FOUR DAYS LATER

Sara sat on the beach sand just in front of the treeline, her arms wrapped around her shins, looking out at the waves, as the constant rain fell on her head and shoulders. She was growing accustomed to the endlessly repetitive noise of the water along the seawall. It was just part of the environment, a reminder of where she was, in a place so far from home. It was useful, in a way. Combined with the constant sound of the water falling into the pool in front of the cave, it allowed her and Cherise to make as much noise as they wanted to during lovemaking, releasing them from the inhibitions caused by the fear of being heard. They'd had sex two or three times daily, and Sara made a point of focusing on a single thing about Cherise during each session -- the scents Sara could detect from various parts of Cherise's body, to the point where she thought she might identify exactly the square inch of skin her nose was hovering over; the feel of Cherise's soft skin on her palms and fingertips, the smooth strands of her hair, the feel of her nipples hardening, of her sex made slick with fluids of excitement; the sounds, to the extent Sara could hear them, that Cherise made in response to each thing Sara did, each place Sara touched, or licked, or sucked. Sara wanted to know everything that could be known about Cherise's body. And about her life -- between sessions of lovemaking, they spent hours talking about things they had seen or done, people they had known, memories they cherished. Other times they just sat silently, Cherise sitting upright against the wall of the cave, with her head on Sara's shoulders or the other way around, Sara with her arms around Cherise.

They did have to spend part of the day apart, as Sara met the needs of both herself and Cherise. Rather than use the walking stick, Sara found it worked better just to hop from one tree to another, because she could carry more peaches or nuts at a time that way. Her ankle was growing gradually less tender. She thought in a day or two she might be able to stand on it.

She took Cherise out of the cave as Cherise's needs required, for getting rid of her wastes at some distance from the cave, not wanting, for obvious reasons, to do that inside. Meanwhile, inside the cave, Sara had begun spending some time each day trying, with stones with sharp enough edges, to saw through the metal bands, or the hooks of the padlocks, to free Cherise. So far she wasn't making any significant progress on that front.

Sara felt this life, though certainly not her first choice, might be tolerable. The background fear of being caught had diminished considerably -- it wasn't just the natural noises covering any they might make themselves, or the darkness of the cave and curtain of water in front of it keeping them invisible. Beyond that, as far as Sara could determine there were no human habitations nearby, and no reason for any man of the island to venture here.

The one worry that gnawed at her was the complete absence of any girlmeat in their diet. A deficiency of gynemones from the meat of women affected different people in different ways. Some were more tolerant of the lack than others. But there wasn't any doubt there would be some adverse health effects, and Sara tried hard to think of a way they might find some girlmeat. Approaching a farm near nightfall, then sneaking onto it in the first minutes of daylight the next morning, seemed the best plan, though once she was prowling a farm, Sara would have no idea exactly where to look for unattended meat. And there was the danger to Cherise to consider. Sara would risk capture if it was only a matter of her own safety, but she wouldn't consider any activity that might end up leaving Cherise on her own. Cherise couldn't even get out of the cave by herself -- the pool of water protected the entire entrance, and with all the slave hardware Cherise was wearing, she would sink like a stone and drown, despite the depth being barely three feet. And Sara certainly wouldn't consider leaving Cherise alone outside the cave overnight.

Sara sat, now, looking out at the ocean. She was allowing herself fifteen minutes for this solitary reverie, adding it onto the time she would be spending gathering food for the day. Today of all days, she needed to do this.

The boat was leaving now, perhaps this very minute. Sara, of course, wouldn't be able to see it -- she was on the wrong side of the island for that. But the consciousness of herself and Cherise being left behind, to be so completely alone, on an island hundreds of miles from any friend, surrounded by men who hated and mistreated all women and who might catch them on any day... Sara needed a little time of meditation to deal with it.

The water in front of Sara went on forever, with no land visible anywhere, no boats, no sign that any world other than the island existed. She wished she could at least see the mainland, though she was on the wrong side of the island for that too. But even on the east side, she knew it wouldn't have been visible. The island was too far, far, far away from home.

