*Celosia "Robin" Douglas's POV:

As I was in the middle of a fantastic dream of me flying, I awoken to the touch of a pillow hitting my face.

"Wake your ass up, it's time to go hunting...again," Kimberly said nonchalantly as she walked out of the bedroom section with the door slamming behind her.

"Good morning to you too, Kimberly. What a great way to wake up", I muffled in frustration.

It was now the middle of November. A month had went by since Beval told us about the electricity, which has not been working actively for the past two weeks, two long weeks. The water wasn't running, nor was the refrigerating systems, the heating, the stoves, or the door, which we had to leave open knowing it was starting to get colder by the month.

I stretched as I brought myself to my feet and slowly moved towards the door of our bedroom section. Just as I was about to open the door, my mother came in.

"Celosia, you're not gonna change?" she asked as she looked me up and down with furrowed eyebrows.

"No point in doing that. I'll just go through the clean clothes I have left too quickly. The washing machine and dryer is no longer working, so we have no choice but to wash our clothes in the nearby lake and wait a day for them to dry," I explained as I walked pass her, heading towards the entrance to the shelter.

"You should have done this sooner and not procrastinate, now you have to go outside with the same dirty clothes you had on yesterday," she nagged, following me towards the door.

I rolled my eyes.

"Okay mom, next time I won't wait until the last outfit to wash my clothes, " I sighed before giving her a big hug, stroking her shoulder-length brown hair. "I have to go back up to hunt now. Love you, I'll be back tonight. Say hi to dad for me."

"Alright. Love you too," she replied with concern as she watched me run up the stairs into the outside world above.

"Bout time you decided to come. We were gonna leave without you", one of the male hunters named Max replied.

"Yeah right, you wouldn't know what to do without me" I replied as I vigorously pet his short curly brown hair. "You have the fishing net, right guys?"

"Right here," Kimberly said as she and five others held up the nets.

After making sure we had everything we needed, I along with the hunters hopped into the vans and made our way to the nearby beach. It was an half-an-hour from the forest into the city as we drove through the Samoa bridge into the Humboldt bay.

The autumn sights around us were breathtaking. While hunting, I tried my best to enjoy the nature around me any chance I had. It's not everyday we got to go out of the shelter, and when we did, I cherished every moment.

Pulling up to the beach, I parked the car around a hundred meters from the shore where we could see several large rowing boats tied up near a post.

"You don't think someone would catch us using their boats right?" one of the female hunter's asked with a hint of anxiety.

"Me and my dad used to come down here and fish all of the time. People rarely come down here on weekends. It's fine," Max replied as he began walking down. I and the others, still holding the fishing equipment, quickly followed him.

The wind blew towards me as we hopped on our boats. My waist-long hair blew away from me, almost hitting a hunter behind me. The wind sent a chill down my spine. Imagine the temperature going from fifty degrees to forty in a second because of the wind. I was thankful for the coat I had on, but it could only do so much.

We hopped onto the boats and drifted from the shore, peddling as we began to ride over the small waves.

I glanced at Kimberly. She was beginning to daydream. I could tell she was in a trance by the fact that she was staring off into the distance.

"Hey Kim, are you okay?"

She suddenly snapped out of her trance.

"Yeah I am fine, I was just thinking about my family. It's sad really, they are all probably dead now."

She rarely, if ever talks about her family, it was weird how she brought them up all of a sudden. But I could tell that even though they were abusive shit-heads, she still thought about them from time to time.

Once we were out far enough, me, Kimberly and the couple of hunters, one being Max, dropped the nets into the water and waited patiently for fish. The hunters on the other boats proceeded to do the same.

"You know Celosia, you had a great set friends" Kimberly said randomly after ten minutes or so of silence.

"What makes you say so?"

"Look at Beval: talented in cooking, pretty assertive, fit, and did I mention he's still hot?", Kimberly winked at me in a playful manner.

"Stop before Gaia kills you, she has ears like an owl you know" I giggled as shoved Kimberly a little, acknowledging her joke.

"But in all seriousness. You did have a great set of friends that completed each other. Beval was the super chill and relaxed guy who was charming. Gaia was quirky, bubbly and very girly.  You were a no-nonsense tomboy, but a girly girl when you wanted to be. You were tough, athletic and stood up for your friends when no one else would. Now, everything is different. It's like you and Gaia switched places in personalities, and Beval is more serious and can't really joke around like he used to," Kimberly explain, fixing the net on our boat.

As I listened, I realized she was right: everything was different now, but that's not our fault. We didn't asked for any of this to happen, it was just a result of what happened: Shimizu's death, Kamryn and Mohammed's death, and those damn events that happened five years ago. God, I missed Kamryn and Mohammed. I missed Shimizu.

"It's because of the trauma from that crazy island we traveled to five years ago, the events before that, Kamryn and Mohammed's death, and Shimizu's death you know," I explain. "We all miss them dearly, and dealt with their death in different ways." I explained to her.

