In thick black grass a creature, petite and crumpled, drops then rises wet and wobbly. An adult gazelle leaps from the spot and flees.

The wet one no longer visible. We sit fixed, staring. A pinched memory: stepping off an escalator in a neon city, leaving something soft and irrevocable behind. The gazelle in the near distance halts, head points to a hyena trotting down the slope towards the black grass.

I swear I hear blood pumping through my ears in the silence of our van. The hyena nears then veers, back tracks, follows another calling.

Now the mother sprints towards the young one hiding. We can hear the mother bleating. We see the calf rise. The mother nuzzles and licks. It begins to nurse for mere seconds, but she interrupts, steps out of the dark haven, turns her head for it to follow. The calf teeters.

Oh to gather it up, to rub down the mother’s tawny body. Again the gazelle steps out, turns, touches her baby nose to nose. The calf totters after her. The two pass into the light grasses. I breathe.