Rating: T for now.
Disclaimer: I do not own Hannah Montana. Based on the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
Note: I'm very sorry it took me three weeks to get this update to you guys! I have a few excuses, but they don't matter. I'm done with finals on Thursday afternoon, so I should get back to my regular updating schedule soon! Now, go read and enjoy :)
11
There were things to do, Lilly thought as she mentally went over her list from last night.
First she transferred all the eggs from the beach into the shelter, reburying them near their sleeping area. It took all her willpower to keep herself from eating another one, but she moved them, and once they were out of sight it was easier again. The last thing she wanted to do was lose her self-control and disappoint Miley, and she was proud of her restraint. She added more wood to their fire in the shelter before stepping out and glancing down to the lake where Miley had disappeared.
Miley had spent the morning bustling about, cleaning the camp area and appearing busy when there really wasn't anything to do. All she had done was smooth out the sand where they slept and thrown the egg shells into the bushes at the edge of camp. Then she had headed down to the water, saying something about rinsing out her jacket to clean out the berry juice that had soaked in. Lilly understood that it was a mental thing – she herself had gotten depressed when she let her mind wander to the fact that they hadn't been rescued yet. When she made herself busy and had something to do, the depression seemed to leave.
And there were plenty of things to do. But when Lilly glanced down at the lake, her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. There was Miley, washing her clothes…topless. Heat spread to Lilly's face as she stood transfixed, unable to take her eyes off Miley or to remember how to breathe. Good God, she was perfect. The warmth that had started at her face and chest spread across Lilly's entire body and she trembled.
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to turn around and took a few shaky steps toward the forest. It was getting ridiculous, the power Miley had over Lilly's body. She desperately wanted to run into the lake and see what it felt like, pressed against her own, but she forced herself to start gathering firewood instead. There were things to do and she didn't have time or reason to ogle over Miley's half-naked body.
Swinging the hatchet at the old rotting log, Lilly tried to clear the image from her mind. She struck the log over and over, sweat pouring down her face, but it was pointless. All she could see was Miley standing in the water, her body tight and responding to the coldness of the lake. No matter how many times she shook her head and tried to focus on chopping up the logs, the vision kept reappearing.
"Oh, God," Lilly mumbled as she finally gave up trying to cut firewood and sat on the log instead, face in her hands as she tried to compose herself. "Why does it have to be so painful?"
"Talkin' to yourself now, Lils?"
Lilly jumped in surprise, glancing up to see Miley standing over her, clothes freshly washed and slightly damp, clinging nicely to her body. Jeez, when did all her thoughts turn so dirty?
"Uh…" Lilly cleared her throat, looking anywhere but at Miley. "Just taking a break from chopping wood."
"Darlin', there ain't another person in this world as crazy as you." Miley laughed and shifted her weight, hands resting on her hips. "So you need some help, or what?"
"Yeah, if you want to gather up some of the branches around here and carry the logs down to the shelter. I can keep trying to chop up this tree." Lilly found it was easier to think if she kept her eyes far away from Miley's body, and she was sure Miley could tell she was avoiding eye contact but she didn't comment on that fact as she quietly began working.
They had both decided it was a good idea to always have enough wood on hand for at least three days, and after spending only one night with the fire as a friend in their shelter, they knew just how much wood that would take. A lot. They worked all through the morning, Lilly breaking down dead limbs or breaking and chopping them into smaller pieces and Miley bringing them back to camp and storing them neatly beneath the overhang.
Once during mid-morning they stopped to take a drink at the lake and Lilly took a moment to study her reflection. The cuts on her face, as well as Miley's, were gone. Her leg was also back to normal although she now had a small pattern of holes, roughly star-shaped, where the quills had nailed her. Miley's leg was slowly healing too, her skin knitting together in what was sure to be a grotesque scar. But their bodies were also changing as well.
Lilly had never been fat, always being an active skateboarder and surfer. In fact, Miley had voiced more than once how jealous she was of Lilly's body. But she had always had a small layer of fat over her body, with maybe a little extra weight at her sides just above her belt.
Now that was all gone. Her skin was tight against the muscles beneath, with her stomach caving in to the hunger and her cheeks hollow. Miley looked even worse, as though she'd dropped a good ten pounds, something she really couldn't afford.
