For Chris, the two weeks that followed were a period of hope and desperation at the same time.

The hope - and deep gratitude - which he felt stemmed from the fact that he was not alone anymore: After nearly going insane from loneliness he now had another human being to share his thoughts with. And not just any human being but, as Chris thought, the best person that fate could have sent him! Scarlett was in a rugged state and still fighting against the shock, but she was without question attractive and sweet. Even more important than her looks though was her character: She had a certain kind of humor, a sort of warm and friendly sarcasm that worked as a perfect counterbalance to Chris' own brooding nature. Being with her was like finally having found the antidote for the maddening poison that had coursed through his veins and brain in the past years.

In the mornings they would get up together and would leave the camp to explore the surrounding dunes. Chris would show Scarlett the best places for spearfishing, the few bushes where an edible sort of sour berries could be found and the best ways to collect precious sweet water. Around noon, when the heat became unbearable, they would retreat to the camp and rest in the sparse shadow and in the afternoon they would return to the beach to look for clams and collect driftwood for their campfire. In the evening they sat there, stared into the flames and exchanged stories. The mood was so weirdly intimate at these occasions that Chris had to touch Scarlett's bare shoulder, his fingertips reluctantly making contact to her skin, in order to prove to himself she really existed.

Scarlett looked surprised when he did it the first time, but then she smiled. She knew his reasons without him having to explain them. "I'm really here Chris. I'm not going to go 'poof'."

He smiled too and nodded when she said that, but an hour later - or, at latest, on the following day - he would begin to doubt himself again. Scarlett felt that he needed the reconsolidation and accepted it: She touched him more often now. Her hand would brushing over his shoulder, one of her elbows would go against his forearm for a moment or her knee would bump against his as they sat close to one another. She smiled when she initiated those small contacts and sometimes winked at Chris as if they were accomplices.

Sometimes at night they lay so close to one another in the sand that he could feel her warmth and smell her salty skin and hear her breathing so vividly that his heart would not stop hammering in his chest. He could not sleep for hours and did not want to masturbate even though he knew the act would give him some peace, for a little while. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He just lay still and enjoyed the knowledge that Scarlett was right at his side and that as soon as the sun went up he could spend another day with her.

The desperation had, as well as the hope and gratitude, directly to do with Scarlett's arrival: It began to set in when Chris realized, after only three days, that nothing had really changed. You could not survive here in between the dunes with two people, not even if one of them was a small woman who needed neither a lot of food nor a lot of water.

It wasn't that Scarlett didn't prove to be a promising spear fisher; it was that there were always only few fish in the shallow water. It wasn't that she was too dumb to find berries, but that too few of those berries grew here. There were also too few clams to be found. Even collecting sweet water was a chore and took a lot of time, and at the end of a day it was usually barely enough for one person.

There were, to put it simply, just not enough natural resources for two people. Chris and Scarlett woke up each day with dry throats and a nagging hunger in their empty stomachs. Even if that day turned out to be one of the good days - which meant they caught one or two bigger fishes than usual or found an extra clam - chances were the next day would not again be a good one. Hunger was a constant companion and slowly led to the sort of exhaustion that Chris still remembered from the first time he had been living between the dunes together with others. You didn't starve quickly, but you began to dwindle slowly. Each day you had a little less energy to get up, each day it all seemed to make a little less sense.

Because he did not want to give up and because he did not see an alternative Chris did everything to hide the fact from Scarlett that things would not work out in the long term. Alas she was an intelligent woman and pretty grounded in reality: After a few days he did not know anymore who protected whom from the truth really.

Scarlett pretended everything was okay just as he did; she stayed calm and relaxed, coped well with the thirst and the hunger. When he tried to give her more of the food, downsizing his own rations, she just smiled, shook her head and insisted they both ate the exact same portion. When he tried to make her drink more of the water she told him she wasn't thirsty anymore and he could have the rest.

