She is not doing anything; not that he can see. Sitting on the edge of the boards, looking off into the branches around them. Her long hair plaited and falling over one shoulder. She never looks down. Not since that first week. He thinks about the way he used to sneak up on her when she sat like that, creeping up as silently as the large cats that sometimes pass by overhead, then suddenly-- pounce! Her frightened scream as she hears his roar, turning suddenly, his strong arm around her waist in case she loses her balance. Kissing her half-angry mouth then until she laughs, high among the hanging grey mosses.
         He thinks he is still strong enough to catch her, if she should fall. But he can't creep like he used to. The groaning of his joints would give him away. Instead, he walks over to where she sits and, moth-gentle, rests his hand on the back of her neck.

        She sits cross-legged on the boards, breaking open the nuts she has found. Today there is no wind, and the dense moist heat reaches up and tries to suffocate her body. She sweats. And no matter how many times she braids it up away from her skin, strands of her hair fall down again and cling to her forehead, stick to her back. Uncomfortably, she tries to contain them one more time in her braid.
        She never liked her hair, as a child. Always tugging on it, she remembers, always reaching for the pair of scissors in her mother's sewing bag. Her hand always slapped away.
        But he loved her hair. Every night when they first came up here, he would tell her so. It is like a ritual by now. He lengthens himself like a cat, lies down on the cushiony pile of moss that is their bed. She kneels by him, her hair pulled over her shoulder, and slowly, slowly, unfolds each kink in her black, glossy braid. Then she lies down too, her cheek on his thigh. He reaches for her hair, sighs as he spreads its length all along his chest and belly. "So beautiful," he tells her, and she understands that from now on, it is the softest thing they will know.
        She unbraids her hair, which is grey like shades of the pale mosses above her, and pulls it across her face, staring out across the branches as if through a cloud.

        He never feels the ground below him any more. Never feels that vehement, greedy pulling towards the black soil so far below. He has gotten used to life among the air. But it has taken a long time. When he thinks hard, he can remember what it was like, one foot in front of the other, carefully, carefully. The red fruit only a few more paces away, his mouth watering. The ground tugging at him from below. The branch trembles-- he almost slips, but crouches and finds himself still balanced. The frightening triumph of besting gravity reminding him of the exhileration of knowing her for the first time.
        He learned later how to run along the branches, should she call him, faster than monkeys. Could leap from branch to branch like a cat. Could swing, jump, drop...now he is learning, as his body slows him down, how it really is to move slowly. The branch, underneath him, trembles. He smiles.

He remembers how frightened she was when they first came up here. How she would spread her palms flat against the boards as the tree branches shifted during the night, staring straight up as if she were on a tossing, pitching ship.
        She had never been up high before. Had not been allowed to climb trees. Knew little of the world. She was so young, and was only visiting for a short while. But she knew, as he knew: and so, secretly, secretly...He was a better climber than she. He went up first, he laid down the boards, he attached the knotted rope that still lies in a neat, greying heap in one corner. No one knew where they had gone.
         She is lying on her stomach on the boards. Watching the ground below. He comes to lie next to her, puts his arm across the small of her back, doesn't need to look down to know what she is watching. He looks at her, instead, her beautiful smooth, soft face, and wipes the wetness from under her eyes. "They will think it is raining," he tells her, hoping for a smile. But her eyes do not turn to him as the people, her people, pass below them, never to return.

        She never looks over the edge any more; what point in that? She knows she will fall if she tries to walk on the ground. If she can not interpret the quiet trembling and shifting of the tree branches under her feet; if everything is shock-still, she will not know how to move.
         She cannot see that proud old claustrophobic house from up here. It is probably gone, anyway, destroyed in just a few years by the ravenous jungle vines and lichens, seeping mosses and dangerously bright hungry flowers that she has come to know so well. The last time she even looked at the ground was years and years and years ago, as her family passed by. She could barely see them, she was so high up, but she could see that they were all dressed in black. When they left that house, she had been gone one week and three days. They must have thought that she was dead; caught by a jungle cat, or worse. And they could not stay any longer than they already had to find out for sure, not since they were so sure of what had happened anyway.
         Watching them from above, she had cried for the last time.
        He pushes her hair back from her forehead, wiped a tear off her cheek. "They'll think it's raining," he says, but she doesn't want to smile. Not until they are all gone. She weighs two things: the calls and the wailings of the small, small people down below, so far away; and the fevered promise of his hands and kisses. His promises of forever. We will grow old with each other up here all alone together, he has whispered, and she imagines her breasts getting heavier, her hair longer. Maybe children. Now, weeping with the choice, she does not turn her eyes to look at him, but she has already decided.

        The morning light falls on her gently, persuasively. She blinks twice, and squints upwards. She can not see very well any more; in the mornings she used to be able to determine each individual leaf swaying above her. But now they blur together into a high ceiling of green lace. She can still see nearby things, though.
        She rolls gently over onto her elbow. She no longer has to be careful of the boards scratching her thin, pale skin. She can remember, though it is fading along with all her memories, a time when the boards are rough, broken, full of splinters. She can see that from where she stands on an opposite branch. She has climbed all that way...for this? He is already crouched up there, waiting for her. "I'll get splinters," she says, nervous, and he holds out his hand to help her up, shakes his head. "I will bring moss for you to lie on. I will bring you fruits. If a splinter hurts you, I will break it." Now the wood is smooth, almost enameled from the friction of their bodies. She lies on her side and watches his shadow-dappled face in the morning light.

        From high above the treehouse, he pauses in collecting a hanging fruit to look down at her. She moves in silence among the branches. He realizes for the first time that her hair is grey, but it doesn't sadden him. They have gotten so used to each other that neither one needs to say anything for the other to understand. They pass long days in silence, sometimes, with only the comforting touch of their bodies between them at night.
        The first time they spoke, they had said nothing trivial. Come be with me, he had said, smiling seriously, and she had just looked at him.
        She sits there in the porch rocker, crossing her legs at the ankle and fanning herself with a reed-woven fan. She is dressed in long pale lace, and he can see her buttoned shoes beneath the edge of her dress. Her cheeks are red and glistening from the heat; her hair is neatly tied back, but strands cling to her forehead. After he speaks, her eyes become dark pools, she says nothing. Suddenly, footsteps coming up towards the porch from behind the closed house door; and then she whispers, softly behind her fan, Come to me tonight.
        That was all. He had dodged around the corner of the house, and someone had opened the house door and asked her who she had been talking to. His heart had been beating so hard he didn't hear her reply.