“When?” My stupor seems to be gone as fast as it had come. I don’t feel weak or dizzy anymore.

“Maybe twenty minutes ago? Why?”

“I just didn’t notice, that’s all. He went alone?”

“No, Envy went with him. Listen, maybe you should sit down--” His plea was cut short by voices heard below. We went silent and crept to the hole in the floor to listen, peeking down to glance at the people who were approaching.

“...Don’t know what you’re...about...told us to keep...eye on…,” came one voice.

“We expected....at least, you could...her back here.” Shadows creep towards the slightly less grassy area that lies just below the fortress exit, cast sharp against the brush by the setting sun.

A familiar voice drifts up to us. “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your--” Pride gasps and narrowly dodges the vine as it drops towards him. “Hey!”

“Shhhh!” Envy shushes him harshly as she comes into view, holding up the arms of a very unconscious Lady, and gestures towards the woman with her chin. “You’ll wake her!”

Wrath and I breathe a sigh of relief. “Do you need help bringing her up?” I ask. Envy and Greed, who was holding the Lady’s feet so that she was suspended in the air, looked at each other, then at the vine, then at the Lady, and back at each other.

“Wasn’t there like a basket pulley system down that way?” Wrath asked, gesturing the direction the crates containing toothpaste were in.

Envy looked as if she was trying to picture it. “Um...I think so?”

“Maybe we could modify the pulley--temporarily,” he adds, as I shoot him a wary look, “--so that we can lift her up?”

“Hold on,” I say, “are we sure we want her up here? Where she knows her way around? I say we tie her up at the foot of a tree and just keep an eye on her.”

“Good point, Sloth,” Lust, who was standing beside Pride, clinging to his arm, says. “I’m with her. She’s not as scary down here.”

Pride, Envy, and Greed all nod in agreement. “Anyone got some rope?” Greed asks. He looks like he’s straining to keep the Lady’s feet off the ground. Envy, on the other hand, looks unfazed. In fact, as soon as Wrath drops a long length of rope through the hole for them, she drops the Lady. A thud is heard as she hits the dirt. Greed momentarily looks sympathetic, before dropping her feet as well. He and Envy get on their knees, tying her arms together behind her back, then to a tree where she is in sight of two exits, then tie her legs together.

“Envy…! Did you just…?”

“I do not deny nor confirm the fact that I just spit on her face,” Envy says, before grasping the swaying vine and climbing up it to the fortress.

“Damn,” whispers Pride. Lust follows Envy, then Greed offers for Pride to go before him. Pride scowls for a moment, then sighs and climbs up the vine, Greed following shortly after.

As everyone gets settled, either on the floor or resting up against a crate, I wander over to the crates containing cups. I’m parched.

“Okay, we need someone to watch her for some of the night,” Greed says. “We can take shifts, but you cannot fall asleep during your shift, you hear me? If you are tired, wake someone up to cover for you. I’ll take the first shift. Let’s say 4 hours? 3 hours?” He looks at everyone but me, searching for agreement.

“3,” Envy suggests, “but I think we should wake ourselves up and make our way down there for our shift instead of you coming up here, giving her a window alone. Did you happen to find an alarm clock up here?”

Wrath, who had been slowly falling over towards Envy, perked up. “By the bed, there was something that looked like a clock.”

“Alarm clock won’t do,” Lust says. “We’d have to reset it every time, which takes too long. What about a timer?”

No one says anything. “Let’s search for one, then,” I say, already prying open the lid of a crate.

“I already checked that one,” Greed says. I put the lid back and chew my lip, unsure what to do. Greed gets up and moves towards me, but stops. “Someone watch that chick. The rest of us will search for a timer.” I hear shuffling as everyone gets up. Everyone but Pride, who was scooting to the exit. “These crates near the exit have all been searched. Let’s go further down.” Greed gestures in the same direction Wrath had when he suggested the pulley.

At this end of the particular platform they were on, there were a few piles of crates as well as a few barrels. At the far end was a short rope bridge that connected the platform to another. I could see a pile of cloth beside a crate with a small box on it, which must be the clock Wrath was talking about. We each took a crate or barrel and searched it. Lust found some brightly coloured socks, lacy underwear and bras, feminine hygiene products, and a bag of hair ties and feminine hygiene products. Wrath found a bunch of vacuum sealed bags of dried fruits and meat, leafy greens, and nuts. In one barrel, that Greed searched, was a small bucket, floating in what looked and smelled like water. We assumed the other barrels also were filled with water, because the only other water around was too salty to drink. Envy’s crate contained things like batteries, flashlights, lighters, and rope. My crate, the last on this platform, had pots and pans and kitchen utensils, like a hefty spatula that was as big as my hand, a heavy duty ladle that was about as heavy as a coconut, and, coincidentally, a small twist timer that didn’t go higher than 60 seconds.

“Well, f--”

“Oh my god! I’m a genius!” Pride came clambering back up into the fortress, holding something in his hand. “That Lady’s got a watch! And it beeps!”

Sure enough, Pride was able to set the watch to three hours from now (it had read 9:23 when he had showed it to us). Lust had dug around in my crate and found a can opener, which she used to get into one of the cans in a crate I searched earlier.

“God, it feels so good to taste vegetable soup again,” she moans as she pulls the can, although briefly, away from her mouth, which was getting stained orange around her lips. My stomach grumbles, but I just stare at her, ready to see her begin to choke….

But she finishes the can, beating her chest and belching loudly, coming away from it with only a small cut on her lip from the sharp metal. Then, chaos.

Everyone ran to the crate with the cans, grabbing blindly in all the madness for a cool, metal cylinder. I had the can opener, but only for a second before it was ripped out of my hand.

“Stop! What are you doing? You’re behaving like animals! And, if you haven’t noticed, no one is watching that bitch!” Lust yelled, the only one not overcome by intense hunger. Pride choked--everyone turned their heads to him--but he recovered; it was only from the shock. “I’m going to watch her now, but you all better behave yourselves, for God’s sake.” She climbed down the vine.

After that, we passed the can opener to each other in a civilised manner--we even used the bowls in the one crate--and ate slowly. As the cool jelly slid down my throat, I could feel the drowsiness creeping over my head like thick fog. I finish my soup and place my bowl in the crate, then snatch the watch and adjust the time to three hours from when Lust left. I grabbed a sheet and curled up under it, drifting off to the sounds of slurping and clinking and crickets.