In Times Of Struggle

She smiled a bit in response, sighing heavily. "I need to study, I have my books but now more than ever do I need to really focus on them." She said, looking at her bag. "I'm not looking forward to it," She mumbled. "I wish there was a doctor on the flight with us, I know I'm not nearly as qualified," She admitted. "I'm sorry, I'm sure thats not very reassuring," She said sheepishly.

---

He nodded. "What were you doing on the plane in the first place?" He asked curiously. "I was supposed to be on vacation," He laughed. "I guess I'm getting it."

"I was coming back from a contract arrangement to help build a chain of hotels," she said to him as she sighed, "I was meant to do up the design for it and have it done in about four months," she told him then wet her lips, "Was going to be my big break, but if I dont get found soon then it'll fall through,"

---

He shrugged,"You seem plenty qualified to me," he said to her as he looked at his hands, "You're all we got right now, so you'll do fine," he smiled.

She laughed, shaking her head. "Thank you, though I know its not true. I'm going to do my best though. I would feel horrible forever if I couldn't do everything that I could."

---

"I'm sure you'll still get it, we'll get found soon. I know we will. And even if it falls through, I'm sure you'll get another break. How long have you been an architect?" He asked curiously.

He shook his head,"You have to take yourself seriously, you're going to be the best you can be and thats good enough for us," he said to her smiling.

---

"A Year now but I interned for a year under a company during my senior year," she spoke lightly as they walked.

"I guess you're right," She murmured, standing up to look at him. "You know, you're very mature. Are you sure you're eighteen? You seem more like someone in their mid or late twenties," She laughed a little. "But thank you. I intend on trying my very best for it."

---

"So about two years then. How long have you wanted to build? What's something you've always wanted to build?" He asked curiously. He found people interesting, and wanted to know more about her.

"I've always wanted to build things that make a difference, before I changed my major to architecture I was a finance major, but I did a couple missions over in third world countries helping to build orphanages and hospitals, it changed my life," she said to him smiling a little as she thought about it. "I want to build things that help people, I've always been very generous with my time, and right now is the best time and place to exert that,"

---

Yugeyeom smiled a little as he looked at her, "Besides, with hope we can be found in a couple of days - we shouldnt have to be out here too long," he said to her nodding a little.

"Yeah, I hope." She sighed. "I'm sure we'll be found soon enough," She added. "We should go help make mats to sleep, it'll be useful for when it gets dark." She said, standing up and dusting off her pants. "I'm going to go help, we'll all need one."

---

He nodded. "If you need help building let me know... I don't know much about architecture, But I can work hard. And help put things together. The others too, we'll all help out." He said as he looked up. "Over there, seems like an opening. Lets go see if we can find water through there."

Talia nodded a little then followed him to the opening in the woods, "Lets hope we find fresh water, we'll all need it," she murmured as she walked with him, "And I'll need all the help I can get. Hard work is whats going to keep us alive," she said as she thought about it, "and maybe a certain mindset, that this is real a couple times I've found myself waiting for my phone to ring," she sighed then pushed a branch out of her way.

---

He nodded,"Can you show me how?" he asked her as he stood up off the ground, "I watched for a moment but I was on the plane with the others getting supplies,"

"Sure," She said, walking the short distance over to the pile of palms that had been gathered. She sat down and crossed her legs, grabbing a frond towards her. "Rip off the leaves, theyre what we'll be using. The stem of the leaves are what will be used to create the base. So it depend son how tall you are then you'll need more. So grab as many as you'd like..." She said, reaching over and grabbing a few.

"Then we are going to lay them out and you can lay in them to make sure its big enough for you. Then we connect them, and weave the leaves. So if you want, lay down and I'll lay them out so we know how many we need for you."

---

He walked in, using the stick he held to knock leaves out of the way. He kept walking, seeing the mountains in front of them get larger. "I see the rock face just through the trees. Is it just me, or do you hear water?" He asked curiously. He kept walking, stepping over leaves and moving as close as he could while avoiding trees.

She smiled a little then nodded,"I hear water," she said to him as she walked with him then stopped when she saw the water, there was no salty smell to the air - this was definitly fresh water. She felt tears sting her eyes, there had been an incredible worry about finding fresh water. With people sick and in need of it, the thought of not having any terrified her. "We'll be okay," she murmured softly, "We're gonna be okay,"

---

He nodded as he looked at her, "alright," he said and did as she said then smiled a little as he laid down, "Do you think it'd be a good idea to wash up tonight? We're all a mess, and it might feel good," he said to her as he thought about it. Being used to a shower every night the idea of not being able to was weird.

"Maybe, but where? We'll need a place that's separate from our drinking water, which might end up being ocean. Plus just to shower will have us going in groups of at least two, so our best bet might be to wait until tomorrow." She murmured holding up her hand to the sun.

She did a trick she learned from summer camp, checking to see what time it was. "Its around 2ish, give or take. Maybe when the others get back we can go looking for a place, if not we can always go tomorrow."

---

He smiled and sighed, looking at the water. "See, it's going to be okay. We're going to make it and we're going to get rescued." He said as he looked at the water. "This is a good thing, now we just need to mark the way so we can return. Then sterilizing everything and making it drinkable."

