A Series of Books for the Queen of the Sea

What had started as high overcast at sunset had condensed into rain by midnight. It had rained much of the night, tailing off to warm misty wetness by dawn. Only marginally cooler than sunlit air at this time of day, the moisture in the air was not a bit cooling, though it was wetting. The warm fog, the hot, wet air united a gray sea with a gray sky, largely obliterating the vertical browns and elevated greens of the palm trees, coating everything with moisture but treating nothing to the feeling of a drop of rain. Standing on wet gray sand beside the flat water of the lagoon in a small gray world, eleven of the thirteen castaways gathered after a sunrise that produced surprisingly little light, a generalized light grayness without a focal point of origin, making visible a small patch of the world that would otherwise have been shrouded in misty darkness.

Valerie and Jeanne were not present, and no one wondered why. Ralph was there, looking tired; everyone understood that he had not slept a lot. Julia, Michelle and James also looked more tired than usual. A bedraggled group, their scant clothing dripping, hair lank, limp and wet around glistening faces, droplets forming on their skin and rolling down in gathering cascades, it was surprising that any of them could be happy.