Withering Hope

"Yeah, a bit," I lie.

"Good." He scans me with a worried gaze. "You didn't rest much last night, did you?"

I lie again. "Oh, it wasn't too bad." I got maybe two hours of sleep last night because of the uncomfortable position I slept in, and the heat steaming off his body was suffocating.

"I'm sorry if—”

"Let's not start that discussion again, Tristan. You have nightmares. They're not a big deal to me, just noise. But they are a big deal to you. You didn't have any more last night after I came to you. When you slept in the cockpit, you thrashed around all night. This is an improvement."

"Yeah, it is."

"Well, that is the whole point." Tristan nods as he moves the bird around over the fire. "What did you do with the snake?"

"Got rid of it. Was lying in the sun on top of the shower."

"Can we do something from preventing snakes, or anything else, falling inside the water bucket?"

"I'll come up with something, sure."

"Thanks. The food looks like it'll take a while to be ready. I'm going to search for fruit so we can eat them for dinner."

Tristan stands up abruptly. "No."

"Huh? Why? I do this every day."

"I saw some worrying paw prints around there." He points to the space between the tail of the plane and the fence.

My stomach leaps to my throat. "It got on the inside of the fence? Can you tell what it was?"

Tristan shakes his head. "It might be a jaguar."

"You said those were rare."

"Yeah, well, we already got lucky crashing on this hill above the floodwaters; I guess we aren't lucky in this department. From now on, we'll stick together at all times."

"But that's not efficient at all," I protest.

"Neither is you getting yourself killed."

"Why are you so pessimistic?" I ask, exasperated.

"I'm a realist. You have no idea how to defend yourself."

"I can climb trees," I say heatedly.

Tristan abandons all pretense of focusing on our meal and stands up, agitated. "So can every animal in this forest. Besides you freak out when you see a damn snake. How will you keep your head cool when you're face to face with a jaguar?"

"I freaked out once," I say through gritted teeth.

"Once is all it takes to make the difference between life and death. Are you actually fighting with me over going into the forest on your own? You're afraid of it."

"That's why I always try to stay close to the plane," I spit back.

"It’s not up for discussion. If there's an emergency that requires just one of us to go into the forest I will go, and you wait inside the plane."

"Oh so you can go on your own, but I can't? Last time I checked, you didn't have superpowers." I try to control myself. What on earth brought on the temper? It’s not because he thinks I can’t defend myself. I know I can’t. I take a deep breath, poking around my mind for an answer, replaying this conversation. The second the word jaguar pops up, I realize what brought this on. I’m just terrified—petrified that something might happen to him. It terrifies me more than the idea that something bad might happen to me. And the fact that he takes his own safety more lightly than mine furthers my apprehension.

"I can defend myself, Aimee," he says in a more measured tone.