Otto the Elephant Who Never Forgot

Otto remembered everything.

He remembered the day he was born — grey sky, warm mud, his mother's rumble like the deepest note of the deepest drum. He remembered the first time he tasted mango — sweet and sticky and better than anything he'd imagined. He remembered the names of every bird that nested in the trees around the watering hole, and their songs, and what time of day they sang them.

He had an excellent memory.

He had no friends.

This was not because the other animals disliked him. They didn't. They found him a little overwhelming, if they were honest. Otto had a tendency, when meeting new animals, to recite everything he knew about them, very quickly, before they could say hello.

"You're a zebra!" he said to the first zebra who ambled past. "Zebras have stripes that are unique to each individual, like fingerprints. Your left ear has a notch in it, which I will remember. You were born in the dry season — I can tell by your colouring. You like the grass near the north bank better than the south bank. Shall we be friends?"

The zebra blinked. Then it walked away quite briskly.

This happened with the giraffes. With the baboons. With three different warthogs.

Otto was discouraged. He sat by the watering hole and looked at the still water and tried to remember if he had ever had a friend. He hadn't. He would have remembered.

Then one afternoon, a tortoise appeared.

She was very small — so small that at first Otto mistook her for a rock. She moved so slowly that by the time Otto noticed she was not a rock but a tortoise, she had been making her way toward the watering hole for quite a long time.

Otto watched her.

He knew a great many facts about tortoises. He prepared them all, ready to recite.

The tortoise reached the water's edge and began to drink, slowly and thoroughly, as tortoises do.

Otto opened his mouth.

And then — for reasons he couldn't quite explain — he closed it again.

He sat down beside her instead.

They were quiet together for a while. The water rippled. A heron stood on one leg nearby. The afternoon light turned golden.

After some time, the tortoise said, "Hello."

"Hello," said Otto.

More silence.

"I'm Meri," said the tortoise.

"I'm Otto," said Otto.

Meri nodded and continued drinking.

Otto noticed that he had not said a single tortoise fact. He had not said that tortoises can live for over a hundred years, or that their shells are made of the same material as their bones, or that Meri's particular shell pattern suggested she was — in his estimation — approximately forty years old.

He hadn't said any of it.

"The water is nice today," Meri said, eventually. "After all the heat."

"Yes," said Otto. "It is."

He found, quite suddenly, that he wanted to ask her something rather than tell her something.

"Do you like the grass on the north bank or the south bank?" he asked.

Meri considered this with great seriousness, the way tortoises consider everything.

"North," she said. "It's shadier."

"Me too," said Otto, though he had always eaten on both and had no preference before this moment. He found that he had one now.

They sat together until the sun went down.

It was the longest conversation Otto had ever had with anyone, and also the quietest. They had said perhaps thirty words altogether. He could have counted them exactly.

He didn't.

When Meri finally rose to go — which took a little while — she looked at him.

"Same time tomorrow?" she said.

Otto felt something warm in the large, memory-filled space of his chest.

"I'll be here," he said.

He was. Every day after that, he was.

And in all the days and all the quiet hours he spent with Meri, he never recited a single tortoise fact.

He didn't need to. He was too busy being interested in what she would say next.

The End.