Chapter Thirty-one

Love and pregnancy and riding on a camel cannot be hid.

Arabic Proverb

Sayid clawed his way to drowsy consciousness. Nadia was shaking him. She hadn't done that since their wedding night, and he had not had an unpleasant dream since that moment. Had he been dreaming now?

"What is wrong?" he murmured.

"Feel this," she said, taking his hand and placing it against the flesh of her belly.

For a moment, he was unable to process her intentions. He thought she wanted sex. Not that he would object strenuously to such an awakening, but he was tired. He blinked hard.

"Did you feel it?" she asked. To Sayid, she sounded giddy. Nadia—his charming, intelligent, passionate, determined Nadia—suddenly sounded like a giddy schoolgirl. She had never sounded like than even when she was a schoolgirl.

That was when he realized the baby was kicking. And not just a little.

He blinked again and then the bright, open-mouthed grin stole across his face. It was unusual; even when he was happy, he tended to smile with his eyes, not with his mouth.

Sayid sensed his own happiness, and that feeling quickly gave way to joy—that was, he felt joy that he should be feeling happiness at all. He had always known, intellectually, that he was going to love this child as his own, but that was because he had determined to do so. Such love was to be first and foremost an act, and the emotion, he assumed, would be secondary, developing in time.

But there he was, feeling the child move within the womb, still unborn, and already, already, he sensed the love building within himself.

Quite unexpectedly and unreservedly, he was overcome by the same excitement and tenderness he saw shinning in Nadia's dark eyes. He bent forward to kiss her stomach, and against her flesh he whispered to the child within, "I cannot wait to meet you."

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Sayid carved another notch in the flat stick. That was the last. He had a workable ruler now. He noticed Kate and Sawyer walk by several yards away by the edge of the ocean, and he shook his head in amused disbelief. He was rather surprised by the amount of time they tended to spend together lately and a bit bewildered by it.

Sayid set the ruler down against the maps and began to tick off measurements. He became immersed in his work, and he did not sense the approaching footsteps. Suddenly, between the ruler and the pencil there landed the ring he had forged, spinning for a moment against the workbench before it fell flat and lifeless with a tiny click.

"Pardon me for wasting your time," came Marcus's voice, thick with suppressed bitterness.

Sayid glanced up just in time to see the man's back as he walked on down the beach. The Iraqi picked up the ring and then looked again at the retreating priest. He narrowed his eyes in confusion and pity. Silently, he placed the ring in his pocket and returned to his work on the map.

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Marcus was chopping wood in the jungle when he felt an irritating presence behind him. This was usually Sawyer's job, although Sayid occasionally found his way to the woodpile, as did the priest, the latter two more often when they were frustrated than at any other time. Sayid hadn't chopped wood in a long while.

Marcus turned his head slightly to see a smirking Charlie draw up behind him. The priest slammed the axe down hard into the wood, let it stand where it hit the ground when the log split, and wiped his sweat-soaked brow with his arm. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Heard there's trouble in paradise," the would-be musician mocked. Lately, Charlie had been very kind to Claire, but, on those occasions when he found himself alone with Marcus, there was still an unsuppressed bitterness that bubbled effortlessly to the surface.

"I have no idea what you mean," replied Marcus, wresting the axe from the earth. How could Charlie have heard anything, anyway? Only Claire and Sayid knew he had proposed, and, by now, probably Nadia. None of them was likely to have told Charlie.

"I think you do," Charlie said with a smile. "I overheard you."

"Overheard?"

"Yeah, I was on the other side of that rock when you proposed to her, just reading a bit. Didn't want to interrupt you or anything, so I kept quiet."

"Did you?" The axe slammed down again with a crack.

"Tough going, huh? Can't say I don't know what it's like to be dumped myself."

"I was not…dumped."

"Kinda sounded like it," Charlie said, the delight not hidden from his voice.

"Well, then, I can only presume you grew a conscience, stopped your eavesdropping, and left early in the conversation."

Charlie's tongue flicked out and across his teeth. He looked irreconcilably peeved. As a matter of fact, he had felt awkward, and he had stolen away shortly after the couple had approached. He had heard Marcus ask the question, had heard Claire hesitate, had listened to the uncomfortable silence that followed. Then he had heard Claire say, "Marcus, I really don't think it's a good idea right now." That had been followed by utter silence from the priest…a very long silence…during which Charlie had made his getaway. He hadn't been spying, really—he had just been there.

"If you, uh…weren't dumped," said Charlie, as he stuck his hands in his back pocket, "why are you attacking those logs with such energy?"

"We need wood."

"They're all splinters."

Marcus dropped the axe and turned a perturbed gaze on Charlie. "Do you have something particular you want to discuss with me, or are you just here to rejoice in what you perceive to be my misery?"

"The latter," replied Charlie with a smile, but he soon left the priest alone, heading back out to the beach.