Sara sighed and started to gather the food she'd picked up on this trip out -- the rest was back at the edge of the pool, waiting for her to take it inside the cave. Her left foot scraped heavily through the sand as she awkwardly worked at standing up. Sara noticed the track left by her heel was darker than the surface sand. Presumably, she thought, the underlayer was the original ground surface, the upper layer deposited above it by incoming waves over the years.

Sara frowned as she considered the dark streak under the sand.

It's worth a try, she thought. Pretty much anything is worth a try if the danger involved is minimal.

She finished gathering the food beside her and hopped back to the cave.

"I think I could leave a message," she said as she set a first handful of peaches on the floor in the area they had ironically dubbed "the kitchen," as if the cave had separate rooms, and leaned down to kiss Cherise.

Cherise gave her a puzzled look. "What message? For who?"

"On the beach. When I scrape the sand, it's dark underneath. I can write something on it, in really big letters."

"Who's going to read it?"

"It could be seen from a plane." Sara realized how unlikely it sounded as soon as she said it. No planes, as far as she knew, other than jets bound for some other part of the world, ever had occasion to fly over the island, and fewer still on the very, very rare occasions when the cloud cover parted sufficiently for anything on the ground to be visible. And a jet would be seven miles up, far too high for anyone to make out any message Sara could create. "I'd like to try it, anyway. There's really nothing to lose. Take me a couple of hours, I think."

"What if some farmer comes by and sees it? I know we haven't seen any around here, but what if?"

Sara shook her head. "They'd think it was pretty mysterious, but it wouldn't occur to them a woman might have written it. They can't imagine a woman reading. I'll make it vague, so they can't figure it out."

"Two hours?" Sara nodded. Cherise smiled then. "Sixty-nine after?" They had tried that position for the first time last night, and then afterwards spent the night sleeping with their heads between each other's thighs.

Sara grinned back. She had really enjoyed that, and now felt an instant wetness between her legs. "Absolutely."

Sara found a sufficiently large rock with a nearly flat edge, the perfect tool. She painstakingly scraped out the words:

in the sand, in strokes eight inches wide, the letters ten feet high, making the edges as sharp and clean as she could, afterwards smoothing sand to cover extraneous marks left by her knees. It looked to her as though the sand was above the normal tide line. Probably, she decided, the water only comes up this far during big storms. That would explain the sand layer being so thin. The letters should stay visible for awhile. And, she pointed out to herself, I can redo it if it gets washed out.

Towards the end the tingling between her legs grew. She forced herself to finish the job, while imagining the feeling of Cherise's tongue licking her right there. She got back to the cave as soon as she could.

THREE DAYS LATER

Yesterday had been a rare clear day, the skies a brilliant blue -- Sara couldn't remember the last time she'd seen that. She had begun walking the previous day, though not far before the ache in her ankle grew to the point that she stopped, not wanting to push her recovery too hard. She added walking, in circles near the cave, to the regimen, intending to build up the distance gradually. During that sunny day she had done as many of her exercises out in the sunshine as she could: the situps, pushups, and chinups using a handy overhead branch. She tried squats, though couldn't do more than a few before her ankle, again, made her stop. She picked out two rocks of nearly matching weight and used them as dumbbells. She wished she could find something to serve as heavier free weights, but it was far too dangerous without a spotter.

That evening the weather went all to hell, with a new wave of black clouds dumping the heaviest downpour Sara had ever seen. Inside the cave, the cascading waterfall was nearly deafening, and around its edges Sara could see that the waterfall could hardly be distinguished from the near-solid wall of water falling down from the skies all around. Sara had found she never even noticed the rain anymore unless she specifically paid attention to it, but in this storm she was profoundly glad she and Cherise had found shelter, though even the cave was getting a steady light spray of water rebounding from the pool. Sara, in the safety of the cave, found it somehow extra-arousing -- the entire universe seemed to have shrunk to the size of the confines of the tiny cave, with herself and Cherise the only two living things in existence. They made love several times, and each time, the universe shrank still farther, to include only their bodies and nothing else -- no cave, no pounding of rain, no ground beneath them, only Sara and Cherise, moving against each other, lips against soft lips, skin against warm skin, fingers enfolded by wet caressing internal muscles, cries, sighs, whimpers unheard but felt as vibrations.

