Days 16-27: Around the Mountain

For the two weeks it took him to follow the sparrows’ path around the mountain, Mei spent most of his time thinking. He spent hours at a time contemplating how Mii and his grandmother would react upon seeing him again. How would he himself react? He was still upset that his grandmother hadn’t stood up for him, but at least she now realised that she’d been too hasty in her judgement of the situation.

Mei wasn’t sure what Mii must think of him now; she hadn’t said much to him after everyone found out. The sparrows had said that Mii had had “a lot of questions” about him and Gabu, so she would at least be open-minded.

As for how Kuro-san would react, Mei had no idea.

When he wasn’t thinking about the other goats, or worrying about how Gabu was doing without him, Mei spent his time thinking about the philosophical ideas Takkan had talked about. Was Mei being selfish by putting Gabu’s wellbeing ahead of other animals’? Or rather, he was definitely being selfish, but was that a bad thing? What was love if not valuing another person’s existence more than you would a random person’s? If Mei loved Gabu enough, did that make everything the wolf had to do okay?

Okay for whom? Mei imagined Takkan saying in response to that. Certainly not the animals he’s killing; they couldn’t care less how much you love him. But they weren’t the ones deciding how Mei thought about Gabu; Mei was, and the fact that he loved Gabu mattered to him. That wouldn’t help to convince anyone else that Gabu deserved to exist, though.

There was one thing Mei was sure Takkan was right about: Any other herbivore would leap at the chance to remove all predators from existence, and Mei couldn’t think of any reason why they’d be wrong to do so. Mei wondered whether anyone in the Emerald Forest would hurt Gabu if given the chance. It would be hypocritical of Mei to tell them they had no right to do so, seeing as he allowed the wolf to hurt countless animals whenever he went hunting. Again, Mei could think of no good solution. Perhaps their attempts to befriend the same animals Gabu hunted were destined to fail?

Except somehow, miraculously, they weren’t failing. The group of animals who chose to spend time with them had been growing every day. There were people whose names Mei didn’t even know who were happy to lie side-by-side with predators and watch the clouds pass by overhead. Maybe getting to know Gabu, just like Mei himself had done, or perhaps getting to know predators in general, was the key to looking past all the awful things they had to do to survive. Maybe people were starting to see that, despite all of that, a wolf or a fox or a bird or a spider could be a good, kind person, and being friends with them was better than being enemies.

Maybe, one day, the whole world could see that. For now, though, Mei would settle for convincing the three other goats in his life who still cared about him.