Tatum Donnelly (a_straychild) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-08-10 03:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, cycle003, emma, incomplete, tatum |
Who: Emma & Tatum & OPEN.
What: Very, very mild exploring along the shore of the island.
When: Mid-day, on June 7th.
Where: Twenty-or-so minute walk from the original landing site.
Warnings: None so far.
Since they'd arrived on shore, twenty-five of them all together in the boat if her counting wasn't off, Tatum had been trying to keep it together. She'd gotten her cry out on the boat, fluctuating between sobbing and sniffling on Emma for most of the way to the island they'd eventually made it to. She'd been hoping, praying, waiting ever since for another lifeboat to appear on the horizon, bringing more survivors with it, bringing her cousin with it. She'd have done anything to see Annie's smiling face, to have the blonde pull her into a one-armed hug and scruff her head, or to curl up on the couch together and watch Game of Thrones (maybe not Beneath the Veil considering) like they'd done back home.
Home, hah. That was a thought.
The island couldn't be any further from the height of luxury, especially for someone like Tatum, who'd always been so dependent on technology and a weak at best camper anyway. No pre-existing shelters, an abundance of only bare-bones supplies, with no idea where they were, no idea what to do. But the lack of electricity was still a concern to her, too. Everything, or close everything, that was in the bag she'd grabbed before evacuation was a stupid electronic device. She had a backpack with her tablet, camera, portable videogames, her phone, one rechargeable battery-charger that would give her life for her iPod or phone for another day.. for what it was worth. Which, really, was nothing. The most useful thing she'd had was a half of a pack of cigarettes, but they were still soaked from being the pocket of her shorts when they'd dismounted the lifeboat into the watery shore the morning prior.
They were essentially sitting ducks until help came, and it had been a full day already, and there still wasn't any word. She was nervous. She was always nervous, but she was getting worse. Some of the faces among the survivors were familiar, one of the boys she'd met at the dance, the maintenance worker, the couple of the girls from the wedding party. Dakota Davenport too, and Ian Kingsley. She'd never seen Dakota look so disheveled in her life, even in her worst paparazzi photo. But more than any of them, most important to her, was Emma. She'd been sticking to her girlfriend like glue since they'd boarded the lifeboat, and she hadn't quit for a second, never letting Emma get more than a little while out of her sight.
She was often worried about seeming too clingy in their normal every day lives, but given the circumstances, she hoped that she couldn't be faulted.
When the sun rose that morning, Tatum hadn't felt much like eating, but she'd gotten one of the protein bars (only after Emma would walk with her over to get one) and picked at it. She really hoped that the supposed help that was coming chose to come find them soon, because the bars were decidedly nasty, and she wasn't sure that she could take many more stupid, little things going wrong on top of all the surreal, terrible things that had transpired on their last night on the cruiseliner. She already felt like crying at every turn, like anything could set her off. She'd been slipping more than she'd like, shedding more tears in front of strangers than she'd normally ever want to do, but there wasn't really much choice. Some part of her wondered if she were losing her mind.
Sitting around and being still was doing nothing for her sanity, she'd just been biting her lip and bouncing her foot nervously while they sat on the shore, and so she'd asked Emma to come with her for a small walk. A few people had been poking around, but no one that she'd seen yet seemed too eager to go too far. There was personally no way that she was going into any of that vegetation too deeply, who knew what could be in there.. but walking along the beach couldn't hurt. Even if just to see how far down it stretched. A walk also gave them a chance to get a few minutes of privacy away from the rest of the group, many of whom seemed to be parts of their own little groups or pairs. There were odd men out, but she clearly wasn't the only person lucky enough to have a person she cared about stuck there with her.
She had ditched her sweater back with their bag at the landing site, but she'd put one of the stupid looking plastic whistles around her neck instead.. just in case. Not that she planned for them to go too far from the lifeboat and the sound of other voice. Tatum hadn't been saying much, hadn't really been saying much at all unless Emma spoke to her first since their arrival on the island, but she spoke up then when she saw something. They'd been walked for about twenty minutes, when she grabbed Emma's wrist, squeezing. "Dude, is t-that a banana tree?" she asked, with the closest thing to excitement that she'd had in her voice since the boat went down. "I k-know I'm not h-high.."