Chapter 48

I was amazed at the transformation that had overtaken the small camp - when we had arrived, it had just been a small bare patch in the middle of a wild and rampant jungle. Now, with its small, cozy circle of tents and a modest, eco-friendly fire going in the center (which Kathryn assured me would not be happening every night, but was tradition at least for now) it looked... welcoming.

Now, though, I'd turned away, my back warmed by the fire as I looked out into the dark beyond the edge of the fire's light. I felt a presence by my side, and I knew immediately, even with the suffocating profusion of scents and sounds around us, that it was Kathryn. "It's beautiful," I murmured.

"I'm glad you like it, since you're stuck here for the next two months," she said, chuckling. "Think it'll still look beautiful then?"

"I'm sure it will," I turned to where Kathryn had sat beside me, facing the other direction, in toward the campfire, twisted round to look at me.

She smiled at me. "Well, good."

Beautiful as the rainforest was, it was, in the ultimate cliché, Kathryn's smile that made me melt. "I, um... well, today seemed to go well enough," I said.

"Getting in is never easy, but you're right, it went relatively smoothly. Except for Tim dropping the assay kit and nearly costing us several hundred pounds and a trip back out..."

"But he didn't - I guess that's the important thing. And what's a few hundred pounds of equipment between friends?"

"Very funny," she said, leaning over to bump my shoulder with her own. "As long as that's not your motto."

"I don't have a motto yet," I said, shifting a little round to face her better, "unless you count-" I broke off as I shifted my hand and it came to rest over hers - quelling the instinct to snatch it away (because God knows what message that would send) and trying instead for a slight grin as I moved it. "Sorry," I muttered.

"Mm, that's a pretty rubbish motto. I'd keep looking if I were you," she said with a smirk.

"Hah, it's funny you should say that," I returned with a chuckle, glad not for the first time for the blush-hiding properties of nighttime. "That was what I was going to say. 'Keep looking'."

"For what?"

"Everything," I said with a slight shrug. "I mean, until you find it."

"Ah. Well, I suppose that's better than 'give up and hide under the duvet'," Kathryn teased. "So I'll let it pass."

"Oh, believe me," I said with a rueful grin, "I end up doing just that as often as not."

"Well, no duvets out here," she pointed out.

"Oh don't think that'll stop me," I said with a grin. "My sleeping bag zips completely shut."

She laughed again, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees and looking across the fire, where Tim had brought out his guitar and was enthusiastically (and slightly tunelessly) strumming it as Jonas peppered him with questions about whether he knew this song or that song. "Fair enough. I guess we all need to hide sometimes."

"Mm." There was a silence between us, punctuated by Tim's rendition of some nineties indie hit. "Why didn't we tell him he couldn't bring that thing?" I murmured eventually.

"Because of the ultimate irony when we bludgeon him over the head with it in a month's time?"

I chuckled. "Fair enough. Then we can convert it into a nurse tree, leave them both to be eaten by the forest..."

"I like the way you think. You'll make an excellent partner in crime."

"I thought I already was - piracy, remember?"

"Ah, but now we've gone international. So much more exciting, don't you think?"

=I smiled a little again, turning back away from Kathryn to look back out into the jungle. My night vision had been ruined by the campfire light and now all I could see off ahead was blackness, the shafts of moonlight ceasing to penetrate through the heavy canopy just a few yards out of our little clearing. "Pretty exciting," I murmured quietly.

 

The campfire hadn't lasted too much longer. Though it felt like we were on holiday, it was the kind of holiday where you get up early (to beat the muggy, sticky heat) and go to bed early as well (so you can get up early the next morning).

Kathryn, Jonas and I shared a large five man tent - one of those all-weather shield-bug-shaped things you can basically stand up in. Everyone else slept in smaller, more practical affairs, but our 'vestibule' housed our tiny portable lab.

There was several thousand pounds' worth of equipment in there with us, since for some reason getting stuff that could stand up to rainforest humidity and rough conditions just about doubled the price. As such, only Kathryn, Jonas and myself were allowed in there unsupervised, and Jonas only on strict instructions to touch nothing - and teenager though he was, he knew better than to argue on this point.

As we zipped up in our bags for the night I pondered the fact that I was now falling asleep next to Kathryn, and would be for the next few months. Not that this was the very first time such a thing had happened - she had fallen asleep on the plane ride over and briefly rested her head on my shoulder and although it left me with a numb shoulder and a crick in my neck I think it was hands-down my favourite part of the trip over, sitting there with her soft, shallow breathing audible to my ear, the delicate scent of her skin and shampoo resting at the edge of my senses.

Now of course there was the smell of bugspray and tents and sleeping bags, all those distinctive yet undefinable aromas of camping that you recognised instantly but couldn't place. But still, with Jonas determinedly claiming his own compartment (his philosophy that if he wasn't allowed to touch anything in the vestibule he at least 'deserved his own space') we were in the other, a square, airy space - at least when compared to the poke tents everyone else was inhabiting. I supposed that we were rather priveleged really, and yet, lying here next to Kathryn on our low cots, only perhaps a couple of feet between us, literally within my reach and yet figuratively so far out of it, it felt really rather crowded.

 

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