Arrg! School + 5 honors classes + active participation in my school's top 4 clubs + romance + sports = negative time. Gah! Seriously, just when I thought high school couldn't use of more time, BAM; it kicked it up a notch. I deserved to be scolded for my hiatus. D:
Disclaimer Time: I don't own LotF, William Golding does. But if I did, I probably would have introduced females and twisted it into a romance novel for sure.
"The wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts."
-Carl Jung
The highlight of Cassie's day was watching the sunset. She buried her bum into the cooling sand just beyond the fingers of the waves and soaked up the last of the sun's rays. The warm gold and orange lights of the sky mixed with the cool blues and greens of the ocean. Just as the sun dipped into the horizon, the warm and cool colors mixed to form a millisecond of brilliant color. Then, the world was engulfed in the blackness of night.
The sight of the sunset every evening awed Cassie. The most brilliant blend of colors Cassie could imagine occurred just as the day slipped away. She heard of the proverb "The night is darkest just before the dawn." Did it work the other way around? Was the day the brightest, full of color, and breath-taking just before the night? She knew what the proverb meant. Even in the worst circumstances, there's hope. What about the sunset? Did it mean anything?
Cassie didn't have time to debate over proverbs and sunsets. She wasn't different from everyone else on the island, figuratively, of course, which meant she had to contribute somehow to their survival on the island. Ralph had suggested that she kept out of the jungle and away from Jack and his hunting posse. Ever since Jack had brought her back to camp after she nearly drowned, the tension had been tight between them.
Ralph didn't have to apply much effort to keep them apart. Jack spent a majority of his waking hours hunting the wild pigs living on the island. Cassie's daylight hours were spent with the dark haired lad, Simon. A week ago, on the same afternoon she had nearly drowned, she had seen Simon in the fruit trees pulling fruit down for the smaller boys. Without an explanation, Cassie tagged along with Simon. She helped him help the littluns. She brought them water, gave them fruit, washed their scratches, etc. Being around Simon was different than being around Jack. She felt more…peaceful. He was such a peaceful, empathetic individual she couldn't help admiring him. He felt like a brother.
Back at her home, Cassie had grown up somewhat wilder than her classmates. She played in the woods, read books, and sassed her grandmother. She had to be doing something, always. If she sat still long enough, it gave the poisons of her past enough time to creep up on her from behind.
Simon wasn't sure why Cassie liked to be around him. He could tell it wasn't because she wanted to help the littluns. Everything she did around them was performed half-heartily. They didn't speak much, so it couldn't have been anything about him. There had to be something though.
He didn't know why, but whenever he was doing nothing, she seemed the happiest. When he was finished with the littluns, Simon liked to sit and think. Just think. Cassie would usually join him. Leaning against a tree trunk, she looked serene. Simon didn't mind her presence. He was never blessed with a sister, and so Cassie became the closes to one he knew.
The sky was beginning to darken slightly. It had been hotter than the usual mugginess and Cassie had endured the triple digit degrees in her sleeveless blouse and severed skirt, currently cut to knee length. All day she enviously glared at all the boys who were able to strut about in the boiling heat in only a pair of shorts. Now, the temperature was cooling off and she wasn't sweating like a hog.
She was heading towards the shelters in search of some scraps of her sweater. Her leg wasn't entirely healed, but the wound was free of any sign of infection. It was starting to throb though; most likely from the intense heat. Cassie was hoping that wrapping a piece of water soaked sweater around the wound would ease the pain.
As she crawled out of her shelter, she overheard Ralph and Jack arguing a short distance away near the shore. They weren't shouting, but their voices weren't quiet either. Cassie watched Ralph throw up his arms in exasperation.
"Everybody has to watch the fire Jack. I don't care if it means you won't get to hunt your silly pigs. Keeping a fire going, creating a signal, getting rescued…that's what's important. So I expect you on the top of that cliff with a fire blazing around you for the rest of this afternoon or God help me you'll regret it."
Cassie walked away before she could hear Jack's retort. She didn't want to become involved in another conflict. It was funny how even away from all the problems of the world they still created arguments against each other.
She walked into the tropical forest past the fruit grove and towards the freshwater stream where everybody drank. The sun dappled the crystalline stream water and created a scene that resembled a photograph out of a travel brochure. Cassie smirked. All that was missing from the view was a clean elderly couple smiling with thumbs up. She knelt next to the water and dipped her sweater underneath the glassy surface. Once it was properly moist she slapped it against her thigh and moaned with relief. The cool moisture felt heavenly against the warmth that radiated off her injured skin.
She glanced around her surroundings. Even though the sun was due to set in a few hours, the temperature hadn't dropped enough for her taste. A leafy tree with an abundance of branches grew roughly ten feet from the stream. Cassie raised herself from the edge and walked to the bottom of the mighty tree. Staring up into its leafy canopy she felt a stab of nostalgia. She remembered the summer days at home where she spent hours playing in the trees around her house.
