And yet, underneath the excitement, there’s something else: worry.
Not about me. About him.
The more I learn about the Monster Network, the more impressed I am. It’s ingenious—a sprawling, multilayered system of magical and technological infrastructure, connecting beings who can’t safely show their faces to the physical world. Boone’s “office” is a cobbled-together hub of half-broken human tech threaded with enchanted fiber-optic lines, anchored into the rock with old runes and new code. It shouldn’t work.
But it does, beautifully.
He shrugs it off when I say as much. Says things like “It’s just duct tape and wards” or “I’m only keeping the lights on.” But he carries it. All of it. The responsibility. The invisible weight of being the one monsters call when their region is glitching or their protections are fraying or someone is panicking about some human documentary crew getting too close.
He goes to the Solstice once a year and makes a long journey of it, checking nodes, rebooting relays, fixing whatever weird magical hardware the Yeti thought would be “fun to try this decade.”
The rest of the time?
He’s here. Alone.
Sure, he has the chat. I’ve already seen how quickly#us-cryptid-opsfills with complaints and jokes and emergencies. They rely on him. They tease him. They call him in the middle of the night to ask if their lair ward can be set to “annoying teenagers only.”
But in person? In the flesh?
From what I can tell, he spends eight, maybe nine months of the year physically by himself.
I know a little about that kind of loneliness.
It’s strange, because on paper my life is full. I have a family who loves me. Parents who check in. A brother who sends me pictures and voice notes and ridiculous memes. Friends, scattered but real.
I chose this profession. I love it. I love the forests and the wetlands and the deserts, the act of observing and understanding and documenting. I love the feeling of being a tiny part of something vast and alive.
But flitting from park to park, season to season, changes you. You become a traveler in your own life. Always arriving, never quite staying, leaving just as a place starts to feel like home.
The emptiness sneaks up in quiet moments. At night in a tent, listening to your own breathing. On long drives between projects. In the silence after a video call ends and the room feels too still.
Now, though?
I wake up and there’s a thread pulling me forward. A sense of… purpose sounds too lofty, but it’s close. A sense ofsomeonewaiting, a particular presence planted in the landscape of my days like an anchor.
I don’t know what’s happening with Boone. Not really. We haven’t used any big words. No declarations. No official labels.
I know I want more. More time. More of his stupid grumpy affection. More of his laughter, which he pretends he doesn’t have and absolutely does. More of the way he softens when I lean against him, as if he can’t quite believe I trust him that much.
Every morning, that wanting wakes up with me.
I tap my pen against the page.
Time to make sure the human side of my life lets me follow where that desire is pointing.
I scribblevisit rangersin the margin and circle it.
Because if I’m going to vanish into the wild with a legendary cryptid for a multistate trek and a secret monster convention, I need to tell the people who think I’m “just” a researcher something that will not get helicopters dispatched after me.
Gladys looksat me like I’ve just told her I’m eloping with a black bear.
“You want to… cut the season short?” she says slowly, stirring too much powdered creamer into her coffee. We’re in the tinyRanger HQ, sitting at a scuffed table that’s seen more paperwork than wood grain in the last decade.
“Not exactly short,” I say. “More like… relocated.”
Her brows arch.
I slide the folder across the table, because nothing helps a lie land like backing it with too many documents.
