The Lost Lands (work in progress)

I don't know how long I've been here.  In the Lost Lands.  I know how long everyone else has been here, except for Max, and that's only because he was here when I got here.  He likes to say he was born here, but I know that's not true.  There are no mothers or fathers here.  Only us.

When I woke up here, there was only Max.  I remember the feeling of the sun branding scorching lines of heat down my body, the parts of it that the palm leaves didn't cover.  Max stood a few feet away from me, his head cocked to the side, a dead fish slumped onto his spear.  He was naked, but unabashedly so, even when he realized I was looking at him.  Now that I know him, this doesn't seem odd to me.

He scares me sometimes, with his intensity, but I don't know what I would've done without him.  He taught me everything I know about fending for myself.  Surviving. 

We developed a fierce love for each other, a predatory love.  We thought it would just be the two of us forever.  We didn't know others would come.

Josh was the next one that found us.  I was watching Max preform backflips off of the jagged rocks staggered along the beach, and he walked dazedly out of the green-ness of the jungle into the sunlight.

It was strange, at first, having Josh here.  Where Max was all hard edges; Josh was smooth sea glass.  Open and sensitive as opposed to the tight, coiled ball of fire that you knew Max harbored inside.

Josh kept his eyes down on the sand as he spoke to us, drawing shapes in the wet, packed parts with a stick.  He said he remembered everyone around him always talking, shouting yelling, barking.  Never listening.  The noise got so deafening that he just started walking away.  He kept walking until he ended up here.

Max was focusing hard on Josh's face, his brow furrowed.  His blue eyes took on an icy sheen.  I could almost see what was going though his mind.  He was weighing everything out.

From the little bit I've ever gotten out of Max, he has an intense fear of being abandoned.  Not just being alone; as I'd seen the day I woke up here, he got along perfectly fine alone.  But being left- that scared him.  Which scared me, because nothing ever scares him.  He would wake up in the night gasping, groping around for my hand.  And now we had another person to add to our group.  To take under our wing and love fiercely.  But another boy… that equaled more than camaraderie.  It equalled competition.