Robin lays on his stomach, a flickering candle illuminating the small room where he sleeps. He can hear the others aboard deck-drinking and laughing as they play a game of cards-and he sighs a bit wistfully wishing that it were already morning.

In the week they've been docked, he's already filled his journal with beautiful things. Everyday he's rowed to the island just beyond the boat and spent his days exploring; and everyday, he's filled his journal with his findings. There are descriptions of the rich, lush jungle foliage and little sketches of birds and chimpanzees, and photographs he painstakingly rook of waterfalls and impressive ancient trees. Each day, he packs his his bag with his camera and equipment, his charcoal and watercolors, and a well of ink and his quill. He packs a sleeve of crackers and a tin of salted fish, and leaves as soon as the sun is up.

The others don't quite understand it and seem bored of the island, much preferring the mainland that's not far off; but he can't seem to get enough, and still, he's only seen a fraction of it.

But for every incredible, breathtaking thing he sees, he doesn't see her.

Of course, sketches of her fills the pages of his journal. Her dark, wide eyes, her unruly curls, her long fingers-every detail that he remembers, he's sketched again and again. But there are parts that he can't remember-is she short or tall? Fair skinned or dark? Or, maybe something in between?-and of course, there's the parts he never knew.

Like how she came to be on this island and whether or not she's alone.

He thinks he may never have those answers-and he thinks, that just maybe, she was a figment of his imagination.

The others certainly seem to think so…

Rolling onto his side, he turns the page of his journal and touches his fingers to the charcoal sketch in the corner of a page where he'd been doing a watercolor of a brightly colored bird. He smiles as he remembers, sitting against a tree in the shade, still hotter than hades, as he listened to a babbling brook that he now knows leads to an incredible waterfall. His skin glistened with sweat and he did his best not to let droplets of it fall to the page and ruin the painting-and as much as he tried to focus on the magnificent bird perched on a branch high above him, all he could think of was her.

So, he'd sketched her, if only to get her out of his head.

But it'd seemed to do just the opposite.

At some point, the others had caught a glimpse of his journal. They'd laughed and passed it around one night, poking fun at what they called finger paintings and doodles-and when they'd got to that first sketch of her, they'd asked.

And stupidly, he told them about the mysterious girl he met oh, so briefly, in the jungle.

They passed it around again and asked all sorts of lewd questions that made his cheeks burn and his fists clench. Even as he recalled it, he couldn't bear to remember the awful things they said-and then, when they'd exhausted every possible joke they could think of, they decided she was either an ape or an illusion.

There was no way she could be real, and there was no way she could be as beautiful as he described.

John and Will, of course, defended him, as they always did, but even they seemed skeptical. It'd taken everything in him that night to hold back and control himself, and he'd had to remind himself that getting in a row with the rest of the expedition's crew would only have him sleeping on the beach.

Turning the pages, he finds another sketch-this one in a lighter pencil-and he thinks of that spark he'd felt when their fingertips touched. It'd been no more than a handful of seconds-a fleeting moment as she handed him his glasses-but in the sketch, it was immortalized, standing still in time.

By the time he'd put his glasses back on, she was gone-and since then, each day that he returned to the island, he couldn't help but home to catch a glimpse of her again, and he hoped this time, it could last more than a few seconds.

The man who comes to the island day after day is different than the others.

He's careful.

He moves slowly and deliberately. He doesn't disrupt things. He quietly observes.

He doesn't have a gun to shoot at the animals who intimidate him or a sword to cut through the brush. If he touches something, he puts it back and gets out his little book and colors, or his strange little wooden box that he sets on a tripod stand. He spends hours just looking, not taking.

Regina's kept an eye on him from the treetops above, following him on his excursions.

She's decided that, for the most part, he's not a threat to her island-not to the plants or the animals or the birds, but she's still not sure why he comes or how he'd respond to her. And though he seems relatively harmless-and terribly clumsy-he's still a white man on this island and she's learned not to trust those.

The natives on the other side of the island taught her well-though, apprehensive of her, at least at first.

She's not like them, but she's not like those who come and go-she's something in between.

They're good to her, though, and they taught her how to survive.

