The Mountain Observatory – Part 1: Above the Clouds

"Mind the step," said Pablo. "It's very cold on the dome."

"How cold?"

"Cold enough that your coffee will freeze before you finish it."

Alma laughed, tightened her scarf and followed him up the iron stairs. The observatory perched on a ridge at two thousand metres, above a flat white sea of cloud that glowed in the last orange light. The volcano rose, black and austere, behind it. Above them the sky was turning from gold to violet and stars were coming out in their thousands.

Alma, thirty-three, a science journalist from Madrid, had come for a feature on a new survey telescope. Pablo, thirty-six, the technician on night shift, was lean, brown-eyed and quiet, in a padded jacket and a woollen hat with a flap over each ear. He opened the great dome with a clank, and the telescope swung slowly to face the sky.

"Look," he said.

She put her eye to the finder. A fuzzy bright smudge. A swirl of faint stars. A galaxy two million light-years away.

"I'm looking at light that left before there were people," she breathed.

"Yes." He sounded pleased. "I never get tired of that thought."

All night they worked together, adjusting settings, logging exposures, drinking thermos after thermos of hot chocolate. Alma asked a hundred questions. Pablo answered, patiently, in a low voice. At three in the morning, the cloud sea below them was silver under the moon, and they sat on the dome's step wrapped in a blanket, watching a meteor shower flare across the sky.

"You didn't take any notes," said Pablo.

"I know."

"Is that bad?"

"It's very bad. I'll have to come back." She glanced at him. "Probably several times."

"I would like that," said Pablo. "And Alma. May I ask something? I would like to kiss you, if that is welcome."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Dawn Shift.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Dawn Shift.