Jamie went first in the end.

He stepped closer to the shore and declared: “I’ve never seen water this clear,” he announced. “I think we’ll see any lake monster coming our way!”

It might sound silly but none of them moved. Tom felt like a coward – why wouldn’t they go in the lake? – but like the others, he was starting to be on edge. They were all putting up a really nice front, but they were all so close to crumbling down. The only thing that kept them going was pretending. And yet, facing that lake, the fear was bigger.

As stupid as Tom felt then, he was also right to be afraid. Later, when he would know that world a little better, he would always be so cautious about water.

But they did not know better then and Jamie started taking his clothes off. Once he was in his underwear, he stepped in the water. He let out a scream instantly and Tom’s heart nearly stopped. But Jamie just mumbles: “It’s really cold.” But he took a few more steps before properly jumping in and swimming a little before coming back, beaming. “Are you coming?”

Alright, so… the water clearly looked like water, you could see in it and… Tom could see a fish or two, and those looked like any fish he saw in his life before. Not that he saw that many, he liked being outdoors, but he didn’t like being in the wild. And this was still the win they needed.

So Tom followed Jamie’s lead and the other followed. The younger boy had a point: the water was cold. But Claire had a point too: it was nice to feel water on his skin, know that he could clean up a bit, and also drink.

There were so many other things they had to figure out, but there was one less on their list. Sort of. After swimming and being silly in the water for a few minutes, they discussed organization. The girls wanted to wash properly and didn’t want the boys around when they did – not that the boys didn’t want to get clean, they just were less precious about the girls being around and thought it would be good enough to just turn their backs on each other. In the end, they decided that the boys would wash first while the girls filled the water bottles in the river and collected some more wood for tonight’s fire, and the boys would look for food when they were done.

Finding food was harder than Tom would have thought. He had always pictured nature as giving if you knew how to look and, to be fair, it kind of was. Jamie helped them spot a lot of things, but… even on Earth Tom would have been nervous about eating random mushrooms and berries, but it was worse here. Because everything they found could be deadly or, at the very least, make them ill.

So they ended up debating whether the fruits that looked like purplish apples would be worth the risk or not.

Tom wasn’t panicked yet, but he kept somewhere in his mind that although they were all starting to be hungry, Lizzy hadn’t eaten in longer than anyone and that although she hadn’t really complained about it – Tom thought it was out of character, Edwin pointed out that it was nice of her as the group did not need extra stress, and John made a joke about her probably having practice and Tom had mixed feelings about the comment – it was probably getting urgent to give her some food.

“We should look at what the birds are eating,” Jamie advised.

“We’re not birds, and we’re not from this world,” John replied. “Just because they can eat something doesn’t mean we can.”

“If we think like that, we’re simply going to starve,” Edwin pointed out. “We can breathe the air, we can apparently drink the water… maybe we need to start trusting this world.”

“Does your trust exercise extend to purple-skinned fruits?”

Edwin looked at the fruit like he didn’t know if he was ready to put his money where his mouth was. It seemed as if he was not going to. It was fair, he was right, Tom thought that not touching the potentially poisoned purple thing was the smartest move, and yet he saw himself pick the fruit, reply something cocky that he didn’t actually have the confidence for, and took a bite.

Before even being able to register the taste or texture, he thought that this was it, this was how he died. But not only did he not die, the fruit in question was delicious. The texture was close to an apple, which was what he expected, but the taste was different and it was really nice. Alright, it wouldn’t become his favorite food ever, but after twenty-four hours made of drinking water and eating three cookies, it did feel like it.

“Yeah… I’ll still give it a few hours to see if you’re dying or not,” John concluded. But, like the other boys – Tom included – he seemed a little cheered up.

It made looking for other food even easier. They still refused to take a chance on mushrooms and berries, but they did find some roots that appeared to be carrots (not even funny colored carrots, just regular carrots), not that Tom would have known how to spot carrots on his own, this one was down to Edwin, and some nuts that apparently looked normal too but Tom had never seen nuts in their shells before so he couldn’t say.

They were proud when they brought food back to the ruins. It was the closest any of them ever came to achieving the primal need to protect the tribe, or whatever. The pride was however so short-lived: as they stepped inside the castle walls, the smell hit them: the girls were cooking.

Over the fire, on a flat rock they probably brought from the lake, the river, or wherever, they were grilling fish. It smelled great, and yet not great enough for Tom to not feel a little hurt that his task of the day suddenly dropped from ‘achieved’ to ‘second best’. And being second out of two never made anyone happy.

“Look!” Lizzy said, looking a little proud and a lot condescending. “The boys brought side dishes!”

“Well, you know how important it is to eat various portions of fruits and vegetables,” Tom replied, a little bit more offended than he should have.

“Still,” she replied, still smiling bright. “Girls’ team one, boys’ team zero.”

“Zero point five.”

“Oh. You’re that kind of loser.”

She was one of the reasons he would have a better lunch that day, and potentially a good dinner. But he still really disliked her.