The pretty blonde shifted on the blanket in the lean-to and fought back a wince, wishing the baby would just come. She couldn't sit or walk without pain, and sleeping -- how she wished for a body pillow to at least align her legs better, or support her stomach.
She watched one of the women she didn't know well walk with difficulty down the beach. At least Claire wasn't the only one with swollen legs, hands and feet these days. She couldn't even tug on her trainers without discomfort. But the heat, the humidity, that would do it to everyone. Even Sun, Sarah and Shannon seemed to be a little thicker, and she knew it wasn't from gluttony.
Sitting was doing her no good. She had nothing in her left to write, and no desire to read. With a quiet sigh, she struggled to stand in the sand. Maybe it was cooler out by the caves. Maybe she could find some place just to soak her thickened ankles.
Twenty minutes later and she was well in the thick of the jungle. An insect resembling a dragonfly hummed by her, seeming not to notice her, and she stopped to watch the green and blue shimmer against the streaming sunlight. The baby kicked, and she rubbed her stomach, quieting him.
"Claire?" somehow she'd not heard the thick, ungraceful footsteps tramping behind her. "That you?"
"Yeh, it's me, Hurley," she called back, looking around. The overlarge young man appeared seconds later, a bag that was once a t-shirt slung over his shoulder. "What've you got there?"
"You know the golf course?" he asked, a little breathlessly. Sweat made a thick collar on his own shirt, shoulder to shoulder. "We ran outta golf balls weeks ago, right? Guess what I just found?"
Claire grinned a little, raising her eyebrows inquisitively. She liked the way Hurley could carry on his end of the conversation completely in questions and still get his point across. "What?"
He flashed a grin almost as wide as his large head, his brown eyes sparkling, and pulled open the makeshift sack. She stepped closer to him, peering inside.
"They're not exactly lightweight or anything, but they're pretty much round, and there's hundreds of 'em, just piled up, waiting to be..." he looked for a suitable verb. "...golfed."
Claire smiled, reaching into the bag and taking out two of the appropriately-sized rocks, one black as onyx, one white as ivory. As she held them up, the baby squirmed. She flinched, then doubled over, dropping the rocks as the baby kicked violently.
"Oh," she said, trying to sound amused as the pain was suddenly gone. "Whoa." Instictively, she bent and picked them up again. Her fingers were barely wrapped around the rocks when she dropped to her knees, feeling effects of a punch from inside her belly.
Hurley said something but she didn't hear him. For a third time, after the pain abruptly stopped, she reached out for both rocks once more.