He respected her even more for that, but it didn't solve any of their problems: Scarlett looked a little tired and her eyes grew rounder and wider while she lost weight and her ribs started showing. Just as Chris did, she as well got a little weaker from day to day. Still, the slowly beginning process of starvation didn't stop Scarlett from exploring their surroundings with great interest: Chris saw her often down on the beach when they weren't together, where she rummaged through the debris and flotsam with never ending curiosity. Sometimes, when he had been so concentrated on a task that he had forgotten everything around him, he later realized she had wandered off and climbed one of the dunes. She then stood there very still, looking through the binoculars, either surveying the beach and the sea or looking in the direction of the inland. In those moments she reminded him of a general studying all strategic options, surveying the troops, searching for a plan to win an seemingly un-winnable battle.

Day by day the desperation smothered the hope a little more. Dark thoughts crept into his head and nightmares haunted him whenever he fell to sleep, Zoes and Swantjes images burning against the dark background of his eyelids. Their wide eyes, their restrained bodies, the way they had allowed the men to lead them into the forest made him angry in his dreams. He screamed and cursed but was left alone despite all his rage. There was no way to win, he was playing a losing game.

He awoke with Scarlett lying close to him, cuddled against him from behind. The young woman had wrapped his arms around him and kissed the side of his head. Her voice was warm and soothing, just a whisper: "You had another nightmare. What did you dream?"

"It does not matter."

"Sure it does. You are scared, but what are you scared about? Dying?"

"No, I just..." He hesitated and swallowed what he had wanted to say first. "I don't think this is working. I'm scared about what you want me to do."

Scarlett ran her fingers through his hair and kissed the side of his face again. He had an erection now, hard and solid like stone, but was much too confused to make anything of it. And it was not so much a sexual situation anyways than a tender one.

"So you already know what I want you to do", Scarlett laughed softly under her breath. "We are already like a couple, having so much stuff we ought to talk about but rather leave unspoken."

Chris felt a little mocked now - but even worse, felt that she did not completely understand him after all, that he had been expecting too much empathy from her all this time. And how could he have explained to Scarlett that the problem was not simply how the Natives treated their females? For most men, no matter how sane and well controlled, it is nearly impossible to explain to women all the dark things that lurk in the hidden rooms and cellars of their minds. There were some places you did not talk about and kept locked, preferably forever. How could he have expected her to really understand him? His frustration grew with the realization and he stood up, bringing a meter of distance between them.

"I guess that I know it, yes. But I don't want to."

"I don't want it either. I don't want to be treated like a mule, I am not into tie-up-games and I'm definitely not into being led around naked. But it's not what I want that counts, is it? It's what we do not want. And we do not want to die here, do we?"

Chris shrugged. "Maybe not. But you don't understand what you are asking me to do. You do not understand the danger that you are getting yourself into. I have watched the natives much longer than you, I have been studying them for years. If things go wrong..."

"Things have already gone wrong, Chris! We are on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere with no help inbound and we are slowly starving to death!" Now Scarlett was nearly screaming, her voice was shrill from anger. "For Heaven's sake, in the good old days all a girl had to do was date a guy and make a joke about handcuffs . Now here I am with a man so honest and good that he rather would kill himself before trying out bondage. What's wrong with people?"

They just stared at each other for a moment and then started laughing. It was the sort of laughter you reserved for special occasions. When they had it out of their systems they both were a bit more relaxed again.

"I don't want to be in this situation", Scarlett said a lot more gently. "But you look like you can barely stand anymore. And I feel like shit too. We need to eat. So tomorrow you will tie me up and we will go down to the forest. Either we get killed or we get to fill our bellies. It's the only chance we have."

"The plan didn't work out for Zoe and Swantje."

"Maybe not. But you don't know what happened to your friends or if they made a mistake that we can easily avoid. I just want to get some food and water for us. After that we'll see how things develop. Trust me Chris - tied up or not tied up, I can be pretty convincing."

He smiled and hugged her. He could muster the strength for it because his erection had by now receded. "Oh I know you can. Believe me, if I was a native you'd already have me on your side."