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Azari's Apology

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By Eli Faigle & Justin Asante
Illustrated by Saffron Buscemi

Azari, the young mountain Gorilla, lives in the Congo Rainforest with his friends, Pongo the Parrot, Leonard the Leopard, and Oscar the Okapi. 

One day, Azari is casually looking for his food in the forest when he stumbles on a rock, falls onto Pongo the Parrot, and breaks one of his wings!

Azari quickly tries to apologize but Pongo scurries into the forest and out of sight before Azari can get his nerves together and speak. Later that day, Azari starts to feel a little lonely and goes looking for Leonard.

Azari starts wandering around and calling out for Leonard the Leopard, but accidentally scares away his lunch prey yelling. Leonard blames Azari for this and snarls and growls at him before disappearing into the jungle.

Azari hunches over and frowns. He didn’t mean for his friends to get hurt. Azari was trudging through the forest when suddenly he had a plan. Still trudging, he searches for Oscar the Okapi, being very careful to both not scare him or fall on him. 

Azari searches all over for Oscar. He climbs up tall trees and looks under every rock, but he just can not seem to find Oscar. Azari is still in need of a friend and some encouragement when he realizes the sun is setting. He starts on his way home, but then realizes he has gotten lost in the jungle looking for Okapi! As the sun sets, Azari becomes colder and starts to lie down to try and sleep.

As he is drifting off, he sees a set of eyes. “Who- who’s there?” Azari says, shaking with fear. Then, to his surprise Oscar the Opaki comes out of the bush. “What are you doing here?” Oscar asks. Azari jumps with joy and explains everything to Oscar, including how he accidentally made his friends angry and how he needs Oscar’s help to make things right and to make peace with Pongo and Leonard.

Oscar agrees to help, but makes Azari realize that he can not apologize for him. Azari runs some ideas by Oscar, but Oscar does not think feeding Pongo to Leonard will help and tells Azari he can not avoid confrontation with his two friends, and he must simply apologize for his mistakes, hoping his friends will understand they were accidents.

 Azari finally agrees and attempts to build up the courage to confront his two angry companions.The next day, he gathers his friends and apologizes for everything he has done. His longtime friends accept the apology, and to Azari’s surprise, apologize to him for having harsh reactions to Azari’s mistakes. The three friends spend the night together, and go on as if nothing has ever happened, leaving the past in the past.