analiese (anableue) wrote in thefield, @ 2009-06-12 16:23:00 |
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Current mood: | curious |
Entry tags: | aaron, analiese, z - 1st tribe - day 24 |
Monkey Business
Who: Aaron and Analiese
When: early morning
Where: wandering
What: getting acquainted and finding things
Rating: most likely PG
Analiese had not been here any amount of time, and already she was discovering what she hated about the place the most: feeling dirty all the time. Particularly after a day like the one she'd had the day before, when she'd been feverish and sweating. At some point during the night, her fever had broken. She'd awakened early with her hair soaking wet but feeling better overall.
Someone had told her about soap pods for washing and had given her a couple so she'd know what they looked like, and as soon as she woke up, Analiese had taken off for the same area where she'd gotten into the water with Bazzer a couple of days before, the same location where she'd found Adnan, who'd been nice enough to loan her his jacket. Maybe it was a lucky place for her! She'd left her sweater in her bedroll but had brought the jacket along with her, and once she'd washed and rinsed herself as thoroughly as she could, paranoid all the while that somebody would come along and see her, she'd sat on the bank with her knees to her chest and the jacket spread over her from shoulders to ankles to cover herself as well as she could while she drip dried.
She felt much, much improved, both from a health standpoint and from a being clean standpoint, and she spent the brief drying time combing through her hair with her fingers, enjoying the balmy morning that felt like it was going to get even warmer by the time midday arrived. She put her pajamas back on, tied the jacket around her waist and started to walk around the curve of the shore that led away from camp, away from the sounds of people. Walking wasn't painful to her socked feet anymore, and she hummed very quietly under her breath as she moved along, not going anywhere in particular.
There had been some conversation around the campfire in the morning about Quinn finding a gun and Ken offering to teach him how to handle it. Aaron, being Canadian and a hunter, didn't have quite the same outlook about guns that most Americans had. They were something to be treated with respect, a right to be earned and something needed strictly for feeding ones self and family. Self defense? Not so much.
However, Aaron's dad had taught him at a young age how to hunt with a bow. He enjoyed it, played Robin Hood long into his tweens and now owned a competition level composite bow and had a shelf full of trophies at home. He'd noticed that Arlo had a couple of them but he'd also noticed that the grizzled Texan was looking less and less approachable as the hours passed. In the end, he thought he would skirt Arlo completely and maybe see if Ken had known anything about how Arlo had made his bows.
He'd walked well out into the island's approximate middle, a little ways beyond the spring and searched out Ken and Bazzer. He didn't find them at the little fresh spring tannery that was starting up on the northern coast of the island. Circling along the coast, he did spot footprints in the damp sand though and started to follow them. In a few minutes he caught sight of the blonde girl with the Southern accent up ahead. Jogging to catch up with her, Aaron wondered what she was doing wandering all on her own out here.
Bazzer had told her that she'd find something to contribute, that everybody did, but Analiese had not found it yet. She was willing to help anyone who needed it, but as far as a specific task for which she was responsible, something she was skilled at... Well, that had not materialized. So she was just walking, trying to adjust to this new reality, relieved to be mostly rid of the illness she'd had the day before. She heard a faint sound and sensed movement, and she looked around to see one of the guys from camp jogging toward her. She'd seen him around but hadn't really talked to him yet. "Hello," she said as he got within speaking distance.
Aaron loped to a halt at Analiese's side, an easy grin of greeting on his face. "Hey, you're out here early," he said. His blue gaze was curious but also concerned. He was still feeling a bit rotten from the day before but he hadn't been touched that badly. He recalled that Analiese had been a bit worse off than he. He wasn't sure that his experience and, dare he admit it, manly sense of propriety, approved of her wandering so far from camp alone though. It was easy enough to sooth those feelings by just walking with her as long as she'd let him.
"I woke up early and I had to go take a bath," she explained, not that her still-damp hair wouldn't make that obvious. "I guess my fever broke, and I was sweaty, and--." She trailed off, realizing the potential gaucheness of this line of conversation. She smiled lopsidedly and offered a tiny shrug. "You were sick too, right?" she asked, thinking she'd seen him curled into a knot near the fire like a lot of the rest of them. "I'm Analiese," she introduced herself belatedly, since they hadn't previously met.
