There was the warmth of a fire. The light flickered before her closed eyelids. Millie opened her eyes, blinking in the bright light. Her vision focused on the campfire before her, the embers glowing like the sunset on the horizon gracing the horizon beyond the jungle. Night was coming on.
Everything was sore. The driving need to help those she had left on the beach pushed her to sit up. Her head spun as she did. She knew she needed water. The shadows of the jungle about her danced like the figures in her dreams. Bracing her elbow on the ground, she tried to bring herself to a sitting position but stopped short. There was a person on the other side of the fire. At least she thought it was a person.
Firelight danced over his gaunt, leathery face. Hair fell to his shoulders in shades from honey to white blonde, the salt from the sea making it wavy. His face was obscured by a rough beard, not fully grown in. That was the only clue to her that he was not as old as he looked. He sat on his haunches, studying her with the wide eyed, steady stare of a feral animal. He wore only a worn loin cloth.
Millie held his gaze for a few moments, her heart pounding hard in her breast. She blinked, breaking the moment. The stranger stood abruptly, his brown body was sinewy with muscle though lean. Millie pulled back as he knelt beside her. She tried not to look in his face. She began to tremble again.
The stranger reached out towards her face. She closed her eyes.
"Please," Millie croaked through her dry throat, "Please, there was a plane crash."
She felt the stranger's fingers wrap themselves around the back of her neck, burying themselves in her hair.
"Yes, there was," His voice was hushed and his speech slow, "Many years ago."
Millie opened her eyes. The stranger was holding a hollow shell filled with water to her lips.
"Drink." He instructed simply.
Millie obeyed. She was struck by the fire that haunted the depths of his glass green gaze.
"How long have you been here?" She breathed after swallowing.
"I was twelve years old when we first crash landed in the sea." He replied, taking the shell away.
"We?" Millie asked tentatively.
Suddenly a strange cry rose through the jungle. The stranger's head snapped up, his eyes scanning the trees.
"We must go." He answered starting to help her to her feet.
"Wait, what is happening?" Millie asked, as he led her from the clearing.
"Can you walk?"
Millie tripped over an unearthed root before she could reply. Without waiting for an answer, he swiftly took her up in his arms and strode into the dark jungle.
The strange cries echoed through the alien landscape around them. Millie did not argue but clung to her stranger's neck. The fear rose in her throat for an unknown terror lurking in the shadows of the island. Without thinking on it, she buried her face in his neck and tried to think of pleasant things
