Haeli E-my story follows the book. . .but let's assume there was a random girl with them on their flight.

And then, just like that, he couldn't help but care.

He clearly recognized what this caring would entail. Now not only was he thinking of her—for he had thought of her before things fell apart, when things were civil, but not quite like this—but now he wondered about her, where she was, what she was doing, how she was doing.

He might have spent much of his time wondering ever after had she not found him sitting at the edge of the jungle on shore in the bright, clear morning light just hours after he had lain silently beside her said, "Thank you."

He looked at her and did not know what to say other than, "What did they do?"

"He," she corrected simply, and Ralph for some reason doubtlessly knew which he.

"What did he do?" he insisted after a moment of companionable silence, both staring out at the sea of morning.

She sat beside him without replying until answering, somehow looking at him and yet avoiding his eyes, "I think I'll stay around this side, if you don't mind. Just to avoid the other end."

Ralph nodded, seeing clearly how he was digging himself a hole, and looked at her. It was the right thing to do, was it not? Her fate on Jack's side and her fate on this side were two entirely different scenarios. Her freedom was assured her here—certainly not there—and yet—was it really assured anywhere?

She looked down at the sand. "Thank you."

"Don't."

She looked up questioningly and he added, "Don't thank me yet. If we leave."

The girl digested this before she repeated, "If." There was some dark, prophetic sense of doom to her word that gave him pause and when their eyes met again moments later she said, "Shall we pick fruit?"

He stood up walked beside her to the place where the fruit grew, solemnly pulling down ripe ones and picking up the fallen, bright, overripe ones from the floor.

A sudden blow on his back caused him to whip around, sinking into a defensive crouch when he saw it was only her, standing nearby and holding another projectile of fruit in her palm, smiling thinly.

"That wasn't funny," he chastised halfheartedly.

She kept smiling dryly. "If there's no fun at all it's going to be ever so hard on our own. We can't not laugh."

He saw the validity in this. "I know. Just. . .don't do it in the jungle."

She ran her hands over and over a piece of fruit. "I won't."

They gathered more together in the strange light filtering in through the wide leaves and foliage for a while. As usual now that Jack had left, there was no meat with dinner. But something filled it, almost, the hunger for something solid and fulfilling in Ralph's stomach. He just didn't want to think about what.

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