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"A box turtle named Boxxy." Emelyn laughed- more out of sheer mirth than out of a desire to tease. "Well, I suppose it's not any better than a dog named after a sandwich on an island of critters who might want to eat him." Then, since he'd brought up the name, Emelyn didn't feel badly about asking about her, she added: "Nonie? Is that your grandmother?"

"She sounds like your adopted grandma. ...Like a pretty classy lady. It's too bad you didn't get to know your grandparents, though. I didn't know most of mine, either. My mother's parents died before I was born, and so did my paternal grandmother. But my Grandpa John and I were really close. ...He was the one who raised me." An image of the white-headed New Englander was conjured up in her mind- and she saw him, sitting on the deck of The Wilhemina in the damnable old nasty deck chair, his fishing pole between his knees and a bit of a licorice pipe protruding from his lips. It was a gentle memory, and a sweet one- and Em almost expected him to raise his hand and wave, welcoming his granddaughters onto the boat for a 'pipe'... but then she cancelled the memory, rubbed it out before she realized that she would have set Mizzie at her side.

Emelyn smiled, and settled down to sit on the forest floor. Reuben half-crawled in her lap, bowing his head down upon her knee, still standing on his back legs, tail wagging.

"Where are you from?"

"All over. I travelled with a youth diplomacy group since I was about 12... until about two years ago. But before then, I lived with my grandfather and my sister on the shore of Rhode Island. ...But recently I've been making my 'homestead' in a cave at about the treelevel on the mountain."

This time, Em cut most of the questions out. Em didn't much want to regale her days as a member of a UN-sanctioned group of young 'diplomats' who were essentially sent into already buffered-zones to do gruntwork, or to return to her days on the shores of Rhode Island, looking out at the sea and wishing she were back in her helmel, around-the-world bunch. Instead, she went right to the heart of it.

"Yes. If you go to the beach, there's a point in the mountain that crawls up from the shore that's not too steep. If you climb up to about the point where the trees have thinned on the opposite side, you'll find a cave. It's not very tall, but it's a good ten or fifteen feet deep. I've been living there since... well, I don't know, exactly. Since the rest of the islanders returned to the village after the lockout. I've been in the wild since January. But.... I've lost track of the months since then."

Her eyes had been on the dog as he spoke, looking absently through his fur to see if he'd picked up any more ticks she'd have to twist out- but then, afterwards, she dropped her head to the dog's form, resting her cheek on his furry back. It was there, with her eyes closed and her arms wrapped about the brown and white dog, that she answered.

"Moreau threw us into the wild for no reason other than to let us know that he still had control over us. He kept us there for weeks, maybe even months- and then, when he was ready, he opened up the village." She opened her eyes. "It was like a host of little wet, tired dogs crawling back into the house of the man who had beat them the night before, then thrown them out into the cold. You could see it in their faces- they'd been defeated. Beaten down. They were all so tired and hungry and scared that they went back without a murmur. And I just couldn't."

Emelyn lifted her head up and looked into the eyes of a man she'd only just met, and was more honest with him than she'd been with any other who had asked the same question of her the past half a year. Truly, she was being more honest to herself.

"I stood on the edge of the village and watched everyone go back to him. He'd proved his point- that he could take away our comfort at any time. ...I don't know how you found out about this place, Lucas. I mean, about the truth. I don't know who told you. ...Do you know who told me? ....Moreau. Back in the beginning, I was one of the first to be told the truth. And it came from Moreau himself. He dressed me up and paraded me into his mansion and sat me down at a fancy dinner and told me about his grand vision. He asked me to be a part of it, said that he needed me and that I was special. ...I won't go into why. It seems so stupid now. But- he threw me out, too. He cast me into the cold and he left me alone and hungry and afraid. So he proved his point. And I proved mine. ...That I wouldn't go back to that hypocrisy."

During Lucas' response, Reuben had crawled out of Emelyn's lap and curled around behind her, his head somewhere near the back of her left flank, his belly pressed up against the cool jungle earth.

Emelyn put a hand down to rest on the furry creature's back, and she sighed. "No. But I don't think I've been happy here for a long time. So I guess it doesn't matter where I accomplish that." Try as she may, she couldn't make her words come out nonchalant.

Like a storm peals over a clear sky in an instant, blotting out the sun, so did Emelyn's eyes glass over with a fear as she looked into a future of 'forever'. The horizon was dim- the days ahead were grey and bleak, and the days behind did little for comfort, so far away- and so unreachable, as the tide of her days drew her further away from the shore of what had been her happiness.

The pause was pregnant- an unhappy miscarriage of thought and fear, and it went on as she nearly forgot where she was. Then, the storm passed- although grey skies remained.

"I... don't plan on anything. Life is one day at a time."