Islands Away

Chapter 2

The boy had brown hair and tanned skin. He was the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. He was muscled and yet still seemed delicate, frail; he needed medical help. Over the weeks, I had collected medical supplies, crushing plants into medicine and ointments to cure sicknesses. I had been a nurse and I knew what plants could be used. I had also taken survival classes and knew how to find edible plants.
I picked him up slowly and gently into my arms and headed as fast as I could to my shelter. I still slept in my first lean-to, but in the last couple of weeks I'd built more lean­-tos, places to store food and supplies. I had found another tattered blanket in the ruins of a house, one that seemed to have burned down.
Holding my hand over his mouth to check if he was still breathing, I sighed with relief when I barely felt his shallow breaths on the palm of my hand. I pushed down on his chest many times, and he coughed up water. It spilled out of his mouth and onto the grass. When I held my hand over his mouth again, his breathing seemed less shallow and I could feel it more.
The next few weeks, I fed him with herbs I found and with medicine from crushed plants. He slowly recuperated, seeming less frail. But he still did not wake. Was my medicine wasted on a hopeless case? The gash on his temple had healed, leaving only a dark scar, and hopefully nothing damaged on the inside.
The boy stirred and mumbled something that sounded like Orion, but I could never be sure. Could he be Greek or Roman?
I fed him more of the vegetable soup I had cooked, and his eyes fluttered open. They were the most beautiful eyes I'd ever seen, hazel colored eyes with teal spots. He frantically scanned the room, and finally, his eyes landed on me. "Who are you? How did I get here?" he asked, backing away from me.
I looked down, bashful. "I'm Scarlette. I found you on the beach in the distance, unconscious, and I fed you medicine that I made by crushing leaves that I found in theforest." Only then did I look back up into his eyes. He looked a little less panicked, and he edged forward a little.
"Thank you," he said. "My name is Julian. Can I stay here or do you want me to leave and go somewhere else?"
I shook my head. "Stay," I said. "It's probably for the best. You probably have better chances of surviving."
He nodded. "Could I possibly sleep here then?"
I nodded.
He lay back down on the grass and pulled the torn blanket over him for warmth. I sat on a tree stump that I had built my lean-to on top of and asked, "Do you know what happened?"

He stared at me. "I was hoping that...that you would...know," he stuttered.

"Oh." I felt my mouth sag. "I was wondering because...I woke up in these ruins with no memory to recall of how this"-I gestured around us-"came to be." Julian sat up and folded his knees against his stomach, his gaze flickering up to meet mine. My dark blue eyes could not match the subtleness of his eyes; they were too intense. Embarrassed, I look away, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Julian smile with half of his mouth upturned. It was a crooked smile like Augustus Waters' or Edward Cullen's, but a beautiful one nonetheless.

"I-I should go," I managed as I stood. Julian nodded soberly, and I stepped outside into the twilight and lay down on the dry grass where my blanket was laid. I crossed my legs and placed my hands beneath my head, thinking and wondering what the world would be like without me, if I hadn't found Julian... A sudden voice interrupted my thoughts. "If I may ask, what are you doing?" I turned to the side and discovered Julian at my side. "I'm just watching the stars," I reply. Julian stops for a moment, staring at me lying peacefully on the grass, then says, "Mind if I join you?"

"Umm, sure," I reply. He lies down next to me and says, "Do you think we're the only ones left?" I stay there quietly, and after a moment I say, "Maybe."
"The stars are so beautiful tonight," he murmurs. "I can see them without them being drowned out by city lights." He turns and looks at me, his eyes aglow. Even in the pale moonlight he looks beautiful. "Have you ever seen the stars before?" I want to say yes, but I never have, so I shake my head. He points to a cluster of stars and says, "That's Orion." He points to four stars in a rectangular shape and whispers, "And that's the Big Dipper." I smile and turn on my side to look at him. "Orion--that's something you said a lot while you were unconscious."

Julian turns to face me and smiles ruefully. "It was the ship I sailed on before I ended up here." I didn't say anything, and after a while, we lay on the yellow grass, not so much dry as dead, and looking at each other, into each other's eyes until we fall asleep.

The next night, we do the same. And the night after that. And that. About a month after Julian arrived, we lay under the stars again, watching. Julian scoots closer to me so that our shoulders and hips touch. He turns his head slightly and looks at me, smiling. "What?" I mirror his smile, feeling, for once, completely and utterly happy.

He tucks a strand of my long, blond hair behind my ear. "To quote Augustus Waters," he begins, grinning. "'Because you're beautiful, and I vowed awhile ago that I would not deny myself the simple pleasures of looking at beautiful people.'" I blush and look at the yellow grass. "But really," Julian continues, his gaze flickering over to me, "your blue eyes are like the vast expanse of the sky. Your hair is like a silk of many colors, from white-blond to dirty yellow." And we lay there, staring at each other, until our eyes closed and the world became dark.