Francis is oddly calm during breakfast the morning after.

‘Something wrong?’ Angela asks him, as she rips the head off a fish he has just caught for her, she finds herself getting accustomed to ignoring the distant urge of eating human flesh again. Ah. The things love makes you do. Of course, Angela will forever enjoy the taste of Francis’s kind—only, now that she is able to experience it in other ways, her yearn for the hunt has slowly begun to subside.

From across the table, the young man parts his lips and huffs. ‘There is something I must attend to this morning,’ he tells Angela. ‘I’d like to do so as soon as possible, before the sky throws a tantrum and turns grey anew.’

The siren tilts her head. She places her decapitated, long-deceased fish onto the small, wooden plank laid out before her figure. ‘Can I help?’ she asks.

For the first time in a while, Francis averts his gaze away from hers. Angela wonders if the progress they had been making was a fluke, after all. Ever since the first time they touched one another, they’d both decided forcing Angela to wear a shirt was quite the silly thing, indeed. Nobody ever comes around these parts of the island, they are completely isolated. And Francis… is the only one who gets to see her like this. If only he didn’t look away…

Francis rises to his feet. He steps away from the table. ‘I think…’ He sighs, once, it sounds crooked. But Angela doesn’t mind, because the noise is undoubtedly, authentically his. ‘I think I want to do this alone,’ he tells the siren, before he grasps at his elbow then squeezes it, a single time. ‘Sorry. I promise I won’t be long, though!’

Angela can tell he’s sincerely sorry, with the way he frantically moves his hands around in panicked motions that are unlike his usual, coy composed self.

The rest of their breakfast is rather uneventful. ‘You still will not tell me what it is, that you are setting out to do?’ Angela signs the words in a hurry; she hopes she can convince herself Francis will ignore her because he did not catch the words, and not because he purposely does not want to trust her with whatever is on his mind.

As Francis pulls Angela’s now empty plate away from her, he leans in to press their lips together, and smiles into the kiss. ‘Not yet,’ he spells the phrase out, nimble fingers soft against her shoulder whilst they are still pushing their tongues into one another’s mouths.

Angela chuckles. Gentle, slow, she brushes Francis’s bare arm with her finger. In turn, she writes, ‘Cheeky. But, okay,’ onto his skin. And, when they pull away—and Francis is looking at her again—she signs to him, ‘I trust you.’

The young man kisses her once more. However, it is a kiss goodbye, this time.

He leaves the dishes atop the kitchen table; likely to wash them later.

He bids Angela farewells. Tells her, in his own tongue, that he will be back soon.

Angela hopes he will as she observes him slide a handmade leather satchel over his head, and onto his shoulder, the siren prays for his safe travels.

An hour elapses in which not much occurs—that is, until something is thrown into the bathroom past the small quaint window, then into Angela’s bathtub.

At first, the siren assumes this is a rather mean joke from her lover himself, as she stares at the medium-sized stone that has landed right by her tail and sunk to the bottom of the tub. However, when Angela flips it around, she soon understand this odd gesture is much more than a random act from a peculiar farce gone wrong. In the stone, words have been carved: Angela, it’s Zoey. We’re coming to rescue you. Stay put!