Chapter One #2
But the burn in my chest expanded in the shadow of the hollow victory because I hadn’t found it in time to save my mother. The cure sat before me like a promise kept too late, a bittersweet triumph that came with its own kind of failure.
The juxtaposition tore at me, the euphoria of discovery and the devastation of loss hopelessly tangled into a gordian knot of emotion. A sob broke loose, harsh and ragged, and I let it. Because no amount of progress, no groundbreaking discovery, could undo the aching truth that she was gone.
Beyond my own harsh sobs in the cold and still lab, her voice came to me so clear I jerked my head up to look around.
Onwards and upwards, honey.
I took a deep breath, forcing air through my collapsed lungs and willing the blood to pump again through my broken heart.
I moved forward with my discovery because I knew she would never want me to stay locked in the past, would never want me to waste a second chasing down my own cure as I grieved the loss of her.
I took her advice to heart, pushing ever onwards as I wrote grant proposals with fierce determination, convincing my department that this expedition was essential, not just for my doctorate, but for something far greater.
Saving lives. Though I suspected the promise of new pharmaceuticals swayed them more than my appeal for humanity.
But I didn’t dare tell them it was to save my own life. Ben didn’t even know yet. There was just no good way to put words to the magnitude of what I was facing. I promised myself I would tell him, maybe when I finally had the cure in my hands.
And so, here I stand—literally, onwards and upwards—in the village of Migdhari, nestled high in the Himalayan mountains, chasing a plant lost to time.
The people are as warm and welcoming as the air is thin and crisp.
My journey has taken me up and down treacherous mountain paths, along roaring riverbeds, and crisscrossing terrain as I spoke to anyone who would listen.
I asked yogis meditating in solitude, travelers passing through on pilgrimages, locals with weathered faces, and elders whose families had lived here for generations. But no one knew of the star-shaped, blue-violet flower I hunted for.
Every once in a while, I thought maybe I saw a flicker in someone’s eyes, as if they had heard of the plant, but weren’t willing to share their knowledge.
But maybe that was what I wanted to see—a glimmer of hope where there was none.
Even with Sita, whose own family had deep roots here, translating and paving the way, we still had come up empty handed.
My last set of labs showed the toxic protein in my blood is just now starting to increase.
I’m not out of sand in the hourglass of my life quite yet, but I am out of time here in India.
I need to go home and regroup. The idea of retracing my footsteps through the years of research that had led me here is daunting, but what choice do I have? I have to do so, and fast.
Maybe the journals I had read and the research I had painstakingly done were wrong.
Just one mountain range over, hell just one town over, would make all the difference in my ability to find it.
Handwritten notes certainly ran the risk of being inaccurate.
Or maybe I really am blinded by my own impartiality.
But I let it go. I can’t solve this problem tonight, and I can’t search anymore.
Although I still have a few months left on my visa, I am out of research funds, and my flight home leaves tomorrow.
The only silver lining is getting home to Ben.
He was guarded when I explained my grand plan and cautioned me to not be overly optimistic, but I know as soon as I’m in his arms, he will help me find a path forward.
I’ve helped him with his work for years, and I know he will help me with mine now.
I understood he couldn’t before; first when he was working on his own academic progress and then with all the responsibilities as a new tenure track professor.
But surely now, especially when I tell him what lies in the balance, he can carve out the time for me.
I can’t in good conscience wait for the cure any longer to tell him my future is uncertain.
Especially now that we are engaged. I want our future to be built on trust.
A sudden snap of the fire pulls me from my thoughts, the sound sharp and alive in the stillness.
The circle of travelers comes back into focus, their laughter rising like sparks into the quiet night.
For a moment, I let the peace of the evening wash over me, but it’s the question that cuts through it all, drawing me fully from my spiraling thoughts.
“Have you ever seen one?” someone asks, leaning forward with a conspiratorial grin.
“Seen what?” My voice comes out steady, even as my pulse thrums beneath my skin, thinking somehow they had heard about my mission, that someone had seen my flower. Hope flares in my chest that somehow this random traveler had found my elusive plant, and just in the nick of time.
“A Migoi,” the man says, his voice dropping to a near whisper, as if one might be lurking just beyond the ring of firelight. “They say their eyes catch the light like stars scattered across the night sky. And sometimes if you’re lucky, or unlucky, you’ll see them watching. Silent. Waiting.”
His words fall like stones in the silence until another traveler breaks the heavy moment with a scoff, waving the comment away.
But his words claw their way into my thoughts and refuse to let go.
The locals had spoken of such creatures, what I’d call a Yeti, with quiet reverence.
I’d dismissed it as folklore, an easy story to weave into the mystique of these mountains.
Stories and plants are my bread and butter as an ethnobotanist. I don’t just study plants; I study the way people live alongside them, how they turn leaves and roots into food, ceremony, and, as I hope to, medicine.
But now, the idea of the legendary guardians of the mountains and forests worms its way into my mind.
Myths, after all, often hold a kernel of truth buried somewhere deep inside.
And if something as massive and elusive as a Yeti could remain hidden here, it means there are places I haven’t yet explored in my search.
It’s humbling to think how much I’ve missed, how much still hides beyond the edges of the trails I’ve carefully mapped from my research notes.
Because surely, I would have noticed a giant Migoi if it were anywhere near this town or in the surrounding mountains I’ve crawled over inch by inch. Wouldn’t I?