The sun had also cooked them past burning so that Lilly was actually tanning for the first time in her life and Miley was now a deep golden brown. Lilly was slightly aware that she was picturing Miley with an all-over tan, the vision from earlier in the morning surfacing once again. What are you doing? Just leave it alone.
But perhaps more than their changing bodies was their change in mind, or in the way they were becoming.
I am not the same, Lilly thought. She saw and heard everything differently. She wasn't sure when the change started within herself, but it was there. Now when a sound came, she wouldn't just hear it but would know the sound. She would swing and look at it – a breaking twig, a movement of air – and know the sound as if she somehow could move her mind through the wave of sound to the source.
And when she saw something – a bird moving around inside a bush or a ripple on the lake – she would truly see that thing, not just notice it as she used to just notice things back in Malibu. Now she would see all the parts of it, see the whole bird, and the feathers, and the color of the feathers, and the bush, and the shape and size of the leaves on the bush. She would see the way the light moved with the ripples on the water and see that the wind made the ripples, and which way the wind had to blow to make the ripples move in that certain way.
She noticed these changes in Miley too, the way she would react to their surroundings, as if she were a part of the forest now.
None of this used to be in Lilly, or Miley, and now it was a part of them, and their bodies and minds had made a connection with each other that Lilly didn't quite understand. When she heard a sound or her eyes caught something, her mind would take control of her body. Without thinking, she would move to face the noise or sight, as if her body was getting ready to deal with it. And Miley. She was even more aware of Miley if that was possible - of where she was, of what she was doing; her body just sensed her presence. They had been close before, had been able to have conversations without speaking a word, but now they were closer somehow. It was as if their brains were on the same wavelength and they could go hours without speaking, just silently working and cooperating together, knowing what had to be done and what the other was thinking.
But what Lilly hadn't noticed was that the entire time she had been thinking at the lake during their water break, she had been staring at Miley. They stood face-to-face now and Miley's gaze turned concerned.
"What?" Lilly asked nervously.
"Nothing." Miley didn't hesitate to brush a bit of dirt from Lilly's cheek and her tender touch made a lump rise in Lilly's throat. God, maybe she really was a lesbian. Because right now, Lilly could feel the pull of attraction between them as though it were a living, breathing thing. She wanted to wrap her arms around her, bury her face in Miley's hair and stay there. This time when she thought about it, it wasn't at all unsettling to her. She knew who she was and what she wanted.
But there were things to do, so she shook off her thoughts.
They went back to the wood, and when that was done Lilly decided to get a signal fire ready. She moved to the top of the rock ridge that comprised the bluff over their shelter and was pleased to find a large, flat rocky area.
More wood, she thought, moaning inwardly. But just as she turned to head back to camp, Miley appeared with an armful of firewood.
"One step ahead of ya."
Lilly smiled, and the two of them went back to the woods to get even more dead limbs, carrying them up on the rock until they had enough for a bonfire. Initially she had thought of making a signal fire every day but she now realized they couldn't – they would never be able to keep the wood supply going. So while they were working she decided to have the fire ready and if they heard an engine, or even thought they heard a plane engine, one of them could run up with a burning limb and set off the signal fire.
At the last trip to the top of the stone bluff with wood, Lilly stopped and sat on a point overlooking the lake. Miley sat by her side and they rested for a few moments, shoulders touching but each lost in their own thoughts. The lake lay before them, twenty or so feet below, and Lilly realized she had not seen it this way since they had come crashing down in the plane. Remembering the crash brought a moment of fear, terror seizing her breath for a short moment as the images and feelings flashed across her mind, but it passed and she was quickly caught up in the beauty of the scenery. They were both alive and Miley was here with her, experiencing the hardships as well as the beauty.
And it was so incredibly beautiful, almost surreal. From their height on the bluff they could not just see the lake but across part of the forest, a carpet of green, and it was full of life. Birds, insects – there was a constant hum – the song of mother nature. At the other end of the bottom of the L there was another large rock sticking out over the water and on top of the rock a snaggly pine had somehow found soil and nutrients and grown, bent and gnarled. Sitting on one limb was a blue bird with a crest and sharp beak, a kingfisher she thought, which left the branch while she watched and dove into the water. It emerged a split part of a second later. In its mouth was a small fish, wiggling silver in the sun. It took the fish to a limb, juggled it twice, and swallowed it whole.
