Chapter 23 #2
I tried not to wince. Tried to keep my breathing steady.
I needed to take my focus off the pain before I completely lost it. "Can I ask you something?"
He gave me a here we go look over his shoulder. "What?"
"I don't know, but we can't keep walking in silence."
"Yes, we can."
"Well, we can, but I need to take my focus off my damn heels, Mitch. So can we just fucking talk about something?" I hated that I sounded so hysterical. "Please?"
He squinted at me, then rolled his eyes so hard I'm surprised they didn't pop out of his beautiful head. "Fine. Ask away."
I shrugged, trying to seem casual. "Tell me about your siblings. What are their names? What are they like? Older or younger?"
"That's three questions."
I rolled my eyes right back at him. "Okay, well, you start the conversation, cowboy."
He scanned the horizon, maybe searching for an escape route. Then he turned to me with a wry grin. "What made you get into archeology?"
“You mean, paleontology?”
“Same thing, right?”
"Hell, no. Archeology is the study of human history, pottery, tools, and settlements. Boring. Paleontology is the study of ancient life. Dinosaurs, megafauna, creatures that walked the earth millions of years before humans even existed. It's fascinating."
He chuckled. “Okay, so what made you take that up?”
Despite myself, tension loosened in my chest. He actually wanted to know.
"When I was nine, I found a bone while bushwalking with my sisters.
It was half-buried in a creek bed. It was smooth and white and weighed a ton.
I was absolutely convinced it was from a dinosaur.
" I laughed. "I carried it home and begged my parents to take me to the museum to show them. "
"And?"
"And some researcher in a white coat looked at it for about five seconds and said it was a kangaroo bone. Nothing special." I mimicked his dismissive tone.
Mitch snorted. "There are a million of them out here. Help yourself."
I tried to chuckle, but my parched throat could only manage a sandpaper rasp. The sun hammered down, turning my skull into an oven, cooking me from within. "Mom told me to throw the bone away."
"I'm guessing you didn't."
"I still have it on my bookshelf like it's a treasure."
"Funny what captures your attention as a kid," he said, and there was apprehension in his voice that made me want to ask for details, but I didn't want him to clam up again.
"My grandmother helped fuel my obsession.
She was a librarian with this whole amateur fossil collection in her spare room.
It was filled with rocks, shells, and bone fragments she'd found over the years.
She let me catalog them and taught me how to research what they might be.
" My throat tightened from emotion or dehydration, I couldn't tell anymore.
"She died nine years ago. Breast cancer. "
"I'm sorry."
"Yeah. Me, too." I wiped sweat from my eyes, but more sweat oozed down my forehead.
My vision blurred slightly at the edges, and I blinked to focus.
"Nanna encouraged me to go to uni. I think she regretted not going herself.
My family thought I was insane, committing years to a career that rarely pays off. "
"Were you? Insane?"
"Oh, I'm definitely insane. Haven't you noticed?" I giggled, though it sounded strained even to my own ears. "Actually, don't answer that."
"I won't." He wiped his hand across the back of his neck, and I caught another glimpse of the tattoo on his bicep—dark lines, intricate. I filed it away to ask about later.
"So how long did uni take?"
"Eight years total."
"Christ. That's commitment."
"That included fieldwork, though." I focused on putting one foot in front of the other, even as my legs trembled. "Dig sites across remote Australia, Papua New Guinea, and even six months in Mongolia."
"Mongolia?" He sounded genuinely interested.
"Gobi Desert. I was part of a team excavating a Tarbosaurus skeleton. Think T. rex's Asian cousin. The experience was incredible. Brutal, but incredible."
"Brutal? How?"
"Massive sandstorms that lasted all day.
Extreme temperatures. Scorching heat during the day, then freezing at night.
" I stumbled slightly but caught myself.
Keep going. Just keep going. "But when I'm uncovering fossils that have been buried for seventy million years...
" I searched for the right words through the fog creeping into my brain.
"That's when I feel most alive. Most at peace.
Knowing I'm the first person to see this creature since it walked the earth. It’s incredible. "
Mitch was quiet for a long moment, then he said, "Sounds amazing, but lonely."
His comment made me think. "Sometimes," I admitted. "But I mostly work alone by choice." I gestured with my hands, and the movement made me sway. I clenched my hands to steady myself. "At least the fossils don't mansplain at me."
Mitch's brow furrowed. "Mansplain?"
"Yeah. When a guy explains something in this condescending way, like I can't possibly understand without his help, even when I'm the actual expert."
"Ah." Mitch nodded slowly. "I assume Doug was like that."
"Doug was the poster child for it."
Mitch's jaw tightened, and for a moment I thought I saw guilt flash across his face.
A pang of guilt hit me, too. Doug was dead, and here I was complaining about him.
"But when it's just me on the dig site, I don't feel lonely at all. The work feels purposeful, like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing important work."
He nodded as if he understood that feeling better than I’d expected.
I wiped sweat from my forehead with a trembling hand, blinking against the glare reflecting off the red dirt stretching endlessly in every direction.
Even my eyeballs were dried out and scratchy.
The landscape around us was brutal. Sparse saltbush and spinifex clumps scattered across cracked earth, heat waves shimmered in the distance, making everything look like it was melting.
Or maybe that was just me, melting from the inside out.
We fell into silence again, but it felt different now. Less oppressive. We were no longer strangers marching toward doom, but companions united in survival.
The sun beat down relentlessly on my bare head, and fresh waves of heat radiated off the ground beneath my socked feet.
"Your turn," I said, my voice hoarse. I needed a distraction from the dizziness creeping in. "Tell me about your siblings."