You follow her.

Dramatic chords rang in your mind, violins setting the ambience as she rolled ever closer. Her, Wilson, pale spherical bumps and a personality like no other.

Your heart started beating faster. She was out of your league after all, you knew. But did that matter to either of you? You weren't sure anymore. At any rate your logical thoughts started slowing down, replaced with a desire...one fueled with every part of you.

"It's you...you've returned. I'm sorry for leaving so-"

She pressed a stick to her mouth, she didn't want to hear it. Her expression told you everything, all the feelings of betrayal she felt, how could you leave her like this? How could you leave her for another girl?

You knew very well you didn't deserve that kind of interaction. The kind that involves a real girl with real love, let alone the artificial nature of one night stands.

Ahh yes, one night stands...you'd been good at those. Buy some drinks, crack some jokes, be smart with words and coy with requests, all despite the knowledge of what you both knew to be happening and eventually, if the cat in the street hasn't been black or the clover had four leaves or whatever other nonsense that defined the nature of reality occurred or refused to manifest in just the right way, you'd retreat to the bedroom. If you lose luck there, you might just have to resort to..God forbid...getting married.

"What's that?" the girl, the real girl that crashed in the plane. The girl you'd forgotten to get the name of asked, noticing your bouncing the seashell and rock with murmurs for dialogue and imagination for background music as you stumbled through the forest.

You couldn't help it, maybe it was the stress of the crash or the knowing how ridiculous the situation really was or thoughts of what you did or didn't deserve. Your mind wasn't clear, your emotions were everywhere, and you had to stop a moment before answering, after shoving the objects in your torn jacket far too quickly.

"Nothing."

She wouldn't buy that, you were sure, but it bought you time. Time to think, time for the universe to take it's course and end it's dreadful experiment on your being, time for something, anyth-

She laughed.

Such a ridiculously fantastic sound, you had to stop a moment to fully process that it was coming from her. She took your pause the wrong way and stopped as well, giving you a defensive look. "I didn't mean to laugh at you, I just thought it was funny. The fact that you actually care to hide what you're doing from me, almost a compliment. I suppose I should clarify though, I don't really care what you're doing. I was just curious, I swear I won't start screaming at you or something."

She giggled a little more and continued fumbling through the jungle. You paused a moment longer and started following her again, your thoughts catching up.

"I suppose it's just a thing I do...imagine scenarios in my mind where my thoughts can play themselves out."

"Ahhh they didn't get you did they?" she glanced back and asked.

You tilted your head, "Whaddya mean they didn't get me?"

"The people!" she gave you a wide-eyed expression that reminded you of a child. Not because it was unintelligent or unresponsible but because it was full of life. "Governments, economists, politicians, teachers, parents, lawyers, police, the authorities! They have many names, but for simplicities sake; they're the people! The people who, over the course of your life, slowly leach the creativity off of you for their own purposes if ever you make it past the first few years of outcome-based education with it still intact! The very imagination in your soul...it's dangerous for their purposes, you see. Much easier to control people when they can't think for themselves. When they can't imagine a better world, when they leave it to them to solve the problems. Or better yet, imagine a world that better fits their narrative by keeping the divide between the sheep and the wolves wide enough to maintain the power differential. You see what I mean?"

God, this was one of those conspiracy theorists you'd heard so much about back on the main land wasn't it? No wonder she thought armed men in suits were after her in the middle of nowhere...nevertheless you nodded and smiled, best follow along anyway.

You traveled for a while after that in silence, letting the sounds of the forest fill your thoughts.

Eventually she whispered to you as you walked as quietly as possible, "I've never been much good at hunting. I did do a few times, a long time ago...back with my grandad. We'd take the rifle out and he'd shoot some things, I'd always miss."

You couldn't help but smile at this. "Of course you're using a spear now, not a gun. And your life kinda depends on it."

This made her smile. "That's true, though I think it was less about my aim and more about my mindset...I never wanted to kill the things I was shooting at."

A vegetarian conspiracy theorist, could it get much worse than this? Still, she was extremely pretty.

"What's your name?" you felt yourself ask. Uh oh, you were going through the motions again...

She answered, "Lucy, pleasure to have been...well, I suppose it's not a pleasure, but, you know what I mean. I'm glad I'm not alone here."

"Me too. I-" you had to stop, through the trees you caught a glimpse of blue. Was this the other side of the island? You had assumed it was bigger than this but you really couldn't say for sure. "What's that?"

Lucy looked the way you were looking and started creeping towards it. You followed, and soon it became appearant that it was a lake, falls leading into the side of it and a clearing all around. It was a beautiful sight.

Lucy plunged her hand into the water and brought it to her lips.

"No salt!" she exclaimed.

You did the same and breathed a sigh of relief. That would take care of a massive problem, water. You both drank deeply, and eventually Lucy leaned next to you and wrapped an arm around you, taking you be surprise. "I wouldn't have seen this without you, thanks."

Your cheeks turned slightly red and you stood up a little abruptly. "Not at all! You probably would have seen it had you kept going, and at any rate I was probably scaring away half the jungle."

She shook her head. "Not so, I was the one scaring the jungle away. The question is whether-...well..."

"What?"

"Nothing."

You raised your eyebrow, "Isn't it my turn to laugh and tell you I wouldn't be outraged, whatever it might be?"

She smiled, "Well I'm not playing with seashells now am I? Besides, we have a camp to move!"

And so you helped her move the camp, being careful to mark trees along the way to the best of your ability so you could find your way back. You were able to follow the beach, once you reached it, and find the camp. And it only took one trip to take the most important things. Once that was done, you settled in a clearing alongside the lake, setting up a little lean-to. The bugs were bad, and you knew they'd get worse during the night, especially so close to a lake. Hopefully a fire would keep most of them away.

Alright so maybe I continued the volleyball action a bit, that might be a reoccurring theme. Also sorry for the wait, I'm a super slow writer and I accidentally deleted a finished version of this chapter once, so I had to rewrite the whole thing. Though it did turn out better, so I suppose I can't complain. What do you guys think? Is there anything I can improve? If so feel free to comment or send me a message, thanks for reading!