Sometime in the mid-afternoon (Sara judged) the rainfall lessened to the point of being a more normal shower, with the lightening of the sky suggesting that the worst of the storm had passed.

It was finally possible to bring up the subject she'd been thinking about last night, during one of the lulls in sexual play. "Cherise, we've got nine months to think about this, but we might as well start now." She took a breath and plunged in. "You feel... safe here, right?"

Cherise nodded agreement. "If you mean in the cave. Or near the cave. There hasn't been any hint of anyone coming near here, and if they did, I think this is as good a hiding place as we could have." She frowned. "Are you thinking..."

"Probably the same thing you're thinking, yeah. When the boat comes back with next summer's people, and the restaurant opens up again, we could try to get to them. But there are really a lot of miles between us and that, and on the way here I got caught, twice. It's just pure luck that I got away both times. So we've seen how dangerous it can be here. And we still don't know how to get over the mountains. It'll have to be at night, and a crossing like that carries dangers all its own. When you put it all together, the chances we'll get through safely are really small." She paused and took another breath, hesitating. "There's something else."

Cherise stopped as she'd been about to reply, and waited.

Sara went on, "I just was thinking last night... what if I've messed up the whole restaurant deal, too? The guy who took you knows you're from the restaurant. And with what he learned from the farm guys, he must have figured out who took you back from him." She sighed. "So the thing is, the guys who think I've been stealing from them -- well, I did steal you, as they see it -- and running around wearing clothes and beating guys up, they know, by now, I worked in the restaurant. So they'll be mad at the restaurant. They might not let the restaurant come back."

Cherise's face looked more and more horrified as Sara went on. Sara could tell she really hadn't thought of this. Cherise finally offered, "Other people come to the island too. We could try to reach them..." She bit her lip.

Sara shook her head. "We can't get to anybody but the restaurant people. They're the only ones we would ever know how to find in the middle of the night. And it has to be night. Whether I'm carrying you or not, I can't go anywhere in daylight where people might see me, walking around without an owner." Sara held up her hands. "I know the restaurant could still be there. But I'm just saying, it might not be. If we leave this cave and try to get to the restaurant, it's not only dangerous to begin with, but there might not be any restaurant out there anyway."

"So... you think we should just stay here?"

Sara shook her head. "I'm not saying that. I came out here for you, and the only thing I ever want to do is keep you safe. The safest place you can be is home, and as long as you want to get there, I will do anything, anything, anything, to try to get you there."

Cherise was silent for a time. Then she rattled her hardware. "We might not ever get me out of this stuff. You've been trying, but it's not getting anywhere." She kept her eyes on Sara's. "If I don't get out of these things, and if we decide to stay here, you'll have to do everything for me, for the rest of my life. You thought of that, right?"

Sara nodded emphatically. "I know. I'm not going to stop trying to cut through that stuff, somehow. But if you have to stay the way you are, then I will always do anything you need me to do. Always."

Cherise looked down at last. Then she said, softly, "You were asking if I feel safe here. I do, I really do. I've been so scared, the whole time. From the moment the guy took me, I've just been constantly... terrified. And then, when you came and got me, then I started being scared for you too. About what could happen to you." She looked at her surroundings. "Until here. I do feel safe, here. And I feel like you're safe here." She looked back at Sara. "If we stay here until we're too old to be any good as slaves, or breeders -- like, say, twenty years or so -- could you turn us in then? So they'd just cook us?"

Sara moved forward to wrap her hands around Cherise's. "Of course. I'd love to be snuffed and eaten with you!"

In a voice barely audible over the splashing of the waterfall, Cherise said, "Let's just stay, then. Just live here, and not try to get to the restaurant next year. You're right, it's so unlikely we'd make it through. And it's such a big penalty if we don't. And it may not even be there." She closed her eyes. "Would you hold me for awhile?"

Sara grinned, feeling within her the buildup of the sexual desire that never really went away. "I can do more than that."

Cherise gave out a familiar sigh of arousal, and twisted around onto her back so that Sara could crawl into the circles of her arms and legs. "I love you!"

