Page 25 of Restoration
WHEN I SENSE HIM MOVING, I wake up to discover it’s light outside.
I sit up, wincing when my back and thigh muscles ache. No doubt from all the physical exertion yesterday and sleeping on a hard surface. Edmund is sitting up too, and he blinks at me groggily.
If possible, his hair is even more wildly disarrayed than it was yesterday. It’s kinking and tangled and sticking out in odd places all over his head. He’s got three days’ worth of beard now, and it gives him a sexy rakishness that I’m not used to associating with him.
“Mornin’,” he mumbles. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Yeah. Some.”
“You seemed kind of restless.”
“Woke up now and then. Just nerves, I think. Did I disturb you?”
“Nah. Wasn’t exactly sleeping like a baby anyway.” He stretches his arms, crossing them one by one in front of his chest, and then groans. “Ugh. Guess we weren’t miraculously rescued overnight.”
“Doesn’t look like it. Actually, that makes me think of something. Maybe we should put some sort of sign on the beach in case someone passes by and we’re not around. So they’ll know we’re here.”
“What kind of sign? Writing on the beach will just get washed away.”
“I know. Maybe with rocks or shells or something? We could write out a big SOS.”
He chuckles. “That would work. That can be a project for today.”
“Okay. We can add it to our list.”
“What other projects do we have?”
“We’ve got to look farther into the forest and see if we can find anything other than coconut to eat and make sure there aren’t any dangers in there that we need to know about.”
“Oh. Yeah. We should probably do that.”
“So we can start with the SOS in case anyone is already looking and then do some exploring later in the morning.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He’s smiling with a familiar, amused warmth as he crawls out of our hut. “Nice to know you’re still trying to schedule my whole day.”
I huff, but it’s mostly for show since he’s obviously not annoyed with me.
At least he wakes up in a decent mood. This whole ordeal would be a lot worse with a grumpy downer.
Hopefully he doesn’t think that’s what I am.
***
IT RAINED FOR A WHILElast night but not enough to provide any workable amount of water in our tub, so after we go to the bathroom, we walk over to wash up in the stream and refill our coconut bowls with water.
Our breakfast is another coconut, and then we spend over two hours searching for enough shells and rocks to shape out a very large SOS on the top of the beach where it’s not likely to be washed away by the surf.
We’re both quite pleased with this accomplishment, and we’re newly invigorated as we once again brave the forest to see what we can see.
There are more bugs—flies and mosquitoes and spiders and other crawly things—than on the beach, so I immediately do a lot of slapping and swatting. Edmund doesn’t even have any shoes, so he’s trying to traverse the uneven ground full of tree roots and branches and rocks without ripping open the soles of his feet.
We find a ton of coconut palms and a lot of other palms. There are other taller trees that look almost like pines and a lot of vines and brushy shrubs. We’ve been walking for about twenty minutes when we come across a spot where the taller trees thin out so there’s more sun.
There, we find a spring surrounded by big rocks. It looks almost like a cultivated water feature in a garden. The spring is clearly the start of the stream we’ve been using for water. And all around it are flowering plants—big blooms in purple, white, and yellow.
It’s like something out of a fantasy. I’m delighted as we move closer.
“This is definitely the island Jon told me about. He said it was like the Garden of Eden in the middle of it.”