You sit on the cliff’s edge as though the whole island were holding its breath with you.

The late afternoon sun folds itself into gold, pouring over the black rock and the restless sea below. Isla Nublar looks peaceful from this height—too peaceful, like something rehearsed. As a design intern you’ve spent your weeks stitching together the park’s public face: soft colours, rounded fonts, smiling staff in crisp polos. But here, the mask slips. Here, the ocean gnaws at the cliffs with the patience of something ancient, something that remembers more than any human blueprint.

Theo sits beside you, knees drawn up, shoulders brushing yours. He always carries the scent of dust, earth, and something faintly metallic—the smell of the behavioural labs where he spends his days decoding the minds of animals older than language. There's that grin on his face that only comes out when you're alone.

“I brought you something,” he says, his voice soft enough to be swallowed by the wind.

You turn, expecting a joke or some scavenged fern, but what he holds is strange—like a fossilized flame. A flower, but not any genus your textbooks ever dared mention. Its petals are thin, translucent, blushed with iron-red veins. It looks as though it was never meant to bloom in sunlight.

“Pelretes vivificus,” he murmurs. “They found them near the restricted wetlands—growing in the mud, like they’d just decided to exist again.”

You take it gently, feeling the chill of its stem. It shouldn’t be cold. Nothing alive should be that cold.

The sea breaks against the cliffs like an argument with God.

You look at Theo. His eyes are searching your face, though he doesn’t know what for. The closeness between you—fragile, growing, warm—feels suddenly at odds with the island’s cold breath.

Theo tucks the flower behind your ear. "I know you're going to press it into your journal later."