On the sixth night, Del made six notches in a flat piece of driftwood she'd collected. She'd stopped talking to Kasimir after her outburst on the beach. She was too angry to talk. Too frustrated.
If this wasn't... if she wasn't on Earth, then where the hell was she?
Anger took her, and she meted it out on the trees and rocks and dodos that stupidly wandered through the area. She even broke the pestle in the mortar, grinding up a piece of flint. Kasimir hadn't said a word about it. Of course he hadn't.
She stared at the fire, watching the bird leak juices into the coals. Her attack on the thing was especially brutal. Dozens of holes sizzled out runny fat, her frustration in action.
When it came time to eat, she spat out tiny flecks of rock. Kasimir cleaned up as always, walking off to feed the piranhas.
Del sat and listened to the sounds of the trees, waiting for him to return. Her thoughts were still a mess. If only she knew why―why she'd been put here. If she could figure out what was going on, maybe―if―
But what if she never found out? Her stomach twisted into knots. What if she was stuck here, with a terse Robinson Crusoe, her an unwilling Man Friday, for the rest of her life? Maybe they could get out, or make a signal fire, or―find other people―
But the others were dead and gone, Kasimir said. Were they, really? Had they wandered off into the forests, gone off to try to find answers, and he stayed behind assuming they'd died? She heard the echoing roar again, a shiver running down her spine. Maybe he was right. There were dinosaurs running around.
But... what if the others had survived out there? That meant she could, right? If only she―
Del sighed, heavily. She covered her face with her hands, stifling a groan. It was too much.
"They went to the trees," Kasimir said, suddenly. She lowered her hands, wiping them onto her pants, and looked up at him. He settled himself on his rock again, staring into the fire. "North, east. Sometimes west. Never came back."
Del breathed out slowly, trying to calm herself. His face was serious in the fading light. "You didn't leave," she said.
"Once." He poked at the fire, carefully. Dropped the stick into it. Didn't meet her gaze.
"And?" she asked, the word thrown at him like a stone.
He didn't react to her anger. "Spitters are easy," he said.
"Easy!" she nearly shouted. They'd fought off several of the things in the last few days, chasing them away from the dodos. The spit smelled disgusting and hardened to a painfully-removed crust if it wasn't washed off immediately. They bit hard, and the marks left would inevitably swell up into a hard red lump. They were, in no way, easy.
"Bigger danger out there," Kasimir replied. His hand went to his arm, gouges glaring on his skin. "Worse things."
"But what if that's the way out?" she snapped. "What if we go up north and there's a―a city, or a ship, or―" She stood and pointed at the towers in the sky. "Or whatever those things are, what if they're the way out!?"
Kasimir shook his head. "No." He dropped his hand to his side. "No." He stared into the fire, gloomily.
"How do you know?" Del yelled, throwing up her hands in frustration. "How long have you really been here?!"
"Too many days," he said, simply. His eyes were blank, the fire reflected in them.
That was when her anger broke. Hearing the sound in his voice, she realized―he'd given up. He'd left the shore, but came back. He didn't need to go anywhere, now. Even if he'd never tried to get to those things up there, he didn't want to leave this place anymore.
He knew he would die on this island.
That was depressing as hell, and she didn't want to believe it was true. "There has to be a way," she moaned, sinking back onto the ground. "What if we left here?"
Kasimir grumbled, loudly, moving away from the fire and toward the hut. "You go," he muttered, angrily.
"Kasimir―" she started, but stopped herself. The look he shot her was scathing. He moved into the hut, shutting the door behind him.
Del curled up into herself, rocking back and forth and watching the fire die. The sun went down, leaving her looking into black treetops outlined by stars. The sounds of the forest were muted but not gone, small coos and clicking and rustling and loud footsteps in the deeper parts.
It was colder, tonight. The weather was wrong, too. Wet, hot, dry, cold, but there was no reason to it. Clouds formed immediately before it rained, bunching up over the beach. The heat waves came whenever they wanted, sometimes lasting only a minute. Chill would set into her bones seconds after she had been sweating furiously.
Her mind was sore of overthinking everything. She couldn't turn it off, even if she wanted to. She was so exhausted by the quiet, by trying to stay alive.
She rocked back and forth for what felt like forever, under the uncaring stars.
A few more days passed. Del gathered materials, making spears and learning how to skin the hide from the spitters. She'd seen a triceratops, even bigger than she'd ever imagined it as a child. Other dinosaurs wandered about, too, even pteranodons. It was like she'd been thrown backward in time.
Started remembering things better, if she could even trust her memory. She was Delia Copelin. Her parents moved to Kansas City before she was born. She'd grown up there. She'd had boyfriends, graduated high school. Those memories were ordinary, she thought. Normal, even.
But whatever normal was, now, she didn't know.
She didn't talk to Kasimir for days. He didn't speak either. The noise of the forest was enough company. She understood, now. Why he was so quiet.
The dodo that had been following her about was cooing gently, sitting at the base of a big tree near the hut. It'd eaten the dark berries she tossed out, again, and fallen asleep. Del watched it from time to time, wondering why it stayed nearby when they'd eaten so many of its kind.
But it gave her an idea.
She ate the dark berries when the notches in her timekeeper numbered fourteen. It wasn't that she was trying to hurt herself. She just wanted to sleep. She hadn't slept well since she came to this place―wherever it was.
The berries only brought her nightmares. The long black, she was falling through space again. Pain rocketed through her arms and legs, her head swelling up near to explode as she tumbled. The screeches of spitters and their sharp teeth nipping at her, tearing her into pieces, and she couldn't fight them off―
When she woke up, Kasimir was holding her arms down, looming over her in the twilight of dawn. Her eyes hurt, her tongue stung. She could taste blood in her mouth, feel the bristles of the thatch poking into her back, see his concerned face.
She calmed herself, swallowing the horrible taste in her mouth, letting her legs fall to the floor of the hut. He removed his hands from her wrists, the pressure suddenly gone but the warmth of skin replaced with a rush of cool air.
She stared into Kasimir's eyes, seeing sadness in the shallows. Understanding. He knew what she'd done. Maybe he'd done the same, once. Maybe he didn't blame her for it.
Del pried herself out of the hut, stumbling to the grass, and threw up into a thicket. She dry heaved for minutes afterward, her skin coated with sweat and chills running up and down her body, tears in her eyes and feeling absolutely miserable.
A waterskin, grimy-looking but full, entered her field of vision. Kasimir stood beside her, holding it out. "Better," he said, pushing it forward by an inch or two.
Del grabbed at the skin, downing the contents. Her stomach was weak still, hands trembling.
She handed it back, feeling ashamed of herself. "Thank you," she mumbled.
He nodded. "Welcome."
She hesitated. "Kasimir," she said, her voice thick in her throat. "Where did you come from? Before you were... here."
He stared over her tilted head, into the trees. As if he were searching his memory, trying to find the right one. "Berlin," he said, finally.
"Germany." Del coughed. "...I'm from Kansas."
He glanced down at her. The corner of his eye twitched. "The States."
"Yeah." She reached out a hand to balance herself on a tree. "I want to go home," she whispered, pitifully. "I just... I want to go home."
Kasimir reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it slightly, then moved away from her. He put the waterskin into the carryall and looped it around a shoulder, holding his hatchet in one hand. She watched him walking into the trees, off to cut wood.
Her head hurt pretty badly, still, all the sourness in her guts churning.
She pushed herself off of the tree and followed.