Fish! There were fish in the lake, and if a bird could manage to catch one…
Startled, Lilly jerked back from her thoughts when she felt a cool finger slide down her forearm to her wrist. She turned to see Miley intently examining the skin she'd just touched. "Sorry," she said, glancing up and self-consciously withdrawing her finger. "I was just brushing it away."
Lilly's eyebrows lifted and she rested her hand over the skin Miley'd just touched. "It?"
"Spider."
"A spider was on me?" Lilly squeaked and shuddered, suddenly feeling as if things were crawling all over. Not that she should be surprised. She'd probably had spiders crawling all over her since they'd crashed in the woods.
"Yeah. Don't worry, I got it."
"Thanks." The skin on her arm still tingled, and she knew it had nothing to do with the spider that had apparently been crawling on her.
Miley nodded and turned to stare out at the lake once again. "It's so beautiful. The water is so blue."
The lake. Her thoughts were brought back to the fish. She jumped up and scrambled down the side of the bluff to the lake edge, Miley following her a minute later. Lilly stared down into the water. Somehow it had never occurred to her to look inside the water – only at the surface. The sun was flashing back up into her eyes and she moved off to the side and took her shoes off before wading out into the water about fifteen feet. Then she turned and stood still, with the sun at her back, and studied the water again.
"Umm…Lil? Care to explain what you're doin'? Or have you completely lost your mind?"
"Fish! The lake has fish!" Lilly exclaimed as she stared down at the water. The lake was, she saw after a moment, literally packed with life. Small fish swam everywhere, some narrow and long, some round, most of them three or four inches long, some a bit larger and many smaller. There was a patch of mud off to the side, leading into deeper water, and she could see old clam shells there, so there must also be clams. As she watched, a crayfish left one of the empty clam shells and went to another looking for something to eat, digging around with its claws.
While she stood some of the small, roundish fish came quite close to her legs and she tensed, got ready, and made a wild stab at grabbing one of them. They exploded away in a hundred flicks of quick light, so fast that she had no hope of catching them that way.
Miley burst out laughing at her attempt and Lilly glared at her before turning her attention back to the lake. The small fish soon came back, seemed to be curious about her, and as she walked from the water she tried to think of a way to use that curiosity to catch them.
"You're not going to catch fish with your bare hands Lilly." Miley playfully chided.
"Well, what do you suggest? We don't have hooks or string, or a fishing pole."
"I don't know. Maybe a spear? You'd have to be fast enough."
"Hmm…a spear," Lilly thought out loud. She would have to find the right kind of wood, slim and straight. She had seen some willows up along the lake that might work. And she could use the hatchet to sharpen and shape it tonight while they were sitting by the fire.
And that thought brought up the fire, which she realized they needed to feed again. She looked up at the sun, saw that it was getting late in the afternoon, and when she thought of how late it was she thought that they ought to reward all their hard work with another egg. The egg made her think that some kind of dessert would be nice and she wondered if she should move up the lake and see if she could find some raspberries after they banked the fire and while she was looking for the right wood for a spear.
As if reading her mind, Miley spoke. "It's almost evenin'. We should look for more berries since we ate the last of 'em last night."
Lilly nodded and put her shoes back on. There were things to do. "You want to help me pick berries so you know where the patches I found are?"
Miley smiled and nodded. "Yeah, thanks Lil, I'd like that. I was beginnin' to feel a little useless."
"That's nonsense, Miley. You helped me gather wood and make the fire, and you made those baskets, which are awesome by the way." Miley blushed. "Let's bring them with us. We can bring back more berries that way."
"Okay." The look and smile on Miley's face was priceless. Lilly wanted to do or say anything to make her eyes shine that bright again. They almost sparkled.
"And on our way I'll look for some wood to make a spear out of. I think some of those willows down by the lake might have some strong and straight branches. Hopefully tomorrow we'll be dining on fish!"
Yes, they would stoke the fire, find more raspberries for dinner, and work on creating a spear so that tomorrow, they would eat something of substance. There were these things to do.
Questions, comments, or concerns? This chapter was a lot of Gary Paulsen in the beginning. I had a hard time finding places to add Miley in and add dialogue in, so I just decided to go with the original chapter and make a few adjustments and additions. Sorry for it being short and crappy, and for not having as much Miley, which I know some of you mentioned you'd like to see. I probably could have read through it a few more times to make it a little better but decided to just post it since you've all waited long enough for an update!