He steadies himself, laughs shakily, and reaches the trap, clinging there one-armed while he pulls the SD card free and tucks a new one in place. He pats the camera casing as if it can feel gratitude. Then he slowly makes his way back down, boots finding holds by instinct.
Only when both his feet are on the ground again do I let out the breath I’ve been holding.
Ridiculous. He does this all the time. This is what he came here for. It’s what Iwatch him do, season after season.
He has no idea someone’s quietly catastrophizing on his behalf.
“Okay,” he says, pocketing the used SD card like a prize. “One down. Two more to check before I admit my knees don’t bend like they used to.”
He moves to the edge of the rock outcrop, gazing out over the valley. From where I’m hidden back in the tree line, I see him silhouetted against the pale sky—hat pulled off, curls ripped free by the wind, eyes half lidded as he takes it all in.
Down below, the forest stretches in endless shades of green and brown and shadow. Rivers glint like silver threads where the light catches them. Snow lingers in broken patches on the higher peaks, stubborn and glittering.
This is what my kind has spent centuries protecting. Not in the way humans protect things—with fences and paperwork and slogans—but by existing quietly, by nudging, by scaring off poachers with “ghost stories” and pushing hiking trails awayfrom fragile spots. We are the rumor that keeps a few feet of distance between human greed and the heart of the forest.
And yet, for all their mess, humans have made me care about individual trees more than once. About species. About futures. Elias especially, with his notebooks and his careful hands and his stupid, earnest desire to understand and repair.
A deep ache settles beneath my ribs: a conflict of loyalties I don’t like examining.
Humans are the reason summers are hotter, winters are stranger, storms are more violent.
They’re the reason salmon runs have thinned, glaciers have shrunk, and entire sections of forest have gone quiet.
And yet here stands this one—soft around the middle, curls wild, shirt untucked—doing everything he can to measure the damage and imagine solutions.
Attraction is bad enough. Respect is worse.
He hums again, some tuneless little song under his breath, and I swear the ridge feels different with him on it. Brighter somehow, a little looser, and less tired.
He fishes a granola bar from his pocket, tears it open with his teeth, and immediately gets a smear of chocolate on his thumb. He licks it off absently, eyes still fixed on the valley.
My brain short-circuits.
Absolutely not.
Nope.
“We do not find that sexy,” I tell myself under my breath. “We absolutely do not?—”
My pocket vibrates.
The sound is muffled but startling in the quiet—like a trapped hornet.
For a split second, my heart jumps, thinking Elias somehow heard me or sensed me as he paused and seemed to listen hard before shrugging it off.
I fumble my phone out of my apron pocket and glance at the screen. The Monster Network admin panel glares back at me, angry and red.
ALERT: US-WEST NODE LATENCY SPIKE – POSSIBLE PARTIAL OUTAGE
Source: Regional Cluster – Yellowstone / Upper Geyser Basin
Of course.
Of course the servers choose now to melt down.
A new message pops up over the alert, from our beloved secretary.
MothAkai: Hey, Boone!
