Chapter 2

I woke up with a stiff neck. I had not been aware of any conscious thought of going to sleep. It must have simply overtaken me as I sat, pondering my options.

One thing was clear in my mind. Regardless of the silly actions of Queen Elaine, it was clear that I would never be able to accept the fact of having allowed her to die. As far as I knew, she had not had any food or water since the shipwreck. I had no way to know how long that had been, but would guess that it had to be a least two days. If I did not find her soon, her fate would no longer be in question.

“So, suck it up, buddy”, I told myself. “Let’s find her and get her to a safe place. If she won’t shut up, then I’ll simply have to gag her or leave her in a safe place and only provide food and water while she sleeps.”

After an hour or so of searching, it began to look like I had waited too long. There was no sign of her at any of the places I thought she might have gotten to.

The breeze flipped up a brief glimpse of red fabric behind a sand dune, so I checked it out and saw from the tracks in the sand that she had crawled there, presumably to die.

She was a mess. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her face was nearly one huge blister and her expensive cocktail dress was in tatters. Tear tracks ran through the sandy dirt on her cheeks.

She was curled into a ball in apparent surrender to the elements and her fate. It was impossible not to feel compassion, even though I was still feeling ill toward her for her unsociable, imperious manner.

A few more steps brought me close enough to see that she had carved what appeared to be a message into the sand. My eyes were misting over in sympathy for her death, in spite of my previous feelings, so it was hard to make out what she had written.

By changing my sight angle a bit and blinking away the moisture clouding my vision, I could read what she had written.

“Sorry”, was barely legible, but undeniably correct.

Why couldn’t she have been able to interact with me as a normal human being, instead of alienating me in every possible way, when I was clearly her only hope of survival? Why couldn’t I have overlooked her prickly personality and merely helped her non-judgmentally until she had a chance to get her bearings?

In any event, kneeling here beside her body wasn’t going to help anything and I certainly couldn’t simply walk away now. I slung her frail body over my shoulder and carried her to the stream. As I walked, it seemed to me that I felt her breath on my bare back, but how could that be? She was almost certainly dead, wasn’t she?

I laid her down on the mossy bank and stretched her out in the shade before ripping a section of her dress to use as a cloth to wash her face. As the wet cloth touched her lips, I watched in amazement as her pink tongue stuck out to taste the water.

She was alive! Under the circumstances, she might not survive, but at least for the moment, she had a chance.

For the time being, at least, she needed to be hydrated more than anything else. Food could wait, but her body must be completely dehydrated, under the circumstances, and I would need to replenish the lost fluids.

Luckily, she remained unconscious and I was able to treat her as I saw fit, without having to deal with her personality. First, I needed to finish cleaning her up and get some cream on her sunburned areas. I alternated wiping her down with squeezing drops of water onto her lips.

When she began to breath a little more evenly, I carefully eased her head off my leg so I could make a quick trip to my supply cache for the cream and the food items I had left there. It sounded like she made a small moan when I got up to leave, but it could have been my imagination and I needed to make the run.

She was still out when I returned, so I resumed dribbling water onto her lips and began slowly removing the tatters of her dress so I could get to the places where she needed the cream. I also wanted to maneuver her around to be able to get her whole body submersed in the cool stream water to reduce her core temperature, but I thought it would be better to take it in stages.

Eventually, it was possible to get her completely cleaned up and into the shallow stream with me. I sat on the bottom of the stream and held her in my arms while continuing to give her dribs and drabs to drink. I realized at one point that I was rocking her in my arms and cooing to her as if she were a baby.

She may have been conscious long before I realized it, but it surprised me when she croaked, “You came back?”

Her voice was very scratchy and weak. She may have spent a lot of energy screaming at me after I left. I was feeling a little guilty at having left her to certain death, but had been unable to cope with her abrasiveness. She seemed like such a completely different person now that she wasn’t screaming at me and seemed to accept my help. It felt good to be helping her instead of having to defend myself against her.

“Why did you come back? I thought you hated me.”

“I never hated you. I hated what you were doing. You were verbally abusing everyone in your vicinity and ruining an experience for the rest of us that had required a significant investment. When I tried to help you, you continued to act as if you were Queen of Earth, demanding that I cater to your whims, rather than relaxing and accepting what I was trying to do for you.”

“I am truly sorry. I was afraid that if I didn’t tell everybody what to do, things wouldn’t go the way I wanted.”

“Things seldom go exactly as any of us would like, but being able to bend our own desires enough to allow others to have their way occasionally is what civilization is all about.”

I was grateful that it appeared as if she would be able to have some sort of dialog with me, instead of the continuous harangue that she had used before.

“Are you ready to try drinking a little water. You need to get some water back in your stomach to help digestion because you also need to get some food in you.”

“Are you going to make me stay naked?”

“I’m not keeping you naked, but it was easier to rehydrate you without your clothes in the way. You can put them back on after you have something to eat. However, since the only reason to wear clothes here is to keep me from seeing what I have already seen, you might want to save what’s left of your dress until we are rescued. You will definitely want some clothes then.”