First Comes Love - Ashlee Price Page 0,19

mentioning. You don’t look at your cinematographer’s lips. Period.

Over the next few minutes, the group packs up our stuff quickly enough. Then, it’s trekking time.

Trekking is a mixed bag. On the one hand, we keep up a fairly regular pace, and the others follow my direction virtually seamlessly when it comes to shooting. We even remember to get in a few good ribbon ties on trees as we go along. On the other hand, there’s Russel, who is unpredictable and impulsive in the best of times, and now, in the worst of times, is downright infuriating. He’ll change direction mid-pace, stop and stare around blankly for minutes at a time, and sometimes urge us on faster in a harried shrill with no discernible reason whatsoever. I have to stop myself from yelling at him so many times I lose track. Finally, I have to tell him off.

Unfortunately, the effects of my “Get yourself together, Russel. Most important thing is that we keep going” only last a few minutes. Next thing I know, he’s stopped dead, glaring suspiciously at a knobby tree.

“Hey,” Harley says, coming up beside me.

“Hey,” I say.

“This sucks, eh?” she asks, frowning in Russel’s direction as he starts tapping different trees, apparently for guidance.

“Yeah, Russel is—”

“A complete psycho?” Harley offers.

I chuckle. “Yeah.”

She giggles. “At least we got some good shots of those crazy blue beetles. Next time he pulls a long stop, I’m going to try to catch some more. Looks like they have a whole extended family reunion going on ‘round here.”

“That’s… a really good idea,” I say.

I smile at her. This one feels different from the ones I’ve been giving the crew whenever Russel has stopped. Those are like some mask or duty I have to assume. This one feels real.

Maybe because I’m not nearly as pissed off anymore.

“Finding my old path isn’t easy, you know,” Russel grumbles now in explanation. “Sorting out these memories is a muddle. You know, where I saw the deadly snakes, where I fell into a hidden ravine and almost broke my leg, where there were these delicious tiny bananas that I don’t know how I lived without before… that kind of stuff.”

Do. Not. Yell. At. Your. Guide.

Something tells me Russel wouldn’t take well to be reamed out. I’ve seen him cry before and it isn’t pretty.

I grit my teeth together, grate out, “Reassuring.”

Thanks to him, I’ve started eyeing nearby holes in the ground with suspicion.

Although I can’t deny that Harley is right—Russel’s haphazard start-stop pace is good for capturing interesting shots. When Harley and I aren’t working on having her capture an odd-shaped tree, or two sloths hanging lazily from a palm, I’m having her catch a seemingly endless trail of fire-ants marching along the forest floor, up a tree trunk into a hole, then out the other side.

She’s quick, too—no complaints when I give her seconds of warning to get set up and shooting.

I already know the video editor is going to have a fun time editing this one—lots of choppy shots, a deadline of a day or even less—but that isn’t my problem. My job is to get the best footage I can, and I intend to do just that.

It gives me a second wind, too, an escape from Russel’s incompetence. It gets me in the zone and working. Reminds me why I signed up to do this thing in the first place. Getting behind the camera, right in on the action, putting ideas into practice before my very eyes, it’s magic.

By the end of the first day, as the shadows on the ground grow long and eventually fuse, there’s soon no denying it: it’s time to turn in.

Samantha plops down gratefully, but Russel sighs, scanning the forest around us suspiciously.

“What?” I ask him.

“If we’d only gone an hour longer,” he mutters.

“It’s dark out,” Samantha says flatly.

“I have already tripped many times,” Manuel adds tentatively.

“They’re right,” I tell Russel, “We keep on going and we’ll lose someone. Maybe you.”

“Oh, it’s nothing.” Russel is mopping off his forehead with a Mario-print bandana. “Only the snakes.”

“Which ones?”

In the moonlight, his teeth glint as he shows an ominous smile. “The fer-de-lance.”

The poisonous ones. Fucking great. “You saw them here?”

“Around here, I think. Told you, memory’s a muddle since I was hepped up on adrenaline and whiskey.” He sighs regretfully. “If only the whiskey hadn’t run out.”

If only I didn’t have an idiot for a guide, a joke for a map and… yeah, whiskey would be nice right about now.

“What does it