Night fell and stars spread in the sky like glittering jewels. There was no moon. But it was not dark. It was blue as various luminous plants and insects were glowing. It was magical. Many nocturnal insects were glowing and flying around. There were chirping and creaking noises. There was a chirping similar to crickets.

All the survivors were sitting near the bonfire and deciding how they were going to keep watch in the night. They had already finished building shades for them to sleep in. They had salvaged everything they could from the crash site. They had also separated the dead bodies. They just had to cremate them after daybreak.

When the night grew, almost everyone had fallen asleep except for those keeping watch. Inside Kiaras shade, she was exhausted and was in a state of sleeping and waking, now and then.

"crunch, crunch"

Kiara heard some crunching noise just near her head. From the sound, she could discern that someone was eating. But it was too loud and violent like no human would eat that way. She slightly opened her eyes. From the slit of her eyes, she was horrified beyond limits, after what she saw.

A black animal-like thing with teeth big and sharp shining like jewels was crouching near her. Eyes azure and shining, paws with nails all smeared in blood, and white particles dripping from its mouth along with blood. There was a mess of blood, hair and gross things. Those gross things looked like someone’s head or what was left of the head of the patient who was lying next to her. Her face was beyond recognition. Only her mouth part was left.

Shocked with this scene, she instinctively pulled out the dagger from under her covers. And struck the animal as soon as its eyes met hers. She managed to hit the dagger into the eye of the animal.

The animal whimpered. Other sleeping nearby were awake after the rustling sounds. Somebody screamed. Others started coming towards the tent.

Meanwhile, that whimpering animal ran away in a dash out of that place. Aarav was first to rush into the tent. Samuel and his family were sleeping there itself and had seen the dashing away of the animal. They were shocked by the scene of a half-eaten head of a person.

Kiara’s face became pale. She lost consciousness and fell limpid where she was earlier sleeping. Aarav saw the mauled dead body of a girl. She was no older than 30. He hardly had any conversation with her or knew her name.

He had seen many kinds of brutality but this one was the most gruesome. He took a piece of cloth and covered the head part. He then put his hands under Kiara's neck and legs, and took her into his shade and placed her on his bed. He couldn’t leave her next to a dead body.

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Kiara was shedding tears and shivering in her unconscious state. He felt a heaviness in his chest. He had been observing her throughout the day. He found her strong-willed. He could see her gritting her teeth and bearing her pain. She would do all she could do to help others, and less to inconvenience others. She wasn't complaining neither was she showing any tears.

He knew how big of an inconvenience and painful it was. How wouldn’t he know? He too was immobile for at least a year. Two years back a suicide bomber bombed a bus filled with soldiers. He was the only survivor. His back was broke. He couldn’t move at all. It took him a year to stand back up and another year to learn walking. He suffered PTSD and he had to retire from the army after his father’s command.

Seeing this, he felt his heart broke. He wanted to hug her and say it is okay to cry. He hugged the now shivering Kiara and patted her back, saying it's okay. Time went by and not knowing when he too fell asleep.

Next early in the morning, birds chirping could be heard and faint sunlight and coming from the horizon. Kiara was dreaming. It was a dream where she was a little girl and was embraced by her father. This dream was shattered by the realisation that she no longer was a little girl and her father was long dead. But the warm feeling was not gone. She opened her eyes and saw a man's chest. She was puzzled and then her expression changed into that of disdain. She didn't even want to look the face of the culprit. She wanted to forget it. Her movement woke Aarav up. He looked down and saw Kiara and remembered his embarrassing actions.

"I'm so sorry, you, you were crying, I wanted to comfort you, there weren't any bad intentions", Aarav mumbled in a breath.

He was unable to meet his eyes with her.

"….", Kiara didn't know what to say.

It was true that she had been shocked and frightened. He helped a lot to stabilise her feelings. But she can't admit that she found solace in strangers arm and that too without her consent. This sentence sound so wrong. And it's not even immoral. Kiara shook her head, ending the spiral of her useless thoughts.

"It's okay, forget it", she tried to move and get out of this embarrassing situation. But wait she can't. She helplessly looked at him.

"You want to go outside to relieve yourself"

For the fitness of her mind, Kiara automatically filtered what Aarav said into this sentence in her mind.

"Can you call Fiona"

Aarav went out to call Fiona ending their embarrassment.

Brandon and other people were sitting around the bonfire. They were talking about the incident of the night.

"Did you see the body? It was so gruesome"

"Lucky we were on another side"

"Did you saw the animal"

"Yes, it was huge and black. That girl with broken legs must have seen it. Let's ask her later"

Their discussion ceased as they saw Aarav coming out of his shade.

"How is the kid?" Brandon enquired with a worried expression.

"She is fine now"

Brandon and other men had to dig some graves to lay the dead. However bad their situation may be, they can't forget their humanity. Slowly, these men and women gathered together to perform the final rites of these people. They don't know who these people were, what they did, what their religion was.

One common thing was their destination. Now they were on this unknown island. They could only survive by keeping their humanity intact.