The Cumberland Plain Woodland (as the map told Jim it was called) was not a particularly long walk—though with tired feet, anything could feel long. It wound its way around the Visitor Center and indeed crossed the path they’d taken to come in—not that they would have known that, because they would have had (and indeed did have) no idea what the path crossing their own meant. It took them through scrubland that, Jim had to admit, he would have instantly dismissed if he hadn’t been told it was ecologically significant. It looked unimportant; uneventful; ripe, if he had been, say, a developer looking for somewhere to build, for development.

His walking partner clearly did not see it that way. Pam spent the first part of their walk exclaiming over the colors: it looked mostly brown and a little green to him, but then again he didn’t quite have her vocabulary of color: umber and sage and Kelly green (that one, high up on the branches of a tree, he couldn’t resist suggesting was probably talking all the other colors to death, which might explain all the beige), and yes, she did see beige but also taupe and fawn and buff.

It was like he was dating a Crayola factory, and he couldn’t have been happier, because she was so obviously in her element.

They stopped every few feet, it felt like, for her to make a sketch of some kind of tree shape or just gaze on the midday light hitting the underbrush (he was so glad, in retrospect, that they hadn’t been there in high summer; the cooler winter sun was a perfect balance of illumination and heat). The constant stops gave their feet a rest and also gave him a chance to read the little descriptive booklet that came with the map.

“Oh look!” he shouted, pointing excitedly.

“What? Is it a kangaroo?” Pam spun around from examining a little burst of white flowers (spiked rice flower, said the all-knowing guidelet) and peered over his shoulder.

“No, much more exciting,” he deadpanned. “It’s a Cumberland Plain Land Snail.” Someone—he could just see a back disappearing around the next bend, which had to be the person—had turned over a log and the snail was still struggling to get back under cover. “They’re endangered, you know.”

“I did not.” She winked up at him. “And I’m pretty sure you didn’t either, until about twenty seconds ago.”

“Give me some credit for doing my research, Beesly.” He winked back. “It was definitely like five minutes ago.”

“Oh, well then.” She smiled at him and flipped to next page of the sketchbook that had seemingly spontaneously manifested in her hand as they began the walk. “In that case, I bow to your superior wisdom.” She sat down crosslegged on the path and began sketching the snail. “And since it’s endangered, I really ought to record this one for posterity.”

‘Posterity’ put ideas in his head—ideas about chubby little children with her hair and his eyes—and distracted him from making any further quips. He stood over her as she sketched, trying not to too obviously check in on her drawing, which was coming along nicely. He also, conveniently, had an excellent angle on her from above, which was a view he’d rarely gotten in an office environment. He could do with more of that, for sure.

It was probably that element of the view that distracted him for a few extra seconds. But when he finally looked up, there was a furry face with Chihuahua-style ears staring back at him.

Make that two faces. One where he’d expect it; the other down by the ground underneath what his confused brain eventually realized was its mother.

“Uh, Pam?” He tapped her on her shoulder.

“What? I’m trying to get this spiral right.” She gestured at the snail shell, which did indeed have a nautilus-like spiral to it.

“Maybe you could come back to that after you see the kangaroo?”

**

“What?” Pam was so shocked that she stood stock still—a reflex that, if she were feeling more introspective, she might have realized was the result of living with Roy Anderson’s temper for years, but which fortunately in this case served her well without traumatic implication—and her voice came out not in a shout but a whisper.

“Over there. A mother and a joey if I’m not mistaken.” She glanced at Jim who was nodding with his chin, then out in the direction he’d indicated.

“Oh they’re gorgeous.” She looked down at her paper, whipped the spiral out (perfectly, if she did say so herself) and waved a little at the slow-moving snail. “Bye friend. Glad to have seen you.” She looked back up at the kangaroos—well, she supposed they were probably wallabies, but wallabies counted, dammit—and then up at Jim, who was really towering over her. “I wonder if they’re as surprised as we are.”

“Probably less so. They see humans all the time, I bet.” His voice was also a bit hushed with what she assumed to be wonder. “Well, maybe not the baby.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Are you going to draw them?”

“I was hoping to?” She made it a question, much as she wished she hadn’t, because she wasn’t entirely used to getting her own way on things like that.

“Then I’m going to stay very still here, because I think I might spook them if I move.”

“You do have that effect.” She flipped to the next page of her book. “God, the way the gold highlights stand out in her fur…” she sketched a general outline, then started shading. “And the red by her ears—do you see it Jim?—kind of a russet, like sundown over the lake.” She had a private system for coding color, since she so rarely had anything to color with when the urge to sketch came over her. She’d do a whole black and white (well, gray and white—pencil lead was never really black) drawing and just indicate with a few alphanumeric designations what colors she was imagining. It never looked right to other people—Roy had once accused her of writing “in code or something” and insisted she tell him what it meant—but to her it made perfect sense. A4 by the ears meant red shading into G7 at the more gold-colored face, and B1 for the black on the snout. She could write very small when she needed, and the variations on this beautiful creature were going to demand that of her.

In times like this it was like she became one with the page, or with the pencil, and there was nothing in the world except her subject and her art. Or it usually was. But today she could feel a great warmth behind and above her, empowering and strengthening her every move. Each line was more defined; each shade more precise; each stroke of the pencil more carefully controlled because somehow she felt like anything she did wrong right now didn’t matter. With Jim watching her sketch, she couldn’t put a line wrong—and if there was ever a moment to capture so perfectly, it was this one.

The wallabies were the first to break the moment, turning and galumphing back into the brush from which they’d come. She took what felt like her first breath in minutes, if not hours, and felt Jim relax too.

“I can’t believe we just saw that.”

“Neither can I, Beesly. Neither can I.”