Alice is in the field, observing the grieving behavior of a herd of elephants that has just lost its matriarch. She’s summoned back to camp to act as a tour guide for a visitor from the states—Thomas Metcalf. Alice assumes he runs a circus or zoo and dislikes him immediately.

When he accompanies her team on a mission to collar an elephant, he objects to the trauma that the procedure may cause the animal. Alice secretly shares his beliefs, though her colleagues ridicule her strange notions. When she learns that Thomas runs a sanctuary, and not a carnival, she begins to view him more favorably.

On impulse, Alice takes Thomas to see the fallen elephant matriarch. She speculates that the rest of the herd are in mourning but adds that she can’t prove it scientifically. Thomas says it’s possible to measure a stress response. He was trained as a neurobiologist, as was Alice. She realizes how much they have in common. Thomas later gives her an origami elephant he made from a folded dollar bill.

In the weeks that follow, the pair grows closer. Alice begins to see the African landscape through Thomas’s eyes. They talk about grief and loss.