"What are you doing here?" he asked.
"I'm studying your rocks," she replied, taking a sip of beer to moisten her dry mouth, another symptom of the state of her nerves.
His smile disappeared, and his eyes widened. He glanced about and the...
Samina dragged herself out of her tent, feeling mopey. Not particularly desirous of facing the day, she'd allowed herself to sleep in. She didn't care if Grant wasn't happy with her for it. After all, she wasn't all that happy with him, either!
Most mornings, her routine, upon waking, was to brush her teeth, and go for a discreet dip in the lake – unless she happened to be running late. But this morning, she just couldn't be bothered. Oh, she'd brush her teeth, alright, but she'd wait till after breakfast. After all, she wasn't going anywhere, was she?
Had she not been so preoccupied with the gloomy prospect of Chris, Phil and Grant leaving the day after tomorrow, the watery wonderland awaiting her on the trail wouldn't have come as a surprise to her, but it did, jolting her from her reverie.
The first morning, on their first island campsite, after the spectacular thunderstorm that had taken out a tree, and almost inflicted the same on Chris and Phil, she'd made a shocking discovery. A dense framework of spider webs permeated the entire island – not just that one, but every subsequent island they'd camped on, too! When the webs had first 'shown' themselves to her, she'd shivered, her surroundings suddenly turning eerie and surreal, befitting a horror film and not a field camp!
Of course, where there are webs, (unless they happen to be very old, abandoned ones), there are inevitably spiders! As the latter proved to be more elusive than the webs, the question naturally arose whether the spiders were small – as in, ordinary-sized – and many in number, or few and – yikes! – (unnaturally) large? Perhaps even one, humongous spider, nestled somewhere on the island, in keeping with an actual horror film? Gulp! If so, she very much hoped that its abode was on Grant's side of the island, and not her own, or the boys'! (Fieldwork had a way of undermining one's sense of reality, as evinced by her unfounded alarm over the sonar-wielding fishermen.)
After only a brief consideration, she decided in favour of the many, more or less ordinary-sized spiders over the few, (or one), giant freakish ones. Not only was it more sound, scientifically, it was also unlikely to keep her up at night! (The alternative would most certainly have, inducing chills at every flutter of her tent, every muffled sound outside!)
So, how was it that the webs had gone undetected during their scouting trip to the island? Had the spiders cleverly, (and hastily), taken them down in order to lure unsuspecting geologists to camp there – wait, did spiders actually know how to take down webs? – and then re-spun them, recognizing that nothing short of a threat to their lives would have induced Chris and Phil to dismantle a camp that they had just set up?
