Sayid felt himself waking to his warmest, softest morning ever. He cracked open his eyes, and stroked the back of the woman snuggled against him, face buried in his neck. He lifted his left arm and glanced at his wrist. 7 AM. He sighed and gently shook Rebekah, who moaned and lifted her face up to look into his.

"Good morning." whispered Sayid.

Rebekah moaned again and mumbled, "G-mern no su-thing mmm-sleep."

Sayid chuckled and stroked her cheek. "Sleep then."

He began to get up, but Rebekah wrapped an arm around him tighter. "Stay?"

Sayid shook his head and took her hand in his. "I'm sorry, I can't. I'm out of fruit and need to go gather some. Some of us are also going to gather more wood today. We want to start around 9 AM."

Rebekah nodded. "Okay. Love you."

Sayid kissed her lightly. "I love you too. I'll be back soon."

Sayid got out of bed and after dressing walked off to perform the tasks at hand. Rebekah rolled into the warmth he had left and soon drifted off to sleep again, still breathing in his essence.

------------------------

As the entire island started getting very noisy with all the people moving around, talking, and laughing, at around 10, Rebekah finally felt herself wake up. She sat up, rubbed her eyes, climbed out of bed, and put on her discarded clothes. She frowned when she sniffed her shirt. She decided her first stop today would be by her old 'shelter' to get her stuff, including her semi-clean clothes. Then she'd go see Sawyer…

It was only a five minute walk along the beach to her shelter, and Rebekah managed to reach it without being stopped for any pointless babble. She threw up the flap and entered. Then she pulled off the tarp protecting her suitcases and started stuffing some odd items which were randomly strewn aroundthe shelter inside one.

"HI!"

Rebekah jumped, dropping the box of Dharma Initiative lemon candies she held, which flew all over the floor. She spun around and saw Ethira standing just 2 feet behind her, smiling from ear to ear and holding a tattered baseball in her hand.

Rebekah put on her best fake smile. "Hello Ethira…" she turned back around and lightly mumbling to herself started picking up her precious lemony sugar fix balls, carefully brushing any sand off them.

"I saw you walking down the beach, and thought I'd follow you," Ethira began happily, "Will you play catch with me, please?"

Without turning Rebekah replied, "You know what, I'm pretty busy today… why don't you ask Walt to play with you?"

Ethira wrinkled her nose. "He's sick." Her voice took on a begging tone, "Pleeeeaaase?"

"I'm sorry I can't."

Now a 'you've broken my heart you cruel adult tone.' "But I'm so bored and no one will play with me."

Rebekah turned to face Ethira. Tears trickled down her chubby cheeks and the baseball suspended from her limp arm threatened to fall to the ground. 'Great, Rebekah, you've acquired a leech and must now figure out how to remove it.'
"Uhm… you know what? Maybe we can find something else for you to do."
'Think.'
"Let's see…" Rebekah dug through the suitcase containing her most random items. "What do we have here?..."
'Matches, needles, insect repellent… oh yeah this is real good Rebekah... Just great… Ah!'
"Here we go. Buttons, glue, yarn, scissors, glitter, markers, socks. Know what you can do with those?"

"You want me to make sock puppets?" Ethira raised her eyebrows skeptically.

Rebekah nodded. "Yeah, it'd be oodles of fun, seriously. You could, you know… make a Jack one and some other people and play doctor with them or make a Sawyer one and beat it with a stick or something I've got to go, here, have fun."

Rebekah handed the pile of things to Ethira and, grabbing her suitcases, rushed out of the shelter before Ethira could hurl any more guilt-instilling words or looks at her.