I winced. My knee-length cocktail dress was one of the few clothing items I genuinely felt looked good on me, but it was obviously more suited for the fundraiser I'd been planning to attend than a strange wilderness. White, with lace shoulder caps and a line of floral embroidery snaking down the left side, it hugged my waist by dint of a simple cloth belt clasped with the same mother of pearl inlay as the delicate buttons up my front.  Maybe if we found anyone, I could trade the buttons for food. It wasn't like the credit chip in my phone was likely to be useful -- and I hadn't brought so much as a water bottle with me. Before I could panic, I reminded myself that it could be worse. If we'd gotten dropped in the middle of a desert, we wouldn't make it a day. Here, at least, there was water, and if it was possible to survive at all on this world -- which seemed likely since the air hadn't poisoned us -- there were probably fish in the water we could eat.  We weren't doomed. I wasn't helpless. I'd been camping before, hunting too; and as much as I'd resented my father foisting him on me, Liam was literally one of the strongest, smartest, deadliest people it was possible for me to have gotten stranded in the woods with.  "Do you think we should make a fire?" I asked. "I mean, I don't have a lighter or anything, but isn't there a way to do it with just sticks?"  Liam offered me a crooked smile. "I have a lighter. And some other things that might be useful."  I raised my eyebrow. "You smoke?"  "Not unless I have to," he said, leaving me to wonder why anyone would ever _need_ to smoke if they weren't already in the habit. "But you'd be surprised at how often it's been useful to have an easy way to set off a fire suppression system"  "I think very little will surprise me at this point," I muttered.  "Let's hope," Liam said, and presented me with his lighter. It was tiny, about as big as the last joint of my pinkie finger, and made me wonder how many other little tricks he had hidden underneath his slick black suit. Before I could ask, he said, "Go ahead and see if you can get something going -- fire's always useful, but be careful. Who knows what will burn here?" I blanched; there were plenty of "rocks" that burned back home, coal the most obvious, but I had a sudden flash of trying to get a little blaze going and the sand itself exploding. Hell, if there was too much oxygen or whatever, the air itself might explode.  I couldn't sit stand there doing nothing, though; I'd have to take a risk eventually. _Anything_ I did in this strange world could potentially kill me, but there were so many unknowns that thinking about it too hard was a recipe for paralysis and in the end, we had to do something.  I flicked the lighter open. A bright orange flame flickered to life, and nothing else happened. "Alright." I let out the breath I'd been holding, snapped the metal cap closed, and started looking around. I hoped to find dry moss or some branches or anything that looked like it would be easy to burn, but the narrow beach we'd been deposited on was pretty much just barren rock. "What are you going to do?"  He flashed me a smile and ran a hand through his hair, destroying the perfectly gelled lines of its classic cut. It made him look a little more human. Still unreasonably handsome -- nobody went through the trouble of genetic engineering so that people wound up _ugly_ -- but less like a cardboard cutout of her father's antiquated ideal of a perfect soldier, unreachable and untouchable. "I'm going to go take a look around and see what I can find. Stay here. I'll do my best to be quick."  He pulled a long, thin knife from a sheath above his ankle and started running sunward along the water's edge before I could ask anything useful, like _how quick?_  or _what if I can't stay here?_ Maybe he knew I'd object, and didn't want to waste time on an argument. Scowling, I walked in the opposite direction until I reached the edge of the rocks.  The island's transition from stone to vegetation was as sharp as a knife-thrust; the dark brown soil, rich and loamy, looked as though it'd been filled in by a remarkably conscientious gardener. Or perhaps plucked from a forester's whimsical dream. The foliage twisted and curled toward the sky, and this close, it crackled with the sort of static power I associated with storms -- but the purplish sky above was clear.  I found a couple of thin, dry branches and picked at the edge of one with my fingernail, trying to up my chances of the kindling catching. But when I held the frayed wood over the fire, nothing happened. More accurately, the flame curled cheerfully around the branch, which didn't so much as blacken.  I flicked the lighter closed and touched the end of the branch with the pad of my ring finger. It wasn't even warm.  Swearing, I tossed the branches to the ground and looked around for something else to experiment with. I saw thick, woody vines that looked even less likely to catch on fire than the branches. The moss growing at the base of the tall, gray trees looked too green and too short to help. The weird spiky flowers with rainbow petals? They were weird enough that I decided to give it a shot.  Hoping they wouldn't release toxic pollen nectar or call forth a swarm of giant bees, I plucked a leaf and a petal from the closest flower, laid them down on top of the branches I'd dropped in the gravel, and touched the flame to the edge.  Acrid smoke poured off the leaf as it combusted, disappearing in a puff of ash. The branches were still cool to the touch.  Liam was going to think I was incompetent; making a fire shouldn't have been this hard.  It occurred to me, as I sat there grubbing in the dirt, that my bodyguard was strong, smart, and deadly -- but not necessarily _loyal._ It was entirely possible that he knew exactly where we were and had abandoned me here on purpose, drugged me somehow or used some sort of experimental technology to get me on this crazy island and think I'd only just arrived. It seemed like an insane idea on its face -- why go through the trouble? -- but my father had enemies. What senator didn't? I'd seen stranger things on "reality" television, and I could just imagine some asshole media mogul from Asia taking the opportunity to humiliate my family by making me look like an idiot on international television.  I had only Liam's word that he didn't know where we were, that his satellite connection wasn't working. Sure, he was my bodyguard, but at the end of the day, my father had hired him. He was a contractor. What was to say he hadn't contracted to another party first, or for more money?  