She was a child then-a little girl with her shipwrecked father-and it wasn't until he took ill that any of them took pity on her. But one, elderly childless woman did-she answered her desperate, frantic cries of Ayudame! Ayudame!-and though there was nothing she could do to save her father, she did save her.

What she didn't know is that they had to accept her; after all, the woman who'd taken her in was the daughter of a former Chief, and the grandmother of the current one.

Her opinion mattered, even when everyone else disagreed.

So, she took her back to the village and gave her a warm place to sleep. She fed her and showed her the things she could eat and which she should stay away from. She taught her how to hunt and to bow and pray over an animal sacrifice and how to use each piece of the animal to honor it-and though she didn't like to hunt, and avoided it as much as she could-she was thankful for the skill, even if she did consider it a necessary evil.

She grew up in the village and after a year or so, she hadn't realized there was anything different about her. She didn't notice the distrust or apprehension; she didn't notices the eyerolls or headshakes when she cuddled up to her abuela. She had a handful of friends who accepted her, the way that children did, and though she missed her father terribly, she felt safe,secure and loved.

Then one day a ship arrived and everything changed.

She'd always been a curious child-too much for her own good-and she didn't grow out of that curiosity as a teenager.

She watched as the ship docked and the men lowered rowboats to the water and rowed ashore.

It was lost on only her that the men in the boats looked like her.

But once it was pointed out, she was curious.

She thought of her father-her warm, loving father-and stupidly, against orders, she went to talk to the men, to see if they knew her father. After all, everyone on the island looked alike and knew one another, why shouldn't these men who looked like her know her father?

So, she'd approached them.

And she'd asked.

And as it turned out, they didn't know her father. But when she said her father's name, they'd all looked at one another and whispered under their breath, and then told her while they did not know him, they did know her mother.

Her mother who she didn't remember.

That detail had only further piqued her curiosity. She had a million questions and they seemed to have answered. So she went with them and she trusted them-and she never imagined that choice would cost her the fragile security that she'd grown up with.

The man-Leopold was his name-who appeared to be the leader of the expedition seemed to know most, and he took her back to his ship and introduced him to his daughter. After months at sea, the girl who was only a few years younger than her was desperate for a companion-and before the end of that first night, everyone but her seemed to decide that the girl should have one, and that she should take on the role.

But she wasn't interested in the girls hair ribbons or porcelain-faced dolls.

She wanted to know about her mother.

And Leopold seemed to have those answers.

He talked of her mother's beauty and told stories about her youthful days-ella era tan hermosa, he'd kept saying, over and over, like a chorus that captivated her.

She wanted to know more, so she trusted him-so she stayed and agreed to be the girl's companion, at least for a little while.

When she returned to the island, everything was different.

The foliage was ravished and a fort had been constructed from tree trucks. It sat looming on the beach. Little metal balls were scattered through the sand, and as she walked the path the led to the village, she saw blood splattered on the trees.

Her heart pounded as she raced back, and when she arrived, she found the village forever changed.

The Chief was dead and so was his mother. So many of the familiar faces were missing from the crowd and they all looked at her with distrust in her eyes.

They'd always known better, they'd said. They'd saw her on the ship and they called her a traitor-and when she considered it, she couldn't help but agree.

So, she left. She ran away and returned to the treetop hut her father had built-and there she stayed, isolated and alone.

Since that day, she'd seen other ships come and go. She watched as her home was ransacked. Some came with crosses and bibles and others with guns. Some of them looked like the menaces they were and other had kind faces that she could later see was merely a facade. Still, she didn't approach them. She loomed above the trees, watching and waiting for them to leave, holding her breath until they sailed away.

But the ship she'd been watch for the last week still had yet to leave.

Most of the men went to the mainland and seemingly had little interest in her tiny island-and for that, she was grateful. The mainland had more to offer-more to loot and pillage.

However, there was that one who took interest in her island, that one who returned day after day, that one who sat all day sketching and writing, that one who tripped over tree trunks and vines and jumped back when he stepped on the tiniest of pebbles, that one who stumbled and fell into the the brook, that one who talked in a strange language to the birds and scurried to return everything as it was whenever he felt he'd disrupted something.

That one who wore glasses and pushed them up the bridge of this nose with two finger.

That one whose chest was now sunkissed rather than pale.

That one whose blue eyes matched the ocean.

That one that she can't stop thinking about.