I was out in the bush, a cold sunny windy day. I was near a river, just sitting down. I would usually be asleep but for some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep. So I walked down to the river hoping there might be a fish I could catch when I saw a strange long brown thing sitting on top of the water. It was a peculiar thing, it was long and brown like a hollow log and had 4 straight long brown sticks that went in and out of the water.

In the long brown thing were tall, skinny animals. I recognized them, they were the same kind of animal that killed my cubs and tried to kill me. They looked like they had big cubs with them too! Suddenly wind and rain came through. It was powerful. The rain felt like sharp rocks and the wind nearly knocked me off my feet. The long brown thing flipped over and for a moment the pups and the hunters were stuck underwater. I thought I could get to one of them and so I jumped into the freezing water and began swimming. I lost feeling in my body – the water was so cold. The current was forceful, I felt my body sliding down the river, but with some strong whips of my tail I was able to reach one of the pups. I grabbed it by a leg and managed to drag it out of the water and lay it on the sand. I laid down and fell asleep. I was exhausted from the struggle with the river. I felt like I had been running all day and night and I needed a break. It was too much. I’m not sure why I rescued that pup, I knew it wasn’t mine, how could it be? It didn’t even have a tail. But I knew it needed nurturing. When I pulled the pup out of the water I felt a sort of ache being soothed, deep in my soul. I wanted to nurture this pup like it was my own. 

This paragraph is Episode 1 of Levi’s response to the novel ‘Into That Forest’ by Louis Nowra.