It wasn't common for genies to go rogue, but it happened.  Besides, standing here trying to make a fire out of impossible plants felt pointless. If he didn't come back, I was going to need a weapon. Hell, even if he did, I wanted something to defend myself with. A thick, sturdy branch, maybe.  I pushed aside the thick brush and headed toward the center of the island. The skirt of my dress caught on a thorny pink branch I hadn't noticed. I carefully untangled myself and then, just to be thorough, held the lighter up to the thorn. The whole bush pulled back as though stung, moving with a swiftness I would have expected from a scalded cat, not a plant. I moved the lighter closer to the thorn bush, and it recoiled further, like it had been blown by the wind -- but the air was still, and nothing else had moved.  I tried the same trick on the tree trunks, on the short pink moss, and on the weird blue stalks that looked more like cattails than grass but were topped with spiky seed pods that were as far from the cigar-shaped tips I was used to.  The instant the flame touched the tip of one of the stalks, it burst into flame. Sparks jumped from tip to tip and in a moment I was faced with a wall of flame.  I stumbled back toward the river, heart racing with horror and, frankly, fear. Burning leaves filled the air with acrid smoke, blinding me, choking me. The river offered a semblance of refuge, but I wasn't sure how much safer it would be, given the violence of the rapids and the gaping maw I'd seen earlier.  Hell, even getting my clothes wet could be a death sentence, once the fire burned itself out; the weather here was colder than it'd been back home, and it didn't take much to die of hypothermia.  Hoping the wall of flame would burn out quickly, I huddled at the edge of the river, staying low where the air wasn't as bad, but crouched instead of on my knees -- I wanted to be able to run if I needed to.  My heart had barely started to slow down when a colossal boar-like creature, its fur a vibrant shade of florescent pink, roared forth from the flaming brush, the tuft at the end of its tail dancing with violent flame until it dove into the river. My ridiculous mind supplied a memory from chemistry class: metallic salts made that color. Potassium maybe?  The boar-thing caught sight of me and roared, and I stopped worrying about college as it charged out of the river, dripping wet and face twisted in a grotesque snarl.  I'd grown up on a pig farm. Hell, when I was a kid I'd done a few summers with the rodeo -- I'd been attacked by livestock before.  This thing wasn't livestock. Not with that straight tail, those vicious ivory tusks. If there was anything domestic in its genetic history, it only served to ensure it wasn't afraid of people. Rodeos were mostly fun; there was a reason wild boars were the considered scourge of the south. Even with a shotgun, I didn't know of any boar hunters that went out without a fast truck, a pack of dogs, and preferably a few friends for backup. Mostly even the worst of the adrenaline junkies let the drones handle the hordes. I hadn't even managed to find myself a stick.  I flicked my attention to the woods for a critical half-second, trying to gauge how much room I had to run. I could try to dodge, or I could try to run, but zigzags were best for the latter and there just wasn't room, and I didn't trust the footing, and-- --I darted into the river, a little shocked I'd managed to avoid being gored. I lunged back toward shore, coughing to get the acrid smoke out of my lungs, and turned to check on the monster.  Liam was a few hundred feet away, a gun in his hands. He fired, and I barely heard the bang over the crackling flames and the boar-thing's rage. The creature didn't so much as stumble, though I assumed Liam had hit his target.  Even mundane boars had surprisingly thick skulls.  It roared again and drove its bulk toward Liam, which should have been a relief -- at least it wasn't chasing me anymore -- but instead meant it wasn't making itself vulnerable with a slow, awkward turn.  I didn't know much about the flora and fauna of wherever we were, but nothing shaped like that cornered well.  "Aim for the--" I choked, struggled to clear my throat. "The eyes!"  Liam didn't respond. I picked up a rock and threw it at the boar's rear end, knowing I was unlikely to hit it and even less likely to do any meaningful damage if I did, but unwilling to just stand there.  Liam fired twice more and shouted, "Run!"  Stupid advice. If he was going to try and protect me -- I squashed a flash of guilt over doubting him -- I needed him alive if we were going to survive this whole mess. I threw another rock.  Where could I run to, anyway? Liam had circled this island in like five minutes, and the brush was on fire.  Liam fired two more times. The boar slowed. Liam dodged the stumbling remnants of its charge. The boar dropped to its side.  I ran over, hunched and still coughing even though I'd hiked the fabric of my dress up over my mouth.  "What happened?" Liam asked, and I hated the flash of gratitude I felt for how neutral he'd managed to make his tone. If I'd been stuck here with my brother, he'd have aimed for maximum sarcasm. Dad would have been furious; I could hear him in my head. _I told you to start a fire, not burn down the whole damn island!_ "Everything here is weird. Couldn't get the wood so much as warm, the leaves went up in ashes basically instantly, and the little tufts on top of the reeds practically go supernova. They sparked, and..." I waved a hand toward the island's interior. "Did you find anything useful? Can we get away?   "I'll know more once I take a look inside it," Liam said. "Stay put and keep an eye out for more boars." Liam still had our only weapons. "Wait, no. Let me do it."  He hesitated. "I want to move fast. We don't know how long the daylight will last."  I looked at the sky and cursed. The... local star? looked tiny compared to the sun back home, and we had no way of knowing how fast this planet would rotate. If we were on a planet at all, for that matter: for all we knew this could be a moon, or some kind of Dyson sphere, or hell, a plate floating on the back of an elephant.  "I can move fast, Liam. And if another one of these things shows up, you'll spot it before I can."  He hesitated, then nodded. "Fine. But let me know if you need help." *** * Image: * Meta: * Addendum: [Social Signaling](https://www.eleanorkonik.com/p/social-signalling-realistic-symbolism) * References: [Wild Pig Hunting](https://x.com/EleanorKonik/status/1800515818239000806) * Shared: