Chapter 6

Gwen had been unconscious for many an hour now. Lying within the hut with a pile of clothes beneath her head as a pillow, the sweat-drenched girl writhed and frowned in her deep state of sleep. Ben, who had finally dared to leave her her side, was away at the other side of the island, gathering up fruit. She'd had a fever that finally broke not too long ago, and it was then that he felt safe to leave her be in the hut, to continue getting over the snake bite. What he wasn't aware of, as he ventured further onto the other side of the island, was that Gwen wasn't entirely safe. While her body was healing, her mind was enthralled and caught up in a nightmare that had her heart trembling within her chest.

In her dream, she was still approaching Ben and the snake. Its jaws were strangely unhinged, even more powerful looking than it had been in reality (though of course, this dream felt like reality to her at the moment). Venom dripped slowly from its fangs, and as it rose upward higher and higher, she found herself too paralyzed to do anything. Screaming a scream that didn't even manage to leave her throat somehow, she watched in her mind as the snake latched onto Ben's throat, waking him in a most terrifying way. Latched on, it wouldn't let up, sinking its fangs in as far as they'd go, even as he let out a blood-curdling scream.

"Ben! No!" Sitting bolt upright as she screamed sincerely this time, awakening into reality for the first time in what had felt like a small eternity, Gwen looked quickly around the hut she found herself in; where was Ben?

Scrambling to get to her feet, she nearly fell down as soon as she'd managed to get up in the first place; her knees were trembling, shaking something fierce. She was still quite weak after what she'd endured. But that didn't matter to her. Even as her mind came to realize that she'd only witnessed a mere dream, Gwen still felt hellbent on finding Ben. Something dark and heavy remained over her heart as she flashed back to thoughts from the dream: his scream, his body lying hopeless as she did nothing, him dying. She wasn't even aware of the fact that she had begun to cry as she slipped out from the hut now, managing to barely keep standing as she stumbled forward.

"Ben?" she called out, clutching at her chest as her eyes darted all around. "Ben, where are you?"

Far away, on the other side of the island, Ben was turning to head back for the hut now. He had placed a good amount of fruit on a shirt and tied it up into a makeshift bag, which he then affixed to a stick. With this over his shoulder, he now headed back, traveling in the same way he'd come to get there in the first place. However, before he could quite make it about three-forths of the way back, strange new sounds caught his attention. It was the sound of other voices, male voices. There were other people on the island with them!

Running in the direction of the voices, Ben wasn't even sure what was driving him to do so, but he felt certainly curious about who it was that was with them now. Was it a search party that'd come for them, finally finding them after nearly a year? Surely, whoever it was, they hadn't been there with them long, because Ben felt no doubt that they'd have run into each other before now. Running for moments longer, Ben slowed his pace a bit as he came to the place where the trees began to clear. He could just make out a small band of people, a mix of five or six old and young men. They were standing round and about the lagoon, talking amongst each other. Ben remained hidden behind the shelter of the trees at the edge of the place, listening in to them all.

"Are you quite certain, Shelby?" the oldest of the men there said, his moustache bristling as he eyed a younger member of the group with a nasty look.

"Yes, sir. Our sattelite records indicated that it was somewhere around here, but…"

"If I may, I suggest, sir, that we go back to headquarters and regroup our efforts," said a third man, a bit of a snide, proud look on his face as he tilted his nose upwards in the direction of the man called Shelby.

"Yes, quite right, Jacobson," the moustached-man replied, before clearing his throat and adding, "Well that's that, then. We'll head back to the other side of this island and fetch our copter. Back to headquarters we go."

"Sir, we've only been out searching for such a short while!" interjected the young Shelby then, not moving to walk away from the lagoon as the others did. "Is this really what the integrity of the Forever Knights has come to?"

