I will never forget the sound. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even clear. But it stopped the forest.
The Angkor Wat trees were breathing the way they always do at dawn—slow, ancient, patient. Birds had begun their calls when something else broke through the stillness. A cry. Thin. Shaking. New. It was the sound of a newborn who did not understand why his mother was no longer there.
They later said his name was Andrew.
I was walking near the old stone path when I heard it again. Not the full cry of hunger—this was smaller, weaker, like a baby calling out with the little strength he had left. Each breath felt like a question: Where are you, Mom?
Somewhere in the forest, a mother was waking up to silence where her child should have been.
Andrew lay wrapped in a cloth too large for his tiny body. His hands moved instinctively, opening and closing, reaching for something familiar. The forest offered no answers. Only roots, moss, and shadows stretching between the temples.
The cry came again, and this time it felt desperate. Not panic—newborns don’t know panic yet—but need. Pure, helpless need. Every sound he made felt like a call meant only for one person in the world.
His mother.
I remember kneeling nearby, afraid to move, afraid to scare him, afraid that if the forest swallowed his voice, no one would hear him again. The trees stood tall and silent, as if listening too.
Then, faintly, another sound appeared. Footsteps. A woman’s voice breaking as she called his name again and again. The kind of voice that has already lost something and refuses to accept it.
When she found him, she didn’t scream. She collapsed.
She gathered Andrew against her chest, pressing her face into the cloth, breathing him in as if to reassure herself he was real, that he was warm, that he was alive. Andrew’s crying stopped almost instantly. His body relaxed. His hands stilled.
He had found her again.
That morning, the Angkor forest returned to its rhythm. Birds resumed their calls. The wind moved the leaves. But something had changed.
Because for a brief moment, the forest had carried the smallest voice imaginable—and refused to let it disappear.
