"Y-yeah...yeah...flight 298. That's what I was on." Lizzie stares at him for a moment, probably longer than she might normally have. Maybe it was taking her an extra moment or so to process things. Is this a dream?
The guy was still talking, but she only zones back in to hear the last bit of what he was saying. "other people on the other side of the beach...like you...like you said.""Okay." Her mind was everywhere, but at the forefront was: stay busy. Don't go into shock. Don't completely lose your shit.
She is mid-search through the luggage when she comes across a cotton dress among the water-soaked items. It's dark red, but she can't tell if that's due to the water or if the dress is usually that color. She grabs the fabric in both hands and attempts to rip it in half, much akin to what she's seen in plenty of tv shows and films. The fabric goes taunt immediately and the force she expends nearly sends her falling over... but the fabric remains intact. You've got to be shitting me..
An exasperated sigh warns of the next response she has; which is to say, she flails the fabric around, pulling with her feet and tugging with her teeth in opposite directions in more desperate attempts to get the cotton to rip. Eventually she gives up with a low groan of annoyance.
Back into the bags she goes, digging for something... anything... that would be sharp enough to give her a start on the fabric so that she could use it to bandage the guy's head.
SPLASH
She turns around, looking over her shoulder. At first she doesn't see him, and when she does, she's cussing like a sailor under her breath and stumble-flailing from her seat in the sand toward him. "Fuck, fuck... shit... SHIT, please... Hey, man... Hey.." she attempts to drag his head up onto her lap so that his nose is away from the water. [color=#E4287C]"It only takes, like, a teaspoon or some shit to drown in, you know.. fuck.. Oh, god, please don't be dead.." She almost sobs as she struggles to get her arms beneath his underarms. If successful, she begins to try and tug him up the beach. It's slow, sloppy, and she sounds like a hog in heat with all her grunting and moaning in her attempts to drag his form along the sand and back up onto the dunes.
Only once she has drug him over to her little pile of wreckage does she lay him down, his head propped up against one of the washed-ashore bookbags. She hovers over him for a moment, making sure he's breathing, before she goes back to searching in the bags.
After ten minutes of searching through the bags..
Lizzie has wrapped Lucas' head in the blue dress- having given up on cutting it into strips. Instead, she's used a belt to secure the entire lumpy-thing to his head. She takes a moment longer to ensure he's still breathing and then she sets off into the treeline. The sun is a warm orange on the horizon, the first warning that night is approaching.
Night has set.
Lizzie comes from the treeline with a canteen strapped to her waist and several thick banana leaves drug behind her. She sets about pulling fallen bamboo poles together to lean them against one of the rocks that sit in the treeline just as the ground turns to sand. Once the poles are in place, she begins the tedious task of moving the luggage from the beach into the small lean-to she's made. Aside from Lucas and the backpack, the deflated, bright-yellow raft is the last thing she grabs. She drags it from the rocks to the lean-to and struggles for a good ten minutes to get the plastic over the bamboo poles. Just in time, it would seem, because no sooner does she get the raft situated than she hears a loud clap of thunder overhead.
She doesn't have time to get to Lucas before the rain starts coming down, and hard. By whatever strength she has left, she manages to drag his body under the lean, the backpack that was under his head now on her back. The lean is small, not even enough room to sit up in, so she has to drag his body across her own to get him under the make-shift roof. Lightening splits over the water, and seconds later another clap of thunder shakes the treeline. She curls up the lips of the deflated raft, using rocks to make a lip on the bottom so that the water from the rain could catch on the plastic. All shit she'd seen in movies, but never, in a million years, had she expected to have to use herself.
Another bolt of lightening and crack of thunder.
She scampers into the lean, shaking and trembling. It was freezing, between the rain and the wind from the beach. The lean provided shelter from the wind and rain from two sides. The third side was held up by the wall of luggage. Banana leaves would act as their blanket for the night, as Liz draped them over Lucas' legs, waist, and chest. She saves only two for herself, using them over her legs and chest. She falls asleep surprisingly fast, probably due to exhaustion.
At some point in the middle of the night, she rolls over toward Lucas and curls up into him- using his body heat for warmth. She doesn't seem to notice or care that each of them are covered in sand and smell of exhaustion and desperation.
When the sun rises in the morning, there's a few downed trees from the storm but otherwise the beach is unchanged. Birds have the nerve to chirp merrily in the tree-tops, as though all is right in the world. Lizzie is knocked out cold, in a dead sleep as she snores lightly on Lucas' chest, one leg draped over his waist, one arm wrapped over his chest.
RPG
