What’s left is the Delta.
Dinner ischaos in the best way.
The kids crowd the fire pit, tearing bread, passing cheese and cold cuts, their chatter hopping between Romanian and heavily accented English when they aim a sentence at Kieran. Mihai conducts it all with the ease of someone who’s done this a hundred times, pointing, correcting, laughing without ever raising his voice.
I sit on a log beside Ana, sixteen, knees pulled up, deep into an explanation of her summer project on aquatic plant biodiversity. Her Romanian comes fast; I have to lean in, concentrate. My ear will adjust in a few days.
“Want to try it in English?” I ask.
“The reeds filter sediment,” she says, gesturing toward the channel. “But also they create habitat for— How do you say?—”
“Microorganisms?”
“Yes!” She lights up. “You are engineer?”
“Student. But yes.”
“I want ecology. Or civil engineering.” She leans closer, drops back into Romanian. Her mother wants an answer soon.
“You don’t have to choose yet,” I tell her in English. “Sometimes the best work happens at the intersections.”
She rolls the word on her tongue. “Intersections,” she repeats, satisfied.
Across the fire, Kieran has been absorbed into a knot of boys arguing about football—soccer, I correct myself automatically. He’s mostly listening, asking the occasional question that sends them off again, louder, more animated. They keep switching to English, eager and competitive.
I tell myself I’m tracking the group. That this is part of my job.
Then one of the boys makes a sweeping, dramatic point, arms slicing the air, and Kieran laughs.
It’s easy. Unforced. The sound carries across the fire—warm steel blue, rounded at the edges—and I register it before I have time to decide what it means.
No sharpness. No performance.
Just him, exactly where he is.
Mihai stands and claps once. “Orientation. Then sleep. Tomorrow starts early.”
He runs through the rules—boundaries, boats, water, each other. The kids listen with varying levels of seriousness.
“Every counselor stays with five kids. Always,” Mihai says. “You fish, you navigate. They think they know everything.” He grins as the kids immediately protest.
Kieran looks at me across the fire.
I nod once, automatic, and only realize after that I’ve been holding his gaze a beat too long.
“Good,” Mihai says. “Sleep now. Morning comes fast here.”
The tent issmall but functional. Sleeping bag, foam pad, mesh window that lets in the sound of water and insects. I change in the dark, fold my clothes, lie down.
Outside, the Delta hums.
A thousand small sounds layered over each other—reeds rustling, water lapping, something distant and bird-like. The air is thick and warm, pressing against the tent fabric.
I hear movement from the tent next to mine. Kieran,settling in. A soft thud—boots, maybe. The rustle of a sleeping bag. Then quiet.
His voice drifts through the canvas, low and unhurried. “You still awake?”
I don’t know why I answer. “Yeah.”
