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lucy

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The first time Mathias looks up and catches a glimpse of someone through the trees, he thinks nothing of it. Though he and Lucy don't live right on the boardwalk, it's not unusual for people to travel near their home and he continues to look through the trees for a moment, partly expecting to see someone he knows. But no one emerges onto the path near their shared hut and so he returns to the work on his lap.

For the first time, the island has given him something that he's never used before. The first year he received the tools and since then he's been lucky enough to be given diving equipment. At first, he'd been faintly disappointed with the gift, but now, with the wood working tools and a small, misshaped block of wood in his hands, he's finding he doesn't mind it quite so much. It's a task, something for him to learn, a new skill he's never had before and for that reason alone, he's enjoying his new tools. Even if the wood in his hand looks less and less like a horse with each passing moment.

Sam is playing nearby and he looks up every few minutes to check on her. The horse is supposed to be for her, but he's beginning to think that he's going to end up with a few more practice pieces before he can give anything to her. Glancing up, he watches her push the nose of a plastic elephant into the dirt, then looks into the trees again when he sees movement.

There, just beyond Sam, is one of the men from the base of the hill. Mathias stands in an instant. His wood working tools all tumble to the ground, the block of wood forgotten even as it bounces off his foot and into the dirt. The man has an arrow nocked, aimed at Sam and without thought, Mathias crosses the small clearing to stand between them. Sam looks up at him, smiles, then goes back to her toys as if she doesn't see the man standing there in the jungle.

When Mathias looks down at her, there's a fine green fuzz growing on her clothes and his gaze shifts back to the man in the trees. They don't need to speak, Mathias knows what he's thinking and he wants to make it very clear that nothing will happen to Sam. Even if she carries the vine all over this island, no one is going to shoot her.

He takes a step toward the man, but the second he pushes the branches aside, the man is gone. In the small space where Mathias would have sworn he was standing, there's nothing. Not even an indent in the dirt where his feet would have been.

"Sam, did you see--" But the question falters when he turns to look at her. The green fuzz growing on her clothing is gone, too.

"What?" she asks. "Lucy? Lucy's inside with the dogs."

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Lucy inhaled sharply at that, knowing enough about where Mathias had been before he arrived here to have a sense of what that meant, which was to say, nothing good. Glancing at Sam again now, not seeing anything like that on her clothing, she frowned, wary, as she looked at Mathias again. If that vine showed up here, they were all screwed, but she didn't want to outright say as much. She was sure he didn't need to be told.

"But it's gone now," she said, almost a question, as if she couldn't see that for herself. "So maybe it is just some sort of trick. A mind game."

"It's gone now," Mathias agrees, doing a quick sweep of the area. There's nothing on Sam's clothes, nothing on his own or Lucy's and the man in the jungle is gone. He doesn't want to think that he may need to go back to seeing someone in the psych office, he hasn't spoken to any of the doctors since Harry disappeared, but if he's starting to see things, it might no longer be an option.

"It was probably nothing," he says. "If it happens again, though, maybe I should see someone in the clinic."

"If you think it would help," Lucy said slowly, worrying at her lower lip. The last thing she wanted was to seem like she was calling him crazy or some shit like that, wouldn't have pushed him into it if he didn't want to, but she couldn't pretend that it was a bad idea, either. With all he'd been through before this place, chances were, it could do some good. "But right now, like you said. It's probably nothing." She really fucking hoped it was nothing, at least.

"Neither of us sound very convinced," he points out, though he's smiling very slightly as he says it. He wants to be sure, he wants to know, without a doubt, that it's nothing. That they're all safe. But if there's anything he's learned after living here for so long, it's that they're not safe. That this place will wait until they think they are just to pull something like this.

If it is the island at all and not just something he's hallucinating.

"Well, we're probably better off not committing one way or the other," Lucy said thoughtfully, head tipping to the side. For Mathias to be seeing things was hardly a comforting thought, but it would have been inherently understandable, something to hope for, however strangely. No matter how much sense it might have made, though, she wasn't about to put any stock in it. The island had put her — all of them — through too much for her to rule that out. "You never know around here, right?"

"So... we keep an eye out," he says, because that seems to be the only option available to them. Really, though, he's the only one who can keep an eye out. Sam hadn't seen the man or the fuzz growing on her clothes, which leads Mathias to believe Lucy wouldn't have seen them either. And it's not likely anyone else will be an exception to that.

"We keep an eye out and if we see any other strange things..." But at that, he trails off, because he isn't sure what they'll do.

