The Stargazing Lodge – Part 1: Darkest Sky

"Don't touch your phone," said Kofi. "Not even for a second."

"I wasn't going to."

"You were going to check the time."

Thea laughed in the dark. It was nine at night in the desert, and the lodge had gone black. She stood on a rock terrace in a borrowed jacket, with a cold wind from the dunes on her face and absolutely no idea where her feet were. Thea was thirty-five, a science writer from Edinburgh, here for a magazine piece about the darkest skies on earth.

"Give it twenty minutes," said Kofi, somewhere beside her. "Then you will see."

Kofi, thirty-eight, the lodge's astronomy guide, had a low, patient voice that suited the night. She could not see his face, only the warm outline of his shoulder and the faint sweet smell of rooibos from his thermos. They waited. Slowly, one by one, the stars came out. Then ten at a time. Then thousands, until the sky was thick and glittering from edge to edge, the Milky Way a bright road with a dark lane down the middle.

"Oh," breathed Thea.

"Yes." He sounded pleased. "Everyone says that."

For the next three nights he set up a big brass telescope on the terrace and showed her Saturn's rings, the Orion nebula, a cluster of jewel-coloured stars like spilled glitter. He told her the southern names, the stories from the people who had lived under these skies for thousands of years. She forgot to take notes.

On the third night, when the wind dropped, she lay on a blanket beside the telescope, looking straight up.

"Kofi."

"Yes?"

"I came here to write about the sky." She turned her head in the dark. "I'm finding I'd like to write about the guide."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Shooting Star.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Shooting Star.