Embers Beneath Galuh's Feet | Part-2
Galuh ran along the warm village road, calling out for his mother and father, not knowing where to go. After half an hour of frantic searching, he found his mother—limp and coughing—resting in his father’s lap on the grounds of the village hall, which had been converted into an emergency evacuation shelter. His mother’s wrinkled face was pale, her eyes red and watery. Galuh embraced her tightly, his tears finally spilling over.
“I’m alright, Luh. But Amang...” his mother pointed toward the edge of the peat forest behind the village. Her voice was barely a whisper, as if every word cost her a portion of the dwindling oxygen.
“I tried looking for Amang near the forest edge yesterday, too, but found nothing,” his father said, his voice low.
Amang was an old orangutan—a wild creature that had often kept Galuh company during his childhood as he played near the Jelutung Swamp.
A foreboding feeling crept into Galuh’s chest. After ensuring his parents were safe at the shelter and receiving oxygen from the volunteers, Galuh stepped outside.
He gazed somberly toward the edge of the forest. Once a green bastion that symbolized life, the area was now consumed by a dance of embers that silenced the equator. The crackle of wood snapping in the flames sounded like the crushing of ancient bones.
Ignoring the warning shouts of the volunteers, Galuh recklessly plunged through the thick wall of smoke toward the Jelutung Swamp. The intense heat scorched his skin. His shoes offered no protection against the searing peat embers smoldering beneath the surface—it was as if the earth itself were boiling the ground beneath his feet. Galuh’s heart raced wildly. Every breath he took felt like swallowing shards of glass.
Amidst visibility that had been reduced to near-blindness, Galuh’s eyes caught the silhouette of a giant ulin (ironwood) tree—the only remnant of his childhood splendor still standing, now half-charred. Beneath a network of buttress roots that had begun to turn to charcoal lay a figure with reddish fur.
It was Amang; the old primate lay there, dying. Amang’s chest rose and fell with a painfully slow rhythm. His round eyes, once so gentle, were now bloodshot and watery, staring blankly toward a sky that spewed forth ash.
“Amang!” Galuh cried out, his voice hoarse, as he threw himself onto the smoldering peat soil.
He cradled the orangutan’s head in his lap. Amang did not resist; he simply gazed at Galuh with a look of heartbreaking resignation—as if nature itself were delivering its most bitter farewell. Tears spilled from Galuh’s eyes, dampening the fur that was matted with soot. His weeping was an expression of utter despair—a stark realization of how meaningless all the theories he had studied in the capital city were, if he could not save even a single life in the land of his birth.
To be continued in Part 3 or the end