"We all know Shimizu's death was the one that affected you the most. We all miss him but we are in a better place with accepting it. You may have prolonged grief disorder Celosia, where you grieve for an unusual length of time. Unfortunately, there's no therapist in the shelter to help you though. Damn. But I do have faith in you that you will get over this hump and go on with the rest of the life."

I sat there with Kimberly, listening to her. It was as if she was examining my very feelings and my brain somehow without me saying anything. I was a bit amazed she could read me that well, but not as much surprised because she understood me better than my other two friends, which was backwards as hell.

"I get it though Celosia. The past really was better. Even I could say that and my family was complete trash. But if I could go back to that time...I would," Kimberly finished, looking down at her feet.

Before I could say anything to her, I gazed right passed her head and towards something that was laying on the shore in the distance to the far left of where we were.

"Do you guys see that over there?" I asked.

"See what?" Kimberly asked as she turned and looked at the direction I was looking.

"That over there!" I pointed.

It took a minute but she and the others on our boat finally saw what I was pointing at.

"Oh my god, is that a person?" Max asked as he grabbed the peddles with Kimberly joining in. As I pulled up the net (which caught three fish), they began peddling towards the shore.

"What are you guys do-"

"You all keep fishing, we're going to go check something out!" I yelled to one of the male hunters who was asking about what we were doing going back to the shore. That message was mainly directed to everyone.

I was praying in my head that it wasn't a dead body. If it was, the ethical thing to do would be to call the cops. Either they or the ambulance would've came, but they would asked why we were out here and how we found them, which is absolutely not what we want. But also, if we don't call the police, I wouldn't feel comfortable leaving a dead person to just die as we just continuing to fish. Ignoring the person laying on the group unacknowledged would kill me inside.

As we got closer and closer back towards the shore, we noticed it was the silhouette of a young boy, probably around twelve in age.

The boat came to an abrupt stop as it hit the sand and I hopped off to sprint towards the boy. The child had on a red shirt with black jogger pants. He had on sandals that looked like they were going to break apart any minute. His hair was sandy and unkept, so was his clothes.

"Hey! Hey kid!" I yelled as kneeled down and pat them vigorously.

It felt like I was shaking him for forever before a groan finally came out. It was faint, but I was still able to understand it.

"Kimberly! Fetch me some water from out from one of the vans!" I ordered, looking back at her briefly.

"Got it!" She said, running.

"Water..." the kid said faintly.

"My friend is going to get you some. Here, wear this" I replied in a soft voice as I took off my jacket and gave it to him. I laid his upper torso on my lap.

Kimberly eventually came back with the bottled water to give the boy. He drunk the entire thing within fifteen seconds, followed by a gasp for air, but also in relief. It took several minutes for him to regain his strength, so I waited out on the questions until he was mentally available to answer them.

"What is your name?" I asked.

"Tyler. Tyler Santos", he replied, wiping across his mouth.

"Where are your parents?" one of the hunters asked.

"I don't have any."

Me, Kimberly, and the hunters all looked at each other. It seemed we were all thinking the same thing. I gave a signal for all of us to huddle up and talk about it.

"If we bring him with us, what would Mr. Hada think?" One of the female hunters asked in fear.

"Who cares what that old, dusty, trash-bucket thinks? There's a child here that needs tending to! We have room for one more at the shelter," Kimberly responding with an eyeroll in annoyance.

"That's an extra mouth to feed. We can drop him off at an orphanage and make sure he's good before we dip and head back to hunting like nothing happened. It's a win-win scenario. We go back to hunting, he gets to stay in an orphanage in hopes of finding a family," Max argued with her.

"Look, I agree with Kimberly, but I would've worded it in a different way of course. Yes, that is an extra mouth to feed Max, but it's not like people at the shelter eat a lot anyway. We know how terrible the foster care system is, so I don't want to expose him to that. Plus, people tend to adopt younger kids. So therefore, the kid is coming with us. Do we have an understanding?" I asked, looking at everyone in an assertive manner.

It took a moment of the hunters looking at each other before finally coming to terms and nodding.

I ordered the hunters to keep fishing as me and Kimberly were going to go drop Tyler off to the shelter then return to fish some more.

For half of the drive there, silence filled the car. But I decided to break it to eliminate the awkwardness that was going on around me.

"So Tyler, how old are you? Where are you from? Why are you out here all alone?" I asked, looking at him from the rear-view mirror.

"13", he responded. "I am from a village in the Philippines, but I was told to go here. He said that you people would be able to find me and keep me safe."

Me and Kimberly looked each other with furrowed eyebrows, not knowing exactly how to respond or who he was talking about.

"Who exactly told you that?" I chuckled in a bewildered manner. Kimberly looked at the kid and back at me in confusion.

"I didn't get his name, but he was an Asian man with blue eyes."

At that moment, I almost caused an accident.