51. Bertram
Bertram
Bertram had to position himself carefully if he wanted this photograph to be good. The subject was a sunbeamver—a leopardopteran with a striking resemblance to a beaver, currently flying high on wings that mimicked those of a sunbeam butterfly.
The sunbeamver’s behavior was also extremely beaver-like, meaning they were very passionate about dam-building. Unlike mundane beavers, however, sunbeamvers had the ability to gather logs from any height.
The one Bertram wanted to photograph was currently gnawing at a branch toward the top of a tree as she hovered in the air.
It made her backlit.
He would love to get a shot of a sunbeamver mid-aerial dam-building preparation, but he’d have to angle the shot properly for it to read. He needed the rich orange of the sunbeam wings to be clearly visible, rather than backlit by the actual sun.
But he also needed to not have a branch fall on his head.
He was distracted by the smell of something delicious cooking, and he glanced back in the direction of basecamp.
Helena was puttering around over the fire, humming to herself, her hair pulled back, a cheery smile on her face. She looked like . . . herself.
A version of herself who had gotten sleep and taken a deep breath and would probably have many, many opinions to share on comparing species across taxa.
Gods, she was gorgeous.
THUNK!
Thunk!
Bertram was lucky that the branch the sunbeamver felled was relatively small.
The sunbeamver flew down and landed at Bertram’s feet, chattering up at him angrily as if Bertram had done grave injury to the sunbeamver by being in the way of the falling branch, rather than the falling branch dealing an injury to Bertram.
The sunbeamver glared at Bertram one final time, picked up the branch, and flew off to do some very important dam-building.
As Bertram approached the campsite, Lovatch immediately bounded up to him and rubbed her beak on his leg, purring, looking for a treat.
Bertram gave her one from the pouch around his belt, then looked over to Helena. She was finishing up his favorite tofu scramble, which comprised part of the delicious smell. The other part was coming from the pot of soup simmering on the fire.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“I’m finally starting to feel like myself again, so I had the energy to make you a ‘thank you’ breakfast!” Helena said, and her grin was like sunshine.
“For what?” Bertram asked, bewildered.
“Are you kidding?” Helena scoffed. “Bertram. I was completely drowning. If you hadn’t stepped in . . . I’m just really, really grateful. I needed you. I didn’t even know how much I needed you until you were just . . .”
“What?”
“There,” Helena said softly. “You were just there for me.”
Bertram swallowed.
He couldn’t imagine anywhere else he would’ve rather been, any other way he could have behaved. Seeing Helena in danger, even just from her own fatigue, meant that he would have done anything in the world to make her okay again.
Encouraging her to send an email seemed like a very, very minor feat compared to the acts of daring he would have performed just to see her smiling like this again, to see her healthy and well.
He didn’t say any of it.
“It’s—uh—also going to be a thank you dinner,” Helena said. “It’s—”
“My dad’s soup,” Bertram finished. “I could smell it.”
“Yeah.” Helena smiled wistfully. “I almost told you the first night how happy I was to have Urghk’s soup again. It felt like maybe too much, considering . . .”
Bertram nodded.
“Your soup was great, of course, but I know Urghk traditionally let it simmer for more hours than you had in that moment. So, I thought I’d wake up early and start it. Well.” Helena snorted. “Lovey wakes me up early, every morning, but I thought I’d take advantage of that.”
“I—” Bertram shook his head. “You didn’t have to do all this. But thank you. This is beyond—thank you.”
“Of course.” Helena smiled and passed Bertram a plate that boasted almost as much chopped chives as it did tofu scramble, just how he liked it. There was also a nearly burnt piece of toast and a sliced peach, and the carefulness of the preparation moved him. He loved his toast burnt.
“I assumed you were still sleeping,” Helena said, “and you would have a nice surprise when you woke up.”
“Normally I would be, but I was trying to get a nice shot of a sunbeamver—I’ve seen them flittering around at sunrise around here.”
“Ooh!” Helena squealed. “Did you get it?”
“I hope so,” Bertram said. He turned the camera on, and Helena peered at the screen as Bertram flipped to his recent photos.
“That sunbeamver looks a lot like a branch falling toward your face,” Helena remarked.
Bertram looked at the picture he had taken. “So it does.”
Bertram sighed and set the camera down as he tucked into his breakfast. Lovatch hopped onto his lap and curled up.
“Praaawl,” Lovatch purred.
Bertram looked over at Helena, who was yawning deeply.
“Hey, Hel. It looks like Lovatch is pretty comfortable here with me—after breakfast, do you want to go back to sleep while I watch her?”
“Back to . . . sleep?” Helena stared at Bertram as if he had grown three heads. “Like, Lovey would be with you? And I would be . . . alone in my bed? Asleep?”
“That’s the idea,” Bertram said.
Helena looked like she was going to weep with joy. “I have never wanted anything more.”