Talia nudged him a little, "We did good today" she said to him lightly, "We should fill up and then begin our way back... we can use logs to mark the way here," she said to him as there seemed to be an abundance of them all around the water probably from a storm that had blown through at some point. "Just drag them to mark the way we can through,"

---

He nodded a little,"still early in the day, it'll be getting hotter soon," he said as he put his arm over his eyes not wanting to move now that he was laid out, it felt too good to actually rest.

She finished laying the sticks around him and then gathered them. "You should rest, we've been doing a lot. We all should rest." She murmured, setting the sticks by his feet. "When you feel up to it, here are your sticks. I'll work on mine," She said, laying out the sticks she would need to see how big her mat should be.

"I wonder how hot it will be at night, hopefully not very." She said softly. "I really would hate for it to be hot."

---

He nodded, walking over and gathering a few. "I'll start rolling them to create a path from the beach," He said as he rolled a particularly heavy one. "On second thought, I might need to come back and get some help," He said, wiping his forehead.

"We don't need to use the really big ones," she said as she picked up a branch about the width of her water bottle, "Just enough so it's obvious," she said to him smiling a little, "And maybe eventually I'll do up some rope to tie a more obvious path," she offered to him as she walked over to the water putting her hand in then submerging one bottle into the water to fill it.

---

He nodded a little, "I should probably get started on it, I don't want to sleep on sand tonight," he said to her as he shook his head a little. "Hopefully we're rescued soon - being here for a long time would suck, but I think we'll be okay,"

He nodded and sighed, using his foot to push the log into place and sitting down by the water to fill the bottles. "We'll need to boil it, right? To make sure its clean? There should be iodine in the first aid kits right?"

---

She shrugged. "You can rest if you want, I'll wake you up in a bit." She said, tying her sticks together to make the base. "I should be done with my own quickly," She murmured.

"Yeah iodine is good too but, boiling it would be ideal," she said to him as she closed the bottle then put it in her bag then filled up another,"We'll get back to everyone quickly and then we need to have our bags open for people to put empty bottles in so every day more than once we go fill them up - last thing we need is to run out of water,"

---

He nodded,"IS is safe to sleep?" he asked as he looked at her in concern.

"If you can hold a conversation, you can sleep. If you struggled to speak, I would tell you to stay awake." She explained. "You can sleep, you won't have any issues." She said to him. "I'll wake you up in a bit, don't worry about it."

---

He nodded. "We can leave the bags in a specific area, thats smart. Hopefully we can find a bigger bottle, so we don't have to worry about dransporting so many small bottles each time. We could also give that as jobs, people who go for water a few times a day."

She nodded a little,"Yeah it'd be good to make sure we're all stocked up, they collect the water and then boil it then rebottle it," she said to him as she put the next bottle in the water to fill up.

---

He nodded,"wake me up in an hour?" he asked softly as he closed his eyes, his body ached tiredly.

Naomi adjusted her bag on her back, ready to go. She desperately needed to get off the beach, so she was going to go and explore the island a bit. She had found the island had natural flax, which they could weave into blankets since it got significantly colder at night. She had helped catch some of the fish for breakfast, since she just had to stand knee deep into the water, it didn't bother her as much.

She saw Yugyeom sitting a few feet away, and walked over to him. "I wanted to go explore the island, maybe collect more flax for blankets too. Do you want to come? If not, its okay. I can always ask Youngjae or Bambam if you're too tired." She said to him.

She also wanted to see what kind of leaves she could find. A few of the older passengers had mentioned they used medicines that would eventually run out. She wanted to see if she could gather anything for them to use until they were found. For now, she recommended lowering their dosages so they didn't run out as fast. But she knew it wouldnt last.

Talia washed her face with some of the salt water and sighed as she patted it dry, her skin was doing alright she considered herself lucky she had some what oily skin - dry skin would be terrible right now. Taking a deep breath she walked back to shore and stopped when one of the older people asked her for help, she helped her fix her sleeping area then sighed, she knew for some of them sleeping on the ground just didn't work well. "I'll figure something out Edith, just give me today alright?" she said to her sweetly with a small smile. "Just take it easy today, and I'll get you some advil for the pain," she told her as she walked away and sighed.

"Edith's arthritis is acting up in her legs," she said as she walked over to Jackson, "I'm going to build a better bed for her - but I'm going to need more supplies since everyone else will want one as well. What should we do? The plane has migrated over that way, and I think it's close to being beached we might be able to raid the rest of the supplies off it by tomorrow,"

---

He looked up from his water bottle then finished off the rest of it, a couple people got onto him about how much he was drinking but he was doing a lot of work so he didn't let them bother him too much. "I'll go with you," he nodded a little, "Even just to get them off my back for a while," he laughed a bit then shook his head then put his empty bottle in bag before grabbing another. "Lets got before they get too upset, you'd think we had limited amount of water but we're doing great on that it's food and medicine we're shorter on than anything,"

"Oh I found some fruit but I wanted to run it by you before seeing if it was safe to eat," he said to her as he pulled it out of his bag, "It looks like a berry but.. it doesn't smell off or anything, Bambam said it was Lychee but I don't know if I trust him enough,"