"Brrr!" Aaron executed a tense full body shudder at the thought of having a bath in the lake. "You are way braver than I am." He flashed her a grin as he took her hand. His palm was still rough and ragged from the healing blisters on them but they were warm. "I was but it wasn't bad," he assured her, ever so subtly straightening up his shoulders as though to demonstrate how hale he was. "I'm Aaron, nice to meet you Analiese."
"It's so warm already," Analiese said, "that it really wasn't bad." This day was going to be a scorcher if the temperature already was any indication; she was comfortable in the skimpy camisole that was her pajama top. She just hoped she didn't finish the day with a sunburn. "It's nice to meet you, too," she said as she shook his hand. "It was horrible to just get here and be that sick," she commented. "How long've you been here?" It seemed the question to ask whenever you met someone new.
"Ah, five days now I guess." He shook his head. It was hard to imagine it had been so long already. It wasn't exactly that he was having fun, it was that it had taken so long for the shock to wear off that he'd not really been aware. Not of the time slipping away, anyways. "You've been here three?" he asked. He remembered her coming pretty clearly. He'd wondered if someone was deliberately messing with them by dropping people nearby to their camp, wherever it was.
"Three, yeah," Analiese confirmed. She wrinkled her nose as her socks squished in the slightly damp sand in which they were walking. "Guess I'm the newest except for Adnan... the guy with the guitar?" He was slightly hard to miss considering that he'd arrived with a full backpack and the hard-sided guitar case. "Some people've been here for weeks." She could hardly believe that, yet she didn't have any reason to think the people who'd been here the longest would be lying. Bazzer was one of them, and he'd been really nice to her, letting her hang out with him at his tanning pit-- although she'd tried to keep her distance from the redolence of urine that hung in the air around there.
"And Lucien," Aaron added. The other fellow had arrived the same day as Adnan, in a slightly more jarring fashion. Dumped right into the frigid lake! Not his idea of a good time. Arriving with boots had been a boon Aaron would never have the heart to be thankful for out loud. They'd give out on him one day but he hoped it was long into the future. "So where are you from Analiese?" He tilted his best grin down at her. "Someplace warmer than here, I hope."
"Oh, I forgot about him," Analiese said. "I didn't know his name." It was a bit hard to miss the guys who didn't have any other clothing except underwear, definitely. When the weather got cold again, they could be in for trouble. She adjusted the sleeves of the jacket she had tied around her waist and then glanced at Aaron as he asked her where she was from. "Pigeon Forge, Tennessee," she told him. "It gets cold there sometimes, 'specially in the winter, but spring and summer are really warm. How about you?"
"Tennessee. I've been through there, but never stayed. There's mountains there, right? I think I might have camped one night." Aaron had tried to get to know just about every wild landscape left in North America. He'd been fairly successful as well, though he had to admit a lot of that was due to his beat up old camping gear. This place was a whole different kind of trip. "I'm from Toronto originally. My parents retired to a place called Gananoque on the St. Lawrence river. It's called 1000 Islands. They have a little one all to themselves." He chuckled, thinking fondly of his folks. He missed talking to them and Tim every day. "I was in the Yukon though, conducting environmental research when I...got taken, I guess." His tone revealed his skepticism on what exactly had happened to them.
"The Smoky Mountains," Analiese told him. "They're gorgeous. It's kinda hard to find a time when there's not a million tourists there, though." Tourists were a mixed blessing in her opinion. They were the livelihood of everyone who lived in the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg area, but at the same time, traffic was a nightmare all the time in both towns. The main mountain roads were impassible in the fall, as well. She smiled when he said he was from Toronto. "Canada's someplace I always wanted to see, too. I've heard it's really pretty." Would she ever get the chance to travel now? She tried to push the thought away. "Do you think that's what happened?" she asked him with a quick sideways glance. "That we were taken?"
Aaron wasn't so sure if Toronto was all that pretty. Crowded and smelly and full of light. The nights never got dark there, they just got orange. He much preferred stars, something he'd appreciated from the peace of his parent's dock or better yet, in the Territories on a clear night. And of course, here, on this strange moonless land with the stars so bright that you barely missed luna at all. "I'm not sure but I know I sure didn't walk here or drive here." He flashed her his quick smile.