Mere feet away from the lagoon, Gwen poked her head out around the side of the hut. She had paused on her search for Ben and ducked back within the shelter of it when she'd heard strange voices and footsteps approaching the area. It was only now that she dared to try and catch a glimpse of whoever they were that had come there, now that they mentioned the Forever Knights. Whoever this Shelby was, he was right in going to the lagoon, if Gwen's gut feeling was right about what the group was in search of in the first place. She felt frightened and uncertain about what would happen next, and she dearly wished more than ever that her cousin was there with her to comfort her.

Standing amongst the trees still, Ben kept his eyes peeled as he watched the group of men stand and stare back at the one called Shelby. He'd heard them mention the Forever Knights, and this had intrigued him greatly.

"Shelby, our integrity is, evidently, already compromised when we leave it to you younger ones to figure out our plans, only to lead us into the middle of nowhere, where we're forced to leave afterward, fruitlessly," said the older man, and as Ben's eyes darted over to look at him, he then noticed the sight of a head poking round the side of the hut; Gwen must be awake, he realized, though he couldn't very well walk over to her now. He'd have to wait until this group cleared off.

And so, turning his attention back to the group of visitors, Ben watched as Shelby hung his head, solemnly taking to marching along after the rest of the small brigade as they made their way away from the lagoon, instead heading back for the other side of the island. Ben noticed that they took a different path than he ever had; he made a mental note to investigate it later.

Back by the hut, Gwen had crept fully out and around to the side of it now, watching her own self as the small group of men walked away from the lagoon. Inwardly, she sighed in relief. If they had come for what she thought they'd come for, they'd certainly left empty-handed. However, they could just as easily come back for it later, once they realized exactly where it was. But then, there was also the hope that maybe they wouldn't come back, either. She had a bad feeling about being caught all alone with the Forever Knights, and she'd really rather it never happen again. They were never great news in the past, so she was sure they wouldn't be great news now.

Back in the shelter of the trees, Ben waited a good long while, until the voices of the men were distant, and then unheard altogether, before he ran from the trees, making a bulletline for the hut. Blinking as she noticed the figure of her cousin running toward her, Gwen pushed herself to her feet, a smile breaking out across her face as he reached her, throwing his arms around her as they met. His stick-and-sachel of fruit lay forgotten amongst the trees.

"I was looking for you before those men came by the lagoon!" Gwen exclaimed to him, hanging her arms around Ben's neck as he kept his own arms wrapped around her. "Then I hid, because I wasn't sure who they were. But, oh, I had such a horrible dream about you earlier, and I'm so happy to see that you're okay now. Because, because in the dream, the snake bit you, and you died, and…"

Moving his hands away from Gwen's body, bringing them to rest at the sides of her face instead, Ben looked her right in the eyes, a serious look in his own. "I didn't die. The snake didn't get me. You saved me from it, and I'm right here, and you're right here, and we're both perfectly safe and sound. You hear me?"

Her chest rising and falling rapidly as she fought back the strange urge to begin to cry again, Gwen threw herself at Ben, crashing her lips to his. Letting his hands fall from her face, to wrap them around her waist instead, Ben returned the kiss, his heart pounding against his ribcage something fierce as their lips opened and closed against each other, breathing new life into each other, finding new feelings they hadn't dared to seek out before; they felt scary and wonderful at the same time.

When the pair finally broke apart moments later, they found themselves breathless, pulses racing, minds spinning. Their arms were still wrapped around each other, and neither one of them had the particular intent of letting go anytime soon.

"Is this wrong?" Gwen finally asked aloud, barely able to hear her own voice over the sound of her own heart pounding in her ears.

"Maybe, but I don't really care. If it is, then I like being wrong," came Ben's answer, before he brought his lips to hers again, kissing her, though this time a bit more chastely. "Now come on, I forgot something by the trees. I went and gathered some fruit for you, in case you were awake and hungry when I got back."

"Thanks. I guess I am kind of hungry," Gwen answered him, before walking with him, hand in hand, back toward the trees. "And again, I'm so glad you're okay, Ben."

"I'll always be okay as long as you're okay, Gwen."