Sara never tired of hearing that. Or saying it back. Or saying it first.

Sara went to the beach to check on her message in the sand, and stopped dead with a groan when she was close enough to see what had happened.

It must all depend on the wind direction, she thought.

Instead of incoming waves pushing the sand up and smoothing it over the letters she'd scraped, the deluge of rain had washed the white sand back down into the sea, revealing the uniformly darker soil beneath. Not only was the message gone, but the loss of the light-colored sand had made it impossible to restore it.

Sara dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hands. Nothing ever seemed to work. It had been a harmless longshot. No reason not to try it. But there was a different perspective to it, now that they had both agreed not to expose themselves to the overwhelming dangers of trying to cross the island to a rescue that might not even exist. The message in the sand had been the very last chance for herself and Cherise to escape spending the rest of their lives on Purity Island, cut off permanently from the entire world they had known.

Sara couldn't make herself give up hope immediately. She watched from just off the beach, for an hour each day for a week, to see whether any rescue was on the way. There had, after all, been one day of cloudless skies during which the message might have been seen.

After a week, she knew that if anyone had seen and understood the significance of the message, they would have been here by now. And, she forced herself to remember, the restaurant had made it so clear: girls lost on the island would not be rescued.

Sara stood staring out at the empty waves one last time. To maintain a vigil for a rescue that wasn't coming, she told herself, would get in the way of accepting her life as she now knew it would be. She promised herself she wouldn't come to the beach again.

It was done, now. She and Cherise would have to make the best life they could for themselves here, on Purity Island.

She took a deep breath and returned to the cave. She saw Cherise look up at her and smile at her return, and knew it was time to start thinking long-term.

"I'm worried about you spending all your time bent at the hip. You need to keep a full range of motion." Sara helped Cherise lay on her side. "See if you can get your hands up past your butt, like they were to start with."

Cherise nodded and pushed her knees away, her hands sliding up the backs of her thighs. They got stuck just below her buttocks. "I can't make it," she finally said after a time.

"Yes you can. Keep trying." Sara pulled Cherise's hands outward from her legs. As Cherise's hands finally began sliding upward along her butt, Sara could tell Cherise was in pain, her back protesting against an alignment it hadn't experienced in weeks. Cherise kept trying, though, uncomplaining, though her breath was hissing in and out between clenched teeth, as she occasionally whimpered. Finally her hands cleared her butt, and she was back in the original hogtie position, her hips fully straightened. Her eyes were shut tight, and she bit back a cry of pain.

Sara stroked Cherise's hip, whispering, "The pain will pass in just a minute. I promise." Cherise, still hissing, nodded spastically.

Finally Cherise took a deep breath, and smiled up at Sara. "Feels better now. I mean, a lot better. Thank you."

Sara bent over and kissed her. "Love you. You should be in this position a few hours every day. Want to try a few exercises?"

Cherise nodded eagerly. "I feel like I've kind of been wasting away."

Sara grinned. "You look perfect to me, but you do need to keep all your muscles working. Here." Sara put both hands over Cherise's upper knee. "Try to raise your knee up off the other. I'll be holding it down, but just try as hard as you can to lift it, when I say 'go.' I'll count to five, and you stop pushing and relax when I get to five. Then we'll do it again. Five times today, and then I'll turn you over and you can do the other leg, five times. Then we'll exercise some other muscles."

Cherise returned Sara's grin, and nodded.

"Go."

ONE WEEK LATER

"Oh, let me do your nails. I don't want you to slash your palm if you make a fist."

Cherise gave her a quizzical smile. "What? How?"

Sara searched briefly and found a flat-sided rock. "Here, I can get at them if I turn you on your side. I'll do you toenails after." She gently tipped Cherise over to lie down, reached under her feet and pulled her right pinky out straight. She began sanding the nail, very carefully, with the side of the rock.

"Sara, you are so sweet to do this, but you know it's going to take you forever."

Sara grinned. "What, you've got a class to go to?" Cherise giggled. Sara leaned down and kissed her, and brushed Cherise's hair back behind her ears -- it had grown a couple of inches since they'd left the restaurant. She resumed sanding.