I’ve listened to enough audiobooks now to know there are some parts you listen to in the privacy of your home, where you can pretend you’re not blushing and freaking out.
She leaps out of the car and collects a bag and a blanket from the back seat. I take some of it from her while we walk down a narrow path that leads to the beach. Tall grasses and viny plants bracket both sides, and tiny purple flowers bloom from the chaos.
Sofía walks ahead of me, and I drop a bag, digging out my phone to record.
Rays of light break over the horizon, backlighting her and hiding most of her features. I record for a few seconds—enough for a short clip of B-roll—then catch up to her. She strolls along the beach, searching for a spot, and I find myself recording her again, this time laying out the picnic blanket.
After smoothing out the wrinkles, she glances up at me, rolls her eyes, and continues her task.
“Do you plan to help, or are you going to film me all day?” she calls out, a teasing tone in the question.
“But the view is so pretty from over here,” I reply, narrowing the focus to Sofía rising to her full height.
Her head tilts with a puzzled look, then she looks over her shoulder, the mix of pinks and oranges and purples of the sunrise bleeding into the deep blue of the ocean.
“It’s incredible,” she says, though the camera is pointed at her.
Yeah, it is.
She admires the sunrise and beckons me, a series of Tupperware containers spread out on the large blanket. I turn the video off and sit on the opposite side, leaning back on my palms.
“So, you said you had a surprise?”
She gives me a look. “It was already spoiled.”
“Was it? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Her voice lowers to a whisper. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. They’re rare.”
I know. I’ve researched them. A lot.
The cassowary is the largest flightless bird on the planet and looks like it leaped off the screen ofJurassic Park. Northern Queensland is one of the few regions in the world where you can find the majestic, terrifying birds.
If they weren’t cool enough on their own, with their blue skin, black feathers, and hornlike head, the females also force themales to tend to the egg and raise the chick while they mate with other males during the breeding season.
I tell Sofía all this, and she listens intently as I ramble, my hyperfixation on the topic front and center.
“Damn, that’s a badass bird,” she says, cracking open a container of sliced oranges and tilting it toward me. “What else do you know?”
“There’s this plant, it’s called the cassowary plum, and the bird is responsible for spreading the seeds. They eat the fruit and then poop out the seeds, and it allows the plant to distribute.”
Sofía lowers the berry from her mouth and sets it back into the container. “How…interesting.”
“But now that cassowaries are declining, conservationists are worried about the plant,” I add. “Nature relies on nature, and sometimes humans fuck that up.”
“You care about the planet a lot,” she says.
It’s not a question, but I answer anyway. “Well, yeah. It’s the only one we have, and we’re actively destroying it. I think it’s because people aren’t as connected to it as they used to be. They’re connected by phones and social media, and they can access anything they want with a click of a button, but fewer people are flipping rocks.”
“Flipping rocks?”
“You know that innate sense of curiosity when there’s a large rock and you want to flip it over to discover what critters live underneath?” She gives me a baffled look. “Well, I loved to peek under rocks in the forest behind my house to find roly-polies and worms. And that kernel of curiosity grew into something more. It’s why I wanted to do the deep-sea documentary, to try to make people curious about the insane, incredible things that exist on the planet.”
I take the container of breakfast sandwiches and pull one out for each of us.
“You surprise me sometimes,” she admits.
Surprise her how? In a good way?
