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1.14 Another Try

Posted by on December 31, 2013

Night passed, and the morning dawned foggy and gray. Still Roselyn hasn’t returned. I started to worry about her. Sure, we hadn’t SEEN anything terribly dangerous on this island, but that didn’t mean a young girl out alone wouldn’t find something. Or fallen from a cliff in the dark.

I didn’t say anything to Timi and Adelle. They didn’t need to worry. Jesse squeezed my hand to let me know he knew.

When it was starting to get dark, Roselyn finally wandered back to camp.

Trailing behind her was a wan little boy who watched her with huge, adoring eyes.

His name was Samuel. It took Adelle days to draw him out enough to learn that. At first, he wouldn’t talk to me or Jesse at all, and even Timi seemed too adult for him to trust.

Samuel was quiet and frightened, and he followed Roselyn around like a puppy. We had no idea where she found him.


Once we found him sleeping on the ground outside — as close as possible to Roselyn’s bed, but where she wouldn’t be able to see him.

Roselyn, on the other hand, was a different person when she was around him.

She was relaxed and cheerful, even child-like.

Timi, meanwhile, was recuperating from his run-in with the shark and worrying about what everyone thought of his mermaid story.

Eventually, he confronted Adelle, begging her to believe him.

She told him not to worry. She trusted him completely, and she never even considered the possibility that he was lying.

His face lit up like a lamp.

While Roselyn was gone, I had plenty of time to think about what I would say to her when I saw her again. We all have our own demons from what happened before we came here. She came here as a little girl, without her parents, and I can only guess what she might have witnessed before she washed up here. Most of the time, Jesse acts like he hasn’t a care in the world, but sometimes under the moonlight he has delusional war flashbacks. We probably all have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in some form.

So it is my job not to let her outbursts get to me. When I had a chance to get her alone, I took her aside and told her she was always welcome here, and we would care about her no matter what.

I don’t know what she thought of my little speech, but the next day she came out to work with me in the garden. She didn’t say anything in particular, but it felt sort of companionable.

I’ll take it as a note of encouragement.

———-

I’m trying to catch up here. I still have quite a bit to catch up, and this game is up on the rotation for more playing.

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