Page 75 of Wild Life

My eyes widened as I took in the sight. Tiny furry bodies. There must’ve been over a hundred of them snuggled together.

All Pacific sheath-tails!

A warm hand rested on my shoulder, and I jumped.Aleki.He had shoved his way through the narrow entrance.

His covered hands roamed my body, checking me for injury. I shook him off and gave him a thumbs up that I was okay.

I tapped his chest and pointed, drawing his attention upward.

There were so many bats, and the scientific community had no idea they were here.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed a fuzzy body huddling at the edge of the resting colony. It was smaller than the others. A baby? No, the wings were too developed to be a pup. Its face was hidden. I angled my light slightly, not enough to disturb it but so I could get a better view.

I gasped, my heart seizing painfully in my chest.

White. Its delicate muzzle waswhite.

His neighbor’s muzzle was white, too.

Fuck.I counted about twenty individuals with white patches, each cuddled closely in such tight quarters. It was only a matter of time before the fungus spread to them all.

Aleki noticed my panic and quickly took the lantern from me. He led me back out, shoving through the tiny hole and pulling me along. I was in a daze the entire way.

As soon as we had cleared the entrance, he ripped off his mask and body covering. “What’s wrong?”

I undressed slowly, still stunned. “They’re infected. They have white-nose syndrome.”

He didn’t understand my diagnosis, but he knew it was serious from my tone. “All of them?”

“No, I counted twenty, but soon it’ll deplete the entire colony unless they’re treated.” I wanted to help them right immediately.

“Medicine? What type of medicine?”

“We’re not really sure. We use different therapies based on the species profile. We’ve never had a case documented in a Pacific sheath-tail before.”

Aleki wanted to help, too. I could hear it in his voice. “How do you get this medication?”

“We have them in my lab back at the university, but I’d have to—"

I stopped, unable to finish the rest of my sentence, except Aleki already knew what I had been about to say.

“You’d have to go home to get them.”

There it was, the inevitable end of our relationship. The culmination of our two different destinies placed on opposite poles.

I was a scientist who had devoted my life to caring for the welfare of animals with the help of the modern world, integrating science and technology to help the ecosystem. And Aleki was a man so intertwined with his ecosystem that he couldn’t exist if he was removed from it.

Could I be happy here, knowing that I was unable to access tools from my old life to help these organisms?

I knew the answer.

And Aleki knew it, too, as he did what I had always feared a partner would do to me if I ever entered a relationship. He walked away first.

Chapter 33

Reality Check

Aleki

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