"I didn't either," Analiese said. "Because really, who'd come here if they had a choice?" She might live in rural Tennessee, but they had central heat and air, indoor plumbing and electric lights. She'd never been an outdoorsy sort of girl as far as camping and hiking went, though she'd gone on the occasional hike with a guy, if it was a light hike. She'd never forget getting stuck on the Chimneytop trail in the pouring rain, at least a mile from the car. She'd cried, and the guy in question hadn't known what to do with her. "Could you imagine if you woke up and you couldn't find anyone else?" she asked idly. The very thought made her frown and look slightly worried.
Aaron frowned too. "It would be pretty scary," he conceded and knew that, even as an experienced outdoorsman, he'd be rattled by that. "I've heard a rumor that Helena was here for days by herself before anyone else showed up." The tiny Asian woman looked like some sort of delicate exotic flower. Not the hale and hardy adventure type like the injured girl, Jasper. "And I heard that Jasper went off on her own for most of a week too. But I guess that was a choice, so it was different."
"That would be terrifying," she said, wondering if it was possible to die of fright. If it had been her who'd been alone for days, she really didn't think she would have survived the experience. One of those weird creatures with three legs and sharp teeth would have gotten her, or she would've managed to drown herself in the lake. She felt sure of it. Who knew what other dangers there were? "Jasper's the girl who got hurt, right? The one who was bringing back the two kids?" Analiese had hung back at the back of that terrifying, bloody scene.
The sand along the beach crunched under his boots and he sighed, nodding. "Yeah. She still wasn't moving around much this morning. I'm wondering how she's doing." Without any antibiotics or even any alcohol to disinfect with, there were no guarantees that Jasper wouldn't take a turn for the worst. "Pretty cute kids. Hard to believe that they ended up here," he said. That's what really scared Aaron. The idea that someone must have tucked those two into their beds one night and woken to find them missing. Aaron could not even fathom the horror of helplessly losing a child. That seemed even worse than this to him. "Their parents must be going out of their minds," he added quietly.
"They're so little," Analiese said. She'd noticed that, as children do, they seemed to be able to look past the oddness of their situation and play and laugh like any kids. Their adaptability was much better than an adult's, she thought. "I hate to think about them growin' up here." She'd made the remark almost without thought, and once she realized what she'd said, she wrapped her arms around herself, feeling chilled despite the hot sun that was beaming down on them. If the children grew up here, that meant she'd grow older here, maybe die here. It didn't even bear thinking about.
Aaron drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs and letting it out in a rush. He swept his gaze from the mountains in the north to the sweeping grasslands in the south. "I don't know, Analiese," he said a little bit hesitantly. "Maybe they're better off here." It was a thought he was warming up to. "They'll probably, as long as they don't suffer too much malnutrition or find themselves in physical danger, live longer than you or I will. They've got no blackness in their lungs from pollution and car exhaust. They'll probably never die of cancer from all of the junk in our food and in the air and that we put on our bodies. They're going to live organically, their whole life because I doubt we could reinvent manufacturies in the space of a single generation." He shook his head, feeling the wonder of being handed an untainted world. "We've got most of the benefits of our enlightened age in a place that hasn't been damaged at all by our trials and failures. That's...something really special."
"I wish I could look at it that way," Analiese said. Her voice had become the slightest bit wavery, and when the wind tossed strands of blonde hair into her face, she didn't push them back. While she didn't doubt that he was right, she hadn't accepted the likelihood that they'd never get back home. "Maybe they will be better off... maybe the world is bad, corrupted, polluted, like the preacher always said in church. But it was ours." She walked a little faster, squishy socks and all, as if she could somehow outrun the things she didn't want to think about. Pure and clean or not, organic or not, she didn't want this to be her world. She wanted to go home. And she didn't want to cry here, in front of this perfectly nice and attractive man she barely knew. He'd think she was a basket case.
Aaron easily lengthened his stride to keep pace with her and he even reached out and rested one of his hands on her shoulders. "Hey, don't worry about it. It's perfectly normal to be upset." He cleared his throat, a tense move to try to dislodge the rising emotion that the desolation in her tone had forced up out of his stomach. "I get choked up too, when I think about home." He knew it was really too soon to sit down and look at their situation logically. Far too many people were still stuck in despair, including himself. He wasn't lying to her. However, he recalled a conversation he'd had with Rowan a few days ago. About how if she were given the choice, she might possibly stay in this place and raise her child free of all of humanity's mistakes. He bit the inside of his cheek, content to offer compassion rather than arguments for the betterment of man this time.