With a grunt of determination, Cassie leapt and dug her fingers onto the lowest branch. She wildly kicked at the air and slowly pulled herself onto the branch. Already the air felt cooler and a sense of familiarity spread throughout her body. She climbed up two…three…four branches. She noticed her leg throbbing beneath its wrap, but she was enjoying the feel of bark beneath her toes and air rippling through her clothes too much to stop.
The next branch up the tree was too far out of her reach even if she jumped. She wrapped her arms around as much as the middle of the tree she could and arched her neck around to look at the other side. There was a limb on the other side that she could reach if she maneuvered her position. Within three minutes she was lounging a good distance up the tree. She leaned cautiously against the trunk and dangled one leg over the side of the protruding limb she rested on. The side of the tree she was on had fewer branches, but as long as she came down the way she came up she wouldn't have any problems.
A rustle could be heard on the forest floor. Cassie picked herself up and sat on her haunches. Between the green leaves she spied a head of ginger hair. She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out at the unsuspecting teenager. She'd just wait until he left then-
WHAM!
Something hard struck Cassie in the back. The force caused her to topple forwards and fall like a rag doll through the branches. One of her outstretched hands clenched onto a branch, but with only one grip on the thick limb accompanied with sweaty palms, she slipped off. She screeched wildly and clawed the empty air. She was falling upside down. She felt smaller branches painfully whip her back. She was screaming, but even her high pitched scream didn't accurately match the frenzy inside her mind.
The back of her knees collided with the lowest branch on that side of the tree. The momentum flipped her forward in time for her collision with the earth. Her view changed from the upper branches of the tree to the oncoming earth. But, before her limp body collided into the ground below, it collided with a surprised boy with red hair.
She fell on top of Jack and both of them crashed to the ground.
Cassie didn't register she was on top of Jack until she opened her clenched eyes. She cautiously peeked an eye open, but immediately both eyes widen. She and Jack's face lay merely inches away from each other. She met Jack's blue eyes with her green eyes. Awareness returned to her body and with that became aware that she was lying on top of his bare chest. Jack glared up at her.
"You are a clumsy idiot," he muttered vehemently.
"It wasn't my fault. Something…something hit me…and…and…" She couldn't control her speech. The space between them felt warmer than any degree of temperature she had lived through and twice as unsettling. The tension between them was still there, but it had changed. She couldn't think let alone move herself off of him. Her mind, no, her entire body seemed to have shut down. The sum of the situation could only be described as awkward.
Jack smirked and cocked an eyebrow. "You do a piss poor job at spying on someone."
The momentary paralysis was over. Cassie sat up and crossed her arms.
"I wasn't spying. I was in the tree, and I fell. Something hard in me in the back. It's not like I wanted to fall out of a tree."
"What in the hell would hit you in the back and make you fall out of a tree? An angry bird?" Jack started laughing, and Cassie could feel her face becoming warm.
"It's not funny, Jack! Someone else made me fall out!"
"Who the hell would-!" A wild pig emerged from the undergrowth and trotted to the stream. Both of the teenagers were startled by the boar's appearance. The creature turned its head. It spied both of the humans lying not twenty feet away. It raised its head and roared angrily and began to charge.
Cassie was frozen with fear. Any warmth in the air had evaporated and was replaced with numbing terror. Jack shoved against her frozen shoulders and she fell off him. They both scrambled out of the path of the wild pig. Cassie saw Jack pull his hunting knife out of a loop on his belt. The pig charged over the spot where they had lain seconds before. Jack kept his eyes on the pig's body.
"Cassie, get out of here now. Get back up that tree," he commanded. The pig was turning around. Cassie scrambled to her feet and furiously placed her hands on her hips.
"I'm not climbing back up the tree I fell forty feet out of."
"Fine! Get out of the way then!" The boar was making its second charge towards Jack. Already Cassie could tell that its powerful, charging tusks were no match for Jack's hunting knife. Cassie raised her arms and waved them rapidly to catch the pig's attention.
"HEY! Hey pig!" She could see the pig look over at her distraction. She stopped her crazy movements. She wasn't positive, but she thought the pig attacking them was the same pig she had encountered a week earlier on the island.
The pig roared and changed course heading toward Cassie's weaponless body. She stumbled backwards, but there was no ledge this time, only the trunk of a tree.
There was a whirl of brown and red in front of Cassie. The pig's squeal sliced the air and the animal fell in a cloud of brown dust. Cassie raised her forearms to protect her eyes from the grit. The dust settled and she lowered her arms. Before her lay the boar's motionless body with Jack slung over the top. His hunting knife was wedged into its head. Deep red blood oozed from the wound.
That could have been my blood she thought. She should have turned her head away from the unpleasant sight, but she couldn't help but stare at the dead animal and think with deviant fascination what it would have felt like to drive the knife into the pig herself.
AN: Arrg! Short chapter, but getting back into it. Slowly, but surely. I'm thinking that I need to either 1) get some extreme action going or 2) get extreme romance going for next chapter. -I'm awkward with both though!-
Oh well. It's all just fanfiction, right? If you want a non-cheesy and/or non-awkward story, read the real book :p