Who: Jack and Chloe What: Random meet up When: Slightly forward dated to Tuesday morning Where: Outskirts of the jungle close to the camp Warnings: TBD; some bad innuendo/suggestive references at least because it's Jack. Status: Closed/Incomplete
It had been over a week, and Jack still found most days he was actually--if not happy, peaceful here. He wasn’t putting it past being some kind of manipulation of the ‘gods’ (he still rankled a bit at that term, though he didn’t begrudge anyone who believed in them that way as long as the beings never showed these people any harm), doing something to try to calm the populace.
But then again the teenagers didn’t seem to be doing so well with that. Maybe it was just his own unique biology. Or, if he was honest with himself, the fact that he had a reprieve from everything going on back home. That he didn’t start each day walking past two empty work stations, and that his vortex manipulator had been rendered into a fairly ordinary wrist strap so he couldn’t constantly check on Gray’s vitals even if he wanted to.
And, contrary to what he would have thought before, that parts of the island reminded him of Boeshane before everything had gone so wrong gave him a strange sense of calm. The smell of the salt coming from the ocean, the warm sand, and even some of the plants and animals. Like the guava fruit he’d found this morning, while he’d been gathering wood to work on making a much sturdier bed to prevent any theoretical embarrassing mishaps, and deciding he needed a break had grabbed one from a low hanging branch out of curiosity.
They tasted a little like a fruit he remembered enjoying as a boy; he couldn’t remember the name, and he knew they’d had a pale pink skin instead of green, but the flesh was about the same in taste and texture, and eating them brought back feelings--if not exactly clear memories--of far better days. Jack was leaning against one of the trees, shirtless and with the juice of the fruit and sweat dripping down his face as his hatchet lay forgotten at his side, but even wrapped in the warm feeling of when home had truly meant safety the instincts of a soldier never completely left when he heard movement--remembering that there were bears and probably other things out there. Cracking one eye, he put his finger around the hatchet again and peered for the source of the sound.
"If you're a bear I'm warning you now, I don't have much fat so I'm probably not going to taste real good, contrary to what some people might've told you," he called out.