Analiese slowed down a little when his hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was nice. Solid, warm, comforting. "Bein' upset doesn't help," she said as one hand rose, the tips of her fingers wiping beneath one eye and then the other. "I know that, but it's hard to stop sometimes." She'd never imagined being in a place with literally nobody she knew-- no family, no friends except for the ones she made when she got there. She sighed heavily, finally raked her hair out of her eyes and managed to smile at him. "Thanks," she said. "You're so--." --nice, she'd been about to say, but then her foot hit something that was mostly buried in the sand. "Ow," she remarked, then bent down to try to unearth it. It looked like glass, rounded, something familiar about the shape of it.
Aaron had been about to tell her that being upset had its place. It helped people to work through things and settle their minds on subjects. No one could tell you how long or how hard the grieving process appropriately was. He'd learned that in therapy himself. His parents, brother Tim and he himself had all had a hard time coping when Tim's odd clumsiness was finally diagnosed as Huntington's Disease. It hadn't really struck home for them until they had visited a support group and experienced the advanced disease first hand. Their fear and sadness for what was going to happen to Tim manifested all around them and it had been hard. For Aaron, especially, who was watching his beloved older brother lose more and more control over his motor functions. For boys who'd run so wild in their youth, it was so hard to imagine that soon enough Tim wouldn't even be able to take a sip of coffee from a mug without spilling it all over the room.
However, her discovery came like a saving bell and he crouched to have a look at it as well. "Hey, is that what I think it is?" Her thumb smeared the sand aware from an eye-catching lable with a familiar logo. All of a sudden saliva flooded his mouth. "Oooh, man..." he said, half in awe.
Analiese laughed as she uncovered the label further. "We couldn't be that lucky," she told him. Even if the jar had contained peanut butter, it would probably be rotten, she thought. But no, there wasn't peanut butter in it. The jar had been washed clean, she saw as she got it free from its bed of sand, and sealed up with a small spiral notebook inside. "Wow," she said, seating herself on the damp sand, making sure the thin seat of her pajama leggings was covered by Adnan's jacket; she'd have to brush if off before she gave it back to him. She worked at the lid, wanting to see what was inside the little book, finally huffing and offering the jar to Aaron. "Can you open it?" she asked.
His face was a mask of disappointment for mere moments, almost willing to trade peanut butter for knowledge. However, the inner scientist won out eventually and he accepted the jar from her. He wiped one hand against his denim-clad leg and then the other. Once his hands were suitably dry he gripped the jar in his strong hands and strained to open it for a few seconds before the lid popped off in his grip. "There we go," he said, a satisfied smile on his face. He tipped the jar so that she could remove the notebook inside. Her hands were small enough to reach through but he didn't think he'd get more than a few of his fingers in. "Got it?" he asked, savoring the ancient whiff of peanuts that had escaped the jar.
"Got it," Analiese said, pleased with how easily he'd gotten the jar open. She'd been raised with the theory that men were stronger and more capable than women; women's liberation had not made it as far as the Bleue home in the hills of East Tennessee. College had broadened her views somewhat, but there was no denying that Aaron's hands were larger than hers or that he had more muscle strength. That was just a fact. She reached in for the notebook and eagerly flipped it open, only to frown and flip from one page to the next. "It's in another language," she said, turning the notebook so he could see.
Aaron frowned, feeling her disappointment. His eyes raked over the notes, written in a variety of pens and pencils. "It's..." The strange letters resolved and he realized what he was looking at. "At least it's from earth!" he exclaimed with a chuckle. "It's Cyrillic." He flashed Analiese a grin. "That alphabet from eastern Europe. It's used in most of the countries that used to be the Soviet Union." He'd very briefly dated a girl who'd been a Russian Lit major. They'd not worked out due to their very differing interests. She'd loved the library and he'd loved the park. However, it was always amazing what stuck with you over the years. He shook his head. "I don't speak any of those languages though. Can't help you read it."
"I took Spanish in high school and I can't even read that," Analiese said ruefully. "So I don't have any hopes of readin' this. I wonder what it is?" She couldn't believe the irony of finding something like this and having it be in a completely incomprehensible language. She put the little notebook back into the jar and screwed the top on. "Guess I should take it back to camp when I go," she said. "I don't know if anyone there could read it either, but it might be somethin' important." Also, she knew there was a premium on drinking containers; the jar itself could be very useful.
