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It was getting dark.
Stars had appeared on the sky as sunset slowly waned to dusk. Theo knew that it wasn't long before the skies turned indigo. He had sat back next to her again, and he lost track of time of how long they'd been like that in silence. But he wasn't bothered by it. In fact, he kind of like it.
He looked at her, whose eyes were focused in front of them. Her eyes were anchored to every sight that it could touch — the ocean, the sky; the sand, the birds that flew by. And suddenly he wondered if she was merely an element of the beach as well. A force of nature herself.
He shook the thought out of his head.
"Why are you doing this?"
Lenny startled, turning to him. "What?"
"Helping us," he clarified, biting off the words helping me. "Not long ago, we were complete strangers to you. We still are."
She let out a light chuckle. His eyes flickered over her face, trying to get a sense of where she was at. "Honestly? I'm not sure. Can't people simply just care about one another for the sake of it? Can't we just look out for each other without expecting anything in return?"
"That's a hard concept to live by."
"I didn't say it was easy." She shrugged. "But it's worth a try."
He gave her the comfort of leaving it alone, but his thoughts were already in a whirlwind. In another life, that could be possible — offering kindness, out of kindness. But not in this one.
In a world where people could be as cruel and vain as they would be good and kind, where anger and ignorance could always win, he just found it too hard to believe. Too good to be true.
And that was the problem about her, he realised. People like her were the ones who could easily break; who couldn't survive in the real world because they only chose to see the good parts. People like her depended too much on humanity, and that hope was going to break them.
Life could be cruel.
It was the reason he came here. To a new place and start over.
