"You never really get used to it," she admitted, smiling a little. "I've been here nearly three years and I still don't expect them to be real." They were a fact of island life, but an out-of-the-way kind of fact, something tucked away in a corner and rarely seen, more the stuff of jokes than anything else. That they just went on like this, eating and living and ignoring the humans in their midst, was bizarrely thrilling.