes, and something decidedly unscientific. I've decided to write it in English as well, to preserve its privacy. Perhaps this is my chance to try my hand at writing. I've always thought I had at least one book in me. I've asked Dr. Gordan to put my affairs in order once he's back in London and to look after my mother's house while I'm gone. If everything goes as planned, I'll be seeing my colleagues again as a mother.

If nothing else, I think I've finally decided the subject of my Master's thesis.