"Sorry," I say, turning back to the willow. "Bad analogy."
"No," she says quickly. "It's apt. Partnership. Reliance. Shared resources."
She's rationalizing it, breaking it down into biological terms to make it safe. I can practically hear her brain categorizing marriage under socio-biological contracts rather than emotional risks.
"Let's move," I say, standing up. "If we flank the ridge, we can get above them without scenting the herd."
We move out, falling back into the rhythm that has become our new normal. We anticipate each other's movements, hand off gear without asking, communicate in shorthand and gestures.
It feels like we've been doing this for years.
And that terrifies me more than any blizzard ever could.
We reach the overlook point an hour later. It's a granite shelf jutting out from the mountainside, offering a perfect amphitheater view of the basin below.
And there he is.
Waldo, hub-deep in a feeding crater he's dug to reach the moss, massive shoulders working like pistons. Beside me, Aris's camera shutter clicks rapidly, a mechanical heartbeat in the silence.
"He keeps checking the ridgeline," I say. "Three bites, scan. Three bites, scan. He's not relaxing." I sweep the wider valley with my glasses and find nothing but pristine snow, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up anyway. "He knows something is out there."
We spend the afternoon documenting. I watch Aris work, and it's like watching an artist. She's focused, locked in, completely absorbed in the data. She records feeding intervals, social interactions, defecation rates. She's building a profile of a ghost, turning a legend into science.
"I need to swap the memory card," she says around two o'clock, sitting back on her heels and stretching her neck. "My fingers are freezing."
"Here." I hand her a chemical heat pack from my pocket. "Stick that in your gloves for a minute."
"Thanks." She takes it, and our fingers brush.
Friends. We're friends.
I pull my hand back, grabbing my thermos. "You realize what happens when you publish this, right?"
"What do you mean?"
"This research. Proving he exists. Proving he has a unique migration pattern." I pour coffee into the cup and hand it to her. "You're going to be famous. In biology circles, anyway."
She blows on the coffee, her breath misting. "That's the goal. Not the fame. The funding. If I can prove Waldo represents a genetic adaptation to climate change, I can get the grant renewed for another three years. I can expand the study to the Porcupine herd."
"Three years," I repeat. "That's a lot of trips to Alaska."
"Or a permanent move," she says, staring into the cup. "I've been running my end of the department from Seattle since I finished my PhD up here. If the grant's big enough … I could come back and base myself on campus instead of phoning it in from two thousand miles south."
My heart does a stupid, hopeful flip. Fairbanks is a hundred and fifty miles away, but it's a hell of a lot closer than Seattle.
"You'd move here?" I ask, trying to keep my voice casual. "Give up the lattes and the paved roads?"
"I'm starting to think paved roads are overrated," she says, looking up at me. "And the lattes … well, your cowboy coffee is growing on me."
"It's not cowboy coffee," I defend automatically. "It's a French press. I'm not a savage."
She laughs, and the sound rings clear and bright in the cold air. "Fairbanks has coffee shops, Nash. It's a city. Just … a colder one."
"With moose in the parking lots."
"Exactly. Best of both worlds."
She hands the cup back to me, her expression softening. "It's just a thought. A possibility. Depends on the data."