"If we see any other strange things, we figure it out as it comes," Lucy finished for him, mustering up a small, reassuring smile. "No sense in trying to make too much of it before then." Even if there were, there was still nothing they could do about it now, but that wasn't the point. Though it wouldn't have done them well to be anything other than prepared, there was still a chance that it was nothing, or a one-time occurrence that wouldn't mean anything later. There was enough else to worry about being here without adding to it.

Nodding his agreement, he lets his gaze sweep the surrounding jungle again, but when nothing jumps out at him, he returns his attention to Lucy. "It just has me a little on edge," he admits with a faint smile. He has to remind himself that Sam hadn't seen anything, hadn't noticed the green fuzz on her clothes and that Lucy hasn't seen anything either.

Just a trick of the light, perhaps.

"What's on edge?" Sam asks then, looking up from her toys.

At once relieved for and further concerned by the interruption, Lucy shot Sam a crooked smile. It wasn't going to be an easy thing to explain, but better to attempt this than have to answer what they were talking about in the first place. Maybe this would keep her from asking further questions. That was one of the nice things about kids, Lucy thought, how easily they could get distracted.

"It's like... uneasy?" she said, brows furrowing. "A little nervous. Like you can't relax because you're worried about something. Even if there isn't anything to be worried about." She glanced at Mathias, suspecting he'd agree that they should pretend that was the case, at least for now. "That's on edge."

"That's silly," Sam says before Mathias even has a chance to support what Lucy's said and he can't help but laugh. Sam returns to her toys easily enough and Mathias walks over to the simple bench he's built and set up in their front yard, sinking onto it with a sigh. He has every intention of working on it with the tools, which he collects now, putting them back into their case.

"It is silly," he agrees, though he directs it more at Lucy than at Sam. "Isn't it?"

"It is," Lucy agreed in turn, though the glance she cast Mathias was a thoughtful one, a shadow of reluctance in her expression. She hoped it was silly. At least if that was the case, it was something they'd be able to do something about, whereas if the vine from Mexico was here, they'd be powerless. For Sam's sake, for all of theirs, she wanted fervently for that to be the case. Looking at Sam again, she said, "Very silly. So it's nothing you need to be worried about."

The last thing in the world he wants to do is worry Sam, though she seems far more concerned with her toys than anything that's been said to her over the past few minutes. He doesn't want to worry Lucy either, but he doesn't want to carry it on his own if anything happens.

"When I broke my leg," he says, "I thought I was seeing things in the mine shaft, too."

"Makes sense," Lucy said, drawing in a deep breath, admittedly relieved that their conversation hadn't held Sam's focus. If something was really wrong, they were going to have to find a way to deal with thy eventually, but until then, it wouldn't have done them any good to do so. Jumping to conclusions could be just as dangerous as being unprepared. "So maybe this is... just like that. A memory more than anything else."

The idea was probably too good to be true, but she'd hold on to it while she could. Better that than a loosening grip on sanity, or worse yet, the threat being real.

It's harder for him to believe up here in the daylight, no fear, no real threat, but maybe she's right. Maybe he's just still having a difficult time dealing with what happened to him and his friends. That sort of thinking makes him believe he really does need to see someone in the psych office again, something he isn't looking forward to. Working there every day is a much different experience than actually seeing one of the doctors.

"A memory. A minor... what do people call it? A freak out?" he asks with a small smile.

Though it wasn't funny, Lucy laughed anyway, stifling the sound with her teeth pressed to her lower lip. "Yeah, they do call it that," she said. "So, see, it could just be that." Even if she wasn't convinced of that yet, she didn't want Mathias to have to worry any more than he was bound to be doing already. He would know if things were getting worse; as far as she could tell, he'd have enough on his mind as it was without her openly fretting over the situation. She was a worrier, but she wasn't going to make other people be the same.

"Sometimes, even after being here for so long and speaking mostly English, some of the things people say don't make sense to me," Mathias says, smiling. It's easier to talk about something like that than to worry anymore about what he's seen.

"Chicken with its head cut off," he says, looking up. "I don't understand that expression."

Of all things to say, it was impossible for Lucy not to laugh at that one, shaking her head a little at just the thought of it. "It's... a special one," she said, wishing she had some way of actually knowing its origin. What it meant was pretty common knowledge, but how it started was a different story. "It's because — you know, when they behead chickens, apparently they don't die right away, they just keep... running around without their heads. So it's like, running around kind of frantic, doing things blindly."

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