By the light of their headlamps, Sarah looked over the woman’s ankle. She didn’t seem badly hurt enough to need serious medical attention—but she was injured enough so that Rita had to support her as they made their slow, careful path back to their sleeping bags. Sarah ran ahead to find Binita, who agreed to examine Selassie’s ankle.
“You will not die,” Binita pronounced. “That is my professional opinion. No long hikes, though.”
“If you insist,” Selassie joked, though her voice was strained enough that it was clear she was in pain.
Binita borrowed some of Ren’s first aid tape to wrap the ankle while Selassie continued to insist that there was no need to call the boat back. Instead, the two friends turned in for the night, chatting quietly with each other in the darkness.
Grisha turned in soon after them, saying that he had to get back on an early schedule before his return flight to Europe on Saturday. He had some kind of jetlag plan mapped out that involved him waking up at four in the morning for the dawn shoot. Then Jack returned to the sleeping area, asking to be woken at dawn as well. Fred, Binita, and Tanjul turned in as the night cooled off at close to two a.m.
Sarah, for the first time, wasn’t tired yet. She felt restless, knowing the workshop was almost over, knowing there was a major conversation she ought to have and no Ren around to have it with her. Her heart felt like the needle of a compass, searching for him, but he was nowhere nearby, from what she could tell. He must have gone off with Kyle on some mission…farther along the water or up on some forbidden ledge of the cliffs above. That seemed likely from Kyle: the desire to push against any limits they’d been given for safety reasons.
Sitting alone, waiting for Ren to return, she saw the faintest light of an aurora near the remote horizon, green in hue. It looked a bit like light pollution, too subtle for her to wake people up for, but it might show up on longer exposure shots.
She stepped a little closer to the water and set up her tripod for a ten-minute shot filled with star trails, catching the cliffs in the distance. As she sat in silence, she heard people speaking behind her, but as she was about to get up and greet them, she realized it was Elka and Ren having an intense discussion. Her camera was in the middle of the shot so that she couldn’t easily move away to give them privacy, so she hunched low and hoped she would not be noticed.
“No,” he said. “I don’t regret it. That’s not that I’m saying. But Elka?—”
“I’m in love with you, Ren.”
Regret what? So he had slept with her, it seemed? Sarah was frozen.
She saw the faint outline of Ren as he sighed. Then he gave Elka a warm, affectionate look and leaned over to say something in her ear.
A warm, affectionate look. Like he had given her when she threw herself at him.
Sarah watched, immobile, as Elka regarded Ren for a long moment before turning to walk away.
When her shot was done, Sarah quietly moved to a rock by the water’s edge, hoping that neither Elka nor Ren would spot her and put together that she might have overheard them. Her face felt flushed in the cool air. Her long exposure shot of the star trails had caught the faint aurora, making the sky look touched with both violet and green.
When she heard slow, careful footsteps picking their way across the rocks behind her, she knew without turning that it was him.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Are you in the middle of a shot?”
“Just finished.”
“Can I see?”
She showed him. He nodded. “Nice capture.”
“You can just call it a shot.”
Ren smiled as he sat down next to her and looked out at the water and the sky. A breeze came fluttering across the water and raced up Sarah’s arms. She shivered. He peeled off his fleece jacket and held it out to her.
“Take it.”
“No,” she said.
“You can give it back when you go to bed.”
“I don’t need it.”
“Please put on the jacket, Sarah.”
She shook her head, not looking at him. She could feel him watching her. He took a long, slow breath.
“So I wanted to ask you a favor,” Ren said quietly. “You know how you offered to pretend to date me?”
Her eyes finally went to his, trying to read his expression. “Yes?”