Aaron nodded. "I'll carry it for you, if you like?" His smile turned a touch sheepish. "If you don't mind me tagging along, that is." He chuckled, perfectly willing to accept rejection at this point. "It's kind of a nice morning to be out here exploring," he said. A thought occurred to him and his blue eyes lit up. "Hey, there's a Ukrainian girl at the camp, Delilah. Have you met her?" He gestured to the jar. "There's no guarantee the notebook is written in Ukrainian or Russian but maybe she can get you ahead in the translation. Maybe it has some really important advice."
Analiese handed him the jar back, saying, "Sure, it's nice to have company." She got to her feet, brushing damp sand off the back of the jacket that was tied around her waist. "After yesterday, I feel like walkin' around." She'd spent most of the day huddled miserably in her bedroll, and now that she felt better, exploring was a nice change. "I think I've seen her," Analiese said when he mentioned Delilah. "Dark hair, has on a long t-shirt?" Whenever she felt put-upon in what she'd showed up here wearing, she could think of the people who didn't even have pants... or the people who had only underwear.
Aaron nodded. "That's her. She apparently taught Russian part time. So at the very least, she'd recognize the letters." He nodded further down the beach and they ambled along companionably, one of his hands cupping the jar with splayed fingers. "So what did you do back in Tennessee?" he asked curiously.
Analiese always felt a little bit sheepish when someone asked her what she did, like she should explain that she might be doing something more important if circumstances had permitted her to finish college. "I worked at the Lowes. It's a home improvement store." She didn't know if they had those where he was from or not. "I was in the garden center with the plants and mulch and stuff." She smiled, wondering what he'd think of that. He said he did environmental research... that sounded kind of fancy to her. You'd have to be smart to do that, she thought.
He smiled at her, nodding along. "We have Lowes in Canada. Lowes and Home Depot. The Canadian version is Rona." He wasn't sure how widespread Lowes and Rona were but you could find Home Depots in every Canadian city and township. "That wouldn't be so bad, right? Working with plants. I think if I had to take a job that kept me...well, in town, I guess, I'd have to do something like that. Landscaping." He kicked a clot of earth away from them down the beach. "I start to get really twitchy when I noticed that I'm surrounded by concrete and walls."
"It wasn't bad," she told him, tucking hair behind one ear reflectively. "I liked bein' outside. Well, mostly." There was a concrete floor, but a large portion of the garden center had been open air. Analiese had to laugh when he said he got twitchy surrounded by concrete and walls. "Don't guess you're going to have to worry about that here!" she said. "I'd love to see an actual building again. And have indoor plumbing." She definitely wasn't thrilled with that.
"Oh yeah," he sighed. "Hot shower and a washing machine." He'd been in the same clothes for days and until today, none of the days had seemed warm enough to wash his clothes out. Maybe he'd do that later. He was about to ask her more about her work when three small animals, no bigger than the size of his hand dashed out of the bushes dragging something heavy and yellow. The animals in question had bald and wrinkly little faces with wide set dark eyes and their chittering sound seemed familiar somehow. He was reminded of the primate pavillion at the Toronto Metro Zoo. "Hey, are those monkeys?" he asked.
Analiese's mouth dropped open, and she grabbed Aaron's arm without even thinking about it. "Look how cute they are!" she exclaimed. "Those have to be monkeys!" There was a certain charm to seeing something familiar in a setting like this, something that could be seen in a zoo anywhere on Earth, or on television. She'd never seen a monkey in the wild before. "They're so tiny," she breathed, fascinated by the creatures. "What do they have?" She, like Aaron, had noticed that they were dragging something along.
He shook his head, amazed. "I don't know," he rumbled quietly, not wanting to startle the small animals. They were certainly struggling with something heavy and chittering excitedly about it. They were headed for a clump of bushes which, when they drew closer, seemed pretty active for just a stand of bushes. "I think there's more of them." His breath caught as the bundle the little monkeys were carrying tilted and he caught the flash of sun off of metal. "Oh man, we have to get that away from them." And before they joined with their reinforcements, Aaron was willing to bet.
"Let's get closer," Analiese suggested. "A lot of wild animals will run when humans come near... I don't think these would attack us." She didn't sound a hundred percent sure of that, but she thought Aaron was right; they needed to see what the monkeys had. Maybe it was something more useful than the jar she'd found. "Here," she said, taking the jar from him so he could have his hands free. Her eyes tracked the movements of the mini-monkeys, and she saw that the bushes nearby indeed seemed to be teeming with them.
