The sun beat down on the savannah, baking the air until it shimmered. Elan the elephant felt the heat on his ears and the grumbling emptiness in his belly. Ahead, he watched a dung beetle struggle with its prize. Puffing up his chest, Elan lowered his head and gave a nearby fallen log a mighty shove. The log didn’t budge. He only succeeded in bumping his forehead against the rough bark.
“Oof,” he grunted, shaking his head. “I wish I were big like Daddy. He could move the whole thing with one foot.”
Ahead, his father Bheem plodded on, his silence as vast as his size. To Elan, he seemed to be doing nothing at all.
When they crested a rise, Elan saw a family of warthogs by a waterhole, the piglets squealing as their father received a grassy crown. “Mama,” Elan scoffed, “why are they giving him a hat? He’s just standing in the mud.”
Mala, his mother, nudged him. “Today is a day for noticing, little one.”
“Noticing what?” Elan complained. “Daddy just walks in the front. I’m the one who found that beetle.”
Mala stopped, her gaze soft but firm. “Then let’s notice together. Your father has brought us to this grove. Forget the leaves for a moment. Close your eyes and just listen. Tell me what you hear.”
Elan huffed but did as he was told. The world was a wall of sound: the buzz of cicadas, the chatter of weaver birds, the distant call of a dove.
“Now,” Mala murmured, “tell me what you don’t hear.”
Suddenly, he understood. The cicadas had stopped. The birds were gone. The air was heavy with a waiting silence. He opened his eyes. The world looked the same, but it felt wrong. A scent, musky and sharp, touched the air. He saw a flicker of tawny gold in a dense thicket, a color that screamed danger.
He instinctively tensed for a trumpet, a charge, a show of force. But Bheem did none of those things. Instead, he seemed to grow even more still, absorbing all the sound and motion around him. He shifted his weight, a subtle, geologic movement, planting himself like an ancient boulder between his family and the unseen threat. A vibration, lower than any sound, pulsed from his chest and into the very ground beneath Elan’s feet. It was not a roar, but a statement of absolute, immovable presence.
In the thicket, the patch of gold vanished. The tension in the air evaporated, and a lone cicada began its hesitant song, quickly joined by the others. The world was theirs again.
Only then did Bheem move. He walked calmly toward the acacia tree that stood closest to the now-empty thicket—a tree whose leaves were a brighter, more tender green than any of the others. It was a tree others would be too fearful to approach. With his massive trunk, he reached high, curled it around a branch laden with the best leaves, and bent it down to Elan’s height.
Elan looked from the leaves, to the empty thicket, to his father’s calm, patient eyes. Strength wasn’t a shove or a loud noise. It was a quiet vibration that made the world safe enough for a child to eat.
He pushed his head against his father’s immense leg, the bark of his skin a comforting weight.
“Thank you, Daddy,” Elan whispered, his voice full of a new, quiet awe. “For the leaves… and for the silence it took to get them.”