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"It's a very vigorous hybrid," admitted Kenishwa. "Rather more vigorous than expected. The oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water aspects of its metabolism are within the required parameters. The growth pattern is exceptional; not only do the branches grow at up to forty centimetres a day, so do the aerial roots."

"So," Cornelius Bracken was lead for more than half the botanicals projects, "what positive risks have we identified for the project?"

Saabbuk sniffed the air cautiously.  Here, under the lowest tier of branches, predators stalked in permanent twilight.  This was the realm of the bole predators, of aswengu and cobdru the constrictor snakes, of dabu the little climbing pack hunter that could rip an adult male to shreds, and of morku the hunting lizard.  Moisture dripped constantly from above, all of it runoff or condensation for no rain made it this far through the layers of canopy.  It was quiet because there was little air movement and none of the small bird life found in the upper canopy.  The staples of the of the predators’ diets were the fungus feeders, the insectivors that turned over the humus and the root diggers that dwelt on the ground itself.

Few of the people came down here, Saabbuk didn’t blame them, the risks were great and the atmosphere was oppressive.  Those that did come were mainly bachelors with sleeping nests on the branch tier directly above, seasoned and solitary males, with only a few inquisitive adolescents leavening the mix.

Saabbuk came here because there was a chance for great gain.

The people were tree dwellers, living on platforms that rode the branches of the world tree, sustaining themselves with the fruit of epiphyte species and the small fauna of the upper tiers.  They harvested building materials from small forests that grew on the broader branches.  What they lacked was materials harder than wood for tools.

That was what drew the males here to the dark just above the ground.  The root diggers exposed stones when they dug for their food and a quick male could gather those up before something gathered him.  Its uses made stone a valuable trade commodity.  A backpack full of stone, carefully traded up the branch tiers, could supply Saabbuk with healing teas for the season ahead, stock up his twine supply and provide a waterproof cloth to add to his sleeping nest.

Just as importantly, at his age, a successful stone gatherer was a desirable mate to many unpaired females.  No male he knew wished to be a bachelor forever.

Mevvi could tell from looking at him that the strange boy was probably from the branch layer below.  People who lived here on the topmost branch layer, like her family, tended to have grey or even green-grey fur and their tails rings were barely lighter than their body fur.  This boy had crisp, cream tail rings and a reddish-brown body – too dark for the families she knew and that flash of light on his tail could attract one of the sharp-eyed airborne predators even through the leaf canopy.  Like Mevvi, this boy was still of a size where the tormu and the larger hoku were a danger.

“Thank you for reminding me.”  Back down below the leaves the dark furred boy ducked his head apologetically, adding, “It’s just that I wanted to see what the clouds used to show me.  What are you up here for?”

“Boys!”  Mevvi’s snort was credible imitation of her mother’s.  “I’m working.  I’m collecting erimi blossoms so we can dry them to make the healing teas.”

“Oh,” Kuttik’s response was long drawn out and thoughtful, “I’m Kuttik, I should have said.”  He scratched behind one ear with his hand in embarrassment.  The first time he’d met a member of a family he didn’t know and he had completely forgotten his manners.

“I’m Mevvi,” she said sweetly in return.  She refrained from indicating a territory claim, after all her family didn’t really control anything this far from the platform.

“So,” asked Kuttik, reassured that he wasn’t too close to someone’s home without an invitation, “aren’t you really young to be doing something like that on your own?”  Mother, Grandmother and Greatgrandmother traded for the healing teas with erimi and yuki in them.  Kuttik only knew that they were expensive.

“Erimi flowers right at the top of the canopy,” Mevvi explained, “Because I’m smaller I can get right up to the flowers and take much less of the plant when I pick them.  Then the plant flowers again sooner and we can come back for more.”

“Ah,” Kuttik was satisfied with that.  “Can I help for a while?”

This is written to ellenmillion

Kuttik was no longer a child but not yet an adult.  He was close enough to childhood to miss being able to hear the clouds but not nearly old enough yet to leave his birth platform forever.  He would live under his mother’s eye and his father’s protection for a decade more before he moved off to either a bachelor’s nest or another family’s platform.  For now, he was exploring.

All the young males did it, poking around to see where the trunks and branches of the world tree could take them.

His home branch layer was well lit by shafts of sunlight falling through breaks in the canopies above and shade-dappled splotches filtered by the leaves, thus the food bearing epiphytes grew well there.  It was home to neither the large raptors that hunted the upper canopies nor the arboreal predators of the boles and lower branches.  For these reasons this branch layer was where most of his kind lived, on large, branch-borne platforms built and maintained by maternal lines.

Kuttik’s youngest maternal uncle, Hassuk, was fascinated by the lower branches where the sunlight never fell.  Hassuk claimed to have been close enough to the ground to see it.  Kuttik thought Hassuk’s focus on the branch level below theirs was because that’s where his new friend, Talli, lived...

Kuttik interest was in the branch levels above theirs.  The next level up, the uppermost of the three where their kind lived, was much brighter with more direct sunlight and less filtering.  Kuttik found that the increased light made him feel active and more energetic, making it easier to bounce from limb to limb, hand over hand along vines and jump almost impossible gaps when he needed to.

And he’d found a way up.  He could only use it because he was still small, in another year, two, it wouldn’t bear his weight, but for now...  He cautiously stuck his head up through the leaves and was rewarded with the view the clouds had shown him as a child: treetop canopy as far as the eye could see with nothing but blue sky above it.  Sunlight reflecting off leaves of the world tree while here and there columns of blue and gold butterflies danced over them in the sun.

“You don’t want to stay there for too long,” the voice of a girl his own age warned from behind him.  “Hoku or tormu will catch you if you stick your head up like that.”

Kirri scurried to the side of the platform on the great world tree where her family lived and held onto the railings with her hands and tail.

She sniffed the breeze again.  The clouds were coming.

The clouds were fun.  The clouds told her stories and she told them stories back.

The white mist, a thin one this one, flowed across the platform on the breeze.  The eddy around Kirri stayed long enough to whisper to her of: oceans and seabirds that only perched to breed, lay eggs and rear their chicks; gold and blue butterflies dancing far above over the topmost canopy of the world tree; and a place in the long-ago growing only grass and flowers.  In return Kirri told the cloud about the ripe numcha fruit she’d had at lunch and the renyi vine being trained over her sleeping nest.  Then the cloud was gone, carried on by the breeze.

Kirri would tell the others what she’d heard when they all sat down to eat their evening meal.  Mama, Grandmama and Greatgrandmama all said it was important to listen to what the clouds told you while you could still hear them and to share what they said with others.

Mama told her at bedtime the things the clouds had told her when she was little.

Mama told her too how once, in the long-ago, there’d been no world tree covering the land and there’d been a different people in the world.  How when the world tree began to grow those people realised they had to go away.  How some of them had helped Kirri’s kind become people when they were gone, and how others couldn’t bear to go completely but had left parts of themselves behind, to wander with the clouds and carry stories to the children.