"Not like before," she added quickly. "Not like the smoke. Just... weird. I was underwater. The river was gone and there was only the sea. And the sky was gone too. Everything was blue. Not just blue, *alive*. And I could breathe, but I wasn’t supposed to. I felt like I was being watched. Not in a scary way, not exactly. But like I was being examined."
Jude ran a hand through his hair. "You think it’s connected?"
"I don’t know," she said softly. "But I woke up and my hands were wet. I hadn’t left the bed, but they were *soaked*."
They sat in silence for a while longer. The rest of the wives began to wake and erge from their shelters. Soon the familiar sounds of camp-life returned, Grace and Scarlett collecting kindling, Zoey and Stella preparing breakfast, Emma humming to herself as she sharpened a spear by the fire. It was all normal, everything perfectly in place, and that made it worse. The more the island pretended to be calm, the more Jude felt like it was coiling for sothing bigger.
He gathered everyone after breakfast. No one argued this ti. They circled around the fire pit, so still holding plates, others with dirt on their hands from morning chores. Jude stood in the center.
"I saw sothing last night," he began. "A blue light. It was pulsing at the base of the volcano, just across the border."
Gasps fluttered across the circle. Scarlett’s hand imdiately dropped to the hilt of her blade. Grace’s brows drew together.
"Did anything cross the border?" Susan asked.
"No," Jude said. "Not that I saw. But it wasn’t there before. It was like... a signal. Or a heartbeat."
"What does it an?" Zoey asked.
Jude shook his head. "I don’t know. But I think we’re running out of ti to figure it out."
They discussed plans: no one leaves camp alone, all work happens in pairs, and every evening ends with a check-in at the fire. The sense of unity, of order, helped, even if it was just for show. The won looked to Jude like he had answers, and maybe that was the scariest part, because deep down, Jude wasn’t sure if the island was reacting to them, or if he was the one drawing the changes in.
Later that afternoon, he and Alia took one of the side trails near the southern ridge to check for new fruit growth. The path was narrow, carved between thick ferns and knotted trees. Alia walked ahead, occasionally turning to speak, her voice bright with the effort of sounding unaffected.
"I think the mango grove is about ready," she said. "Another two days and we’ll have more than we can eat."
"That’ll help morale," Jude said, though his voice was distant.
She stopped and turned fully to him. "You’re worried."
"I’ve been worried since the first ti I saw that smoke."
She hesitated. "Can I ask sothing?"
"Of course."
"What if this thing, whatever it is, doesn’t stop? What if it’s not sothing we can survive, or beat, or escape?"
Jude looked at her. "Then we’ll face it together."
Alia nodded, her eyes searching his. Then sothing shifted. She gasped, her hands flying up to clutch her head. Jude lunged forward, catching her just as she staggered.
"No, no, stay with ," he said quickly, shaking her shoulders. "Don’t let it in."
But he was too late. Her eyes cleared, the trembling stopped, and she went completely still. Then she looked at him and smiled with the sa unnatural serenity the others had.
"I like this one too," the thing said through her lips. "So soft, so uncertain. She hides it, but she wants you more than she admits. Even now."
Jude didn’t flinch. "What are you?"
"You already know," it said. "You made ."
He stepped back. "I didn’t create anything."
The smile sharpened. "Didn’t you?"
Then, as quickly as it had co, the presence vanished. Alia blinked and clutched her head, falling to her knees.
"What happened?" she gasped. "Why are we so far from camp?"
Jude helped her stand. "We ca to check the grove. You don’t rember?"
She frowned. "No... I, there was a buzzing in my head. And now it’s just... gone."
They walked back slowly. Jude stayed silent the whole way, his mind reeling. The entity, or whatever it was, kept repeating the sa thing: that he had created it. The idea scratched at sothing locked deep inside, sothing he didn’t dare examine too closely. Not yet.
That night, dinner was quiet. Conversations were muted, glances careful. The tension had beco a third presence in the camp, settling into the bones of every woman there. They all felt it now, even if they didn’t speak it out loud.
After the al, as they circled the fire once more, Jude cleared his throat.
"There’s sothing we need to consider," he said. "This thing, the smoke, it says it’s tied to us. That it’s not just sothing from the island. It says it’s sothing *we*, *I*, created."
The circle went still.
"No way," Scarlett said quickly. "You didn’t make this."
"It could be lying," Grace offered. "Trying to manipulate you."
"But what if it’s not?" Jude asked. "What if there’s sothing about us being here that’s making it stronger?"
Stella looked around nervously. "We can’t leave, Jude. Even if we wanted to. The island, where would we go?"
"I’m not suggesting we run," he said. "I just think we need to stop thinking of this place as just a location. It’s alive. It reacts. It watches. And if that’s true, then maybe, just maybe, it *rembers*."
The fire popped loudly. A log shifted, sending sparks into the air.
Natalie stood slowly. "Then we need to rember too."
Everyone looked at her.
She continued, "We don’t talk about the old days anymore. Before the island. Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe we forgot *why* we ca here. How we survived. What we were running from."
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