Waterfalls

The waterfall drowned most things.

It wasn't silent—Six-Ears didn't think he'd ever get to experience silence—but it was kinder. The water broke sound into sheets, softening the edges and swallowing sharpness before it could bite. He sat just out of the spray, back against cool stone, listening the way he always did: wide, layered, and involuntary.

Footsteps reached him before the body did. Not heavy, but not careful either. Someone who doesn't have "sorry" in their bones.

Six-Ears tensed, ready to leave.

Then the footsteps stopped. A staff struck stone—tok—testing. Curious. Then a voice, talking to itself.

"Huh. The echo sounds weird here."

Six-Ears stayed.

The stranger climbed into view upside-down, hanging by his knees from a branch. His fur the same color of Flower Fruit Mountain's peaches. He turns his head, and Six-Ears sees his bright eyes, too relaxed to be cruel.

They looked at each other. Six-Ears waited for the joke, the question.

Instead, the stranger squinted. "...you hear it too, don't you?"

Six-Ears blinked. Slowly, he nodded.

The other monkey's grin widened, delighted.

"I knew it. Everyone else says it's just water."

He flipped down, landing on Six-Ears' branch. He didn't step closer, but instead silently closed his eyes and tilted his head, hearing how the sound bounced around the cliffs.

After a moment, he lowered his voice, as if he didn't want to let the waterfalls know he learned their secret. "It's louder on the left," he whispered. "There must be more stone behind the ones over there."

Six's ears twitch.

"Yes," he said, surprised at his own voice. "And the birds upstream stop singing before the wind shifts."

The stranger's eyes lit up. "You're good," he said, reverent in the way only the reckless can be. "What's your name?"

Six-Ears hesitates. Names meant conversation. Conversation meant noise.

"...My—" he answers quietly, "Most people call me Six-Ears."

"I'm Sun!" The stranger added, plopping down cross-legged. "Sun Wukong. I climb things I shouldn't and talk too much."

There was no joke. Six-Ears studied him, the waterfall roaring behind them.

"...You can sit."

Wukong beamed, victorious in the smallest way possible.

They sat. Minutes passed, probably more. Six-Ears listened—to the mountain, to Wukong's staff, to the pleasant abscence of pressure.

Eventually, Wukong spoke again, voice low. "You know, most people leave when I get quiet."

Six-Ears smiled a little. "Most people are loud when they're uncomfortable."

Wukong laughed—then cut it short when Six-Ears flinched. "Sorry."

Six-Ears looked at him then. "You don't mind? The noise."

Wukong shrugged, leaning back on his hands, gazing upon the canopy. "I make enough of my own. It's nice when someone else hears the world for me."

The words settled somewhere deep in Six-Ears' chest. For the first time in a long while, he didn't feel like he was standing at the edge of things.

He was sitting beside them.