Aaron was at a loss as to what he should do at first. He looked at the struggling animals contemplatively before bringing his hands together in a sharp clap. The three small animals froze and turned to stare at them. Aaron took a few purposeful steps forward and the little animals cringed but didn't run. He bent and scooped up a coin sized rock and skittered it across the sand toward them. The little bodies leapt back but no sooner had they then the three bent and picked up pebbles of their own, throwing them toward Aaron. He couldn't help but laugh as the tiny stones fell short.
Analiese had started to giggle, and she had to put the jar she was holding down to wrap her arms around herself, as if to contain her mirth. "Monkey attack!" she spluttered. She wasn't sure why she was finding this so hilarious, unless it was the simple fact that happiness had been pretty much nonexistent since she'd gotten here. Maybe this was like life anywhere, she thought: sometimes it was spectacularly awful, and you had to live for the moments in between, the laughter, the simple joys, the friends you made along the way. She stepped closer, wanting to get a good look at the little creatures. "Is it wrong that I want to pet one?" she asked.
As both Analiese and Aaron moved closer the bravado seemed to leave the tiny primates (if that was indeed what they were) and they made a scampering dash for the safety of the bushes. This left Aaron free to take a few steps more and seize the yellow leather tool belt, hoisting it up to have a look at it. To his surprise, it was heavy. "Oh wow, this is awesome!" he declared to Analiese. A ball peen hammer hung from one of the loops. A pair of pliers from another and then a monkey wrench (irony was not lost). Even better was the pouch full of nails. "Holy crap, this is amazing." He shook his head even as a chill ran down his spine. Wasn't this...convenient? With all of the shelters being built wasn't it a little bit too desirous to have found tools and nails? He kept that confusing thought to himself though as he showed her what they'd found.
The first thing Analiese noticed was that the hammer, pliers and wrench looked to be in mint condition. She reached over to touch the tool belt, as if to make sure it was really real. "How would somethin' like this get here?" It was more a rhetorical question than anything, since she felt pretty sure Aaron wouldn't have an answer for it. "I know the nails won't last forever, but this stuff'll be so much help for buildin' shelters." There was one lean-to up and a couple more in progress, but she'd thought privately that it was going to take forever to get enough of them built for everyone. Maybe it wouldn't take quite as long now.
Aaron shook his head almost too violently. Her question peaked on the fear that was threatening to bloom inside of him. He'd said it to Ken the day that Analiese had appeared in the grass near their camp. He'd thought it when Analiese had found Adnan near the spring and when Lucien had been pulled out of the lake. Someone was messing with them. "Quinn found a shotgun and a box of shotgun shells near the spring at dawn this morning," he said hollowly. The card shark had come back to camp, grinning at his good fortune and told everyone what he'd discovered. Now they found a jar with a notebook that very well might contain vital secrets about this place and they did happen to have a girl who spoke Russian. Coincidence? A multitude of coincidences? Aaron didn't believe so.
Aaron's tone affected Analiese, making her step closer and glance around with the uneasy feeling that somebody might be watching them. The sun was bright, the balmy breeze blew unchecked, the soft chitterings of the hand-sized monkeys provided background noise, but suddenly she felt chilled. "A gun? That's kinda creepy. What if one of the kids found it?" She'd seen a blond kid who looked about eleven or twelve, there was a slightly older girl who might be a young teenager, and of course there were the two smaller ones who were probably too young to find something like that by themselves anyway. Still.
"Yeah, it's not good," Aaron murmured, his eyes raking the ground. The tiny footprints of the little chittering monkeys were all around and his own set beside Analiese's led back the way they came. There were no other footprints on this side of the beach. Nothing human but there were the odd grazers. He knew how fast tools could rust, though. Aaron found it hard to believe that the tool belt had sat out for very long at all. He shifted the weight of his find and then very gently took Analiese by the elbow, drawing her back toward where she'd left the jar. "C'mon, let's head back."
"Okay, yeah," Analiese murmured, going willingly along with him. She'd wanted to explore, but right now she wasn't keen on continuing on by herself. If Aaron was going back to camp, she was too. There was no telling what might lie ahead, and if it was something unpleasant, she'd just as soon not find it. She picked up the glass jar once they'd reached it, and they began the walk along the edge of the water that would lead them back to everyone else.