The best and worst of her botanist treasure chest is the kava root. The bush grows everywhere here, and when you grind up the roots and add hot water to make a drink, it turns into a mild narcotic. It tastes awful, like dirt and pepper, and it makes your tongue completely numb, but it gets you high. It’s completely replaced alcohol for us, and many nights we sit around the campfire, telling stories and laughing until we can’t feel our lips.
Live together, die alone. We’re living together.
But, of course, we miss home. You can have all your basic needs met, but those aren’t your only needs. We miss civilization. Being around people. Restaurants and bars. Bookstores. Hot showers and hair appointments. We’re all the scraggliest bunch of castaways you can imagine, considering we’ve been here three weeks in total, plus ten days on the boat, and I definitely need a haircut, fresh nails and a wax. I mean, I’m lucky my body hair is fair, but this shit is getting crazy. Not to mention I just finished having my period. That was not fun. All I’ll say is thank god Tai isn’t squeamish about blood, and also praise be to the Diva cup.
Most of all, we miss the certainty. Or at least the illusion of certainty. Many late-night kava talks have touched on how the future has always been a dangling carrot for most of us. We know what to plan around, what to look forward to, we think we know what’s coming, but the truth is we don’t. And when it becomes apparent that we never had control, that we never could truly count on the future, that’s when people get scared. The unknowing fog of it all.
Right now, it’s that fog that weighs over all of us, even if we make the best of it.
I think we’re all just having to dig deep right now, lean on each other, and have a little faith.
Besides…things can always be worse.
Right now I’m on turtle watch, which is pretty much my version of heaven.
I’m on the little island where my suitcase washed up, you know, Naked Island, which also happens to be a place where the local population of the hawksbill sea turtles come to lay their eggs. I’ve been watching them do this at night, watching from a distance as to not disturb them, and trying to count how many eggs they lay. I won’t be here for them to hatch (in two months), which is kind of sad, but I like to at least hang out here and make sure no predators try to dig the eggs up.
Either way, Fred assured me that my work is much appreciated, since looking after the critically endangered species is one of the things that the Nature Conservancy is trying to do.
Satisfied that none of the nesting sites have been dug up, I head back around the island and proceed to swim across the shallow blue lagoon, back to the barracks. That’s where I live now, with Tai. Lacey and Richard live in the research camp with Fred. It’s funny, you’d think that I would have wanted to live there too, since the buildings are new and have proper mattresses and pillows (and a flush toilet!), but I’m getting used to living here, like a bit of a vagabond. We don’t even sleep inside the building anymore, we just lay our sleeping bag out on the beach and sleep under the stars.
Plus, I’m here with Tai, and that makes everything better. This living situation is the best for all of us. We all need our space, or we’ll get up in each other’s faces, and on each other’s nerves. This way, Richard and Lacey, and Fred, can geek out over their researcher stuff over there, and Tai and I can have peace over here.
And sex. Lots and lots of sex.
Tai is lying on his back on the beach, a book across his face, the spear he fastened out of wood at his side. He looks like one sexy-ass warrior man.
That is until I get close and notice the book covering his face.
“Secrets of a Mafia Princess?” I read the title.
Tai jolts awake, snatching the book off his face.
“I was using it to shield the sun,” he says, squinting up at me.
“Then why are your sunglasses and hat beside you?”
“Uh,” he says.
I flop down on the sand beside him and poke him in the side. “You read romance, you read romance,” I tease.
“It’s not a romance,” he scowls, waving the book at me. “It’s about crime.”
“It’s a dark mafia romance, Tai. In fact, it’s the first in a series.”
“A series? You mean, it continues?”
I nod.
“Do you have the other books here?”
I shake my head. “No. And it ends on a cliffhanger. Will she marry her betrothed childhood sweetheart, Alonso, or fall for the enemy who kidnapped her?”