He lifts me gently off his lap, sets me down like I’m made of something breakable, then hands me my duffel. One kiss to the crown of my head.
“Will you be okay until we talk?” he asks. “You need to know—this distance? This delay? It’s not about you, Coralie. It’s me trying to do the right thing.”
I swallow the lump building in my throat, the one that comes every time I think too hard about how temporary this might still be. “I’ll be fine,” I lie with a smile. “I’ll come find you at your office the day after we land?”
He nods. Presses his thumb against the side of my neck, like he’s marking the place for later. Then he’s gone.
We spend the rest of the morning hiking trails that coil through lava fields and thickets of endemic flora, keeping our eyes peeled for giant tortoises, finches, and the occasional marine iguana that might’ve wandered inland, basking like little prehistoric kings.
Every creature we see feels mythic—like they belong more to story than science. I’ve read Darwin’sVoyage of the Beagletwice and highlighted so much ofOn the Origin of Speciesthe pages are practically neon, but hearing Holden and Dr. Kymbert add their own observations makes it all feel new again.
“That one,” Dr. Kymbert says, pointing toward a dome-shelled tortoise chewing slowly on a low cactus pad, “is likely from the Santa Cruz population. Shorter neck, rounded shell. They evolved to browse vegetation closer to the ground.”
“Unlike the ones on Española,” Holden adds beside Tristan, “which developed saddleback shells and longer necks to reach taller shrubs. Same ancestral lineage—radically different forms depending on the environment.”
I raise a brow. “Niche differentiation. Natural selection’s greatest hits, volume one.”
Holden gives me a side-smile. “Darwin didn’t actually know what species the tortoises were when he first arrived. He was more focused on the finches, but it was the mockingbirds that tipped him off.”
“Which no one talks about enough,” I reply. “Finches get all the glory.”
“They have better PR,” he says, smirking, then points to a bird perched on a twisted branch nearby. “That one’s probably a cactus finch. See the longbeak?”
“It’s wild how different they look just island to island,” Emma says. “Like nature was playing a slow-motion game ofwhat if.”
Dr. Kymbert turns from where she’s sketching a tortoise shell in her notebook. “And still is. Evolution doesn’t stop—it just quiets when we stop paying attention.”
We eventually say goodbye to Floreana, boarding the speedboat back to San Cristóbal—the reigning sea lion kingdom—and pile into the island’s tiny airport. It’s the kind of place where one runway rules all, and you can see the entire thing the second you step inside. A few short strides and you’ve cleared customs.
Our bags go through the organic material scanner, the same way they did when we first arrived. Nothing from the islands leaves with us—no coral, no volcanic rock, not even a grain of sand. Imagine an ecosystem so delicately calibrated that one invasive seed, one unintended microbe, could unspool centuries of equilibrium? Yeah. Dr. Kymbert knew exactly what she was doing bringing us here.
While we wait for our flight, I sit cross-legged near the gate with Emma and Chloe, deep in one final debate about the infamous chickens of Hawai‘i. Both of them confirm—yes, they’re real, and yes, they’re everywhere. On sidewalks, on beaches, in the middle of the road like they own it. I truly wasn’t hallucinating the few times I’ve seen them.
“They’re descendants of junglefowl brought over by ancient Polynesians,” Emma says.
“And later they bred with domestic chickens from settlers,” Chloe adds.
As if summoned by the academic gods, Dr. Kymbert walks over just then, her coffeesloshing slightly in a reusable cup.
“Hurricanes in the ’80s and ’90s ripped through backyard coops and released thousands of domestic chickens into the wild, too, which is why they’re everywhere.”
She stays there with us, one eyebrow raised, waiting for the moment the facts settle in.
We all blink up at her.
“That… explains so much,” I say.
Emma squints. “So the chickens are like… a feathery example of colonization and climate disaster all in one?”
“Basically,” Dr. Kymbert says, and smiles. “Also a pretty solid example of evolutionary chaos. The Galápagos are delicate because they’ve been protected. But Hawai‘i’s been disrupted over and over again. You can see it in the plants, the birds, even the bugs.”
She sits on the bench next to us.
“Did you know,” she adds, “Hawai‘i has lost more native bird species than anywhere else on the planet?”
We all fall quiet.
“Which,” she says, “is exactly why we do this kind of work.”
