Prosaic.

Safe Travels.

Felicity was hazy; they grew in and out of consciousness for a little over two hours, and then by the time they had completely woken up, the sky was dark and starry, and the moon was high, gently blurred by mist and clouds. They glanced around the small boat, where piles of people lay. People! Oh, they had not seen a living person in almost two full days. Rubbing their eyes and feeling grateful that they were mostly dry, they scanned the small wooden boat and counted. Five persons, not including themselves. Three were asleep, curled up as best as they could in such a cramped location, bags of supplies being used as pillows and blankets, and two were awake. One stood, scanning the darkness around them, and gently eyeing the waters as if sensing danger. The other sat on the edge of the boat on one of the benches with their legs up and over the edge, feet lingering in the water, and bent at the knees. They leaned back on an extended arm and glanced up at the stars.

"What are we going to do?" The woman standing asked softly. She had skin nearly as black as the night, with tightly screwed hair just above shoulder length. The other one was a boy of similar stature and skin tone and age, and Felicity concluded that they had to be siblings. Twins, perhaps. Both were heavier weights, although visibly with loose skin and stretch marks from weight loss since the initial flooding began, and both with slightly shaggy haircuts and wide faces.

"We gotta find someplace higher elevation. Maybe that new kid can help us, especially if they're from farther down where we haven't been yet." Felicity noticed with his words that they both had a slight accent that mimicked one another. It sounded like an unextreme british accent, their vowels pronounced with an airy, twisty edge.

"We'll get there with or without her."

"You don't like that we saved her, do you?"

The young woman, no older than 20, turned around to glare at her brother, and quietly hissed, "Of course not! She has absolutely nothing to offer us. No supplies, no skills."

"You don't know that."

"I do! Just look at her! She's skin and bone! She's pale! She's not intimidating, she's not strong, she's too young to know anything!"

"Maybe she has other talents. Maybe she can help us purify the salt water, or fish."

"Yeah, and if she can't? I suggest we throw her overboard."

"Absolutely not," he stood to meet her eyes, "Look, Tati, I know you're worried about having too many mouths to feed. But we'll get to higher grounds where the floods haven't reached, where there are resources and fresh water rain and plenty of places to fish. We will be fine."

"And until then? Will we starve and die before we manage to get there because you decided to save some stranger who has nothing to offer us? Someone who we don't even know, who could be dangerous, evil, or selfish?"

"And if we hadn't, what would that have made us? Criminals? Inhumans? Insane?"

"Survivors, Zephyr. It would have made us survivors." She huffed, arms crossed, and gently stepped over the first bench where her brother sat, and then sat down on the floor between his bench and Felicity's, leaning against the short wall of the boat. Felicity sat up then, eyeing her, and she turned to glare at him back with beady eyes reflecting timid stars. The boat rocked gently.

"So?" she said, "You have anything to offer?"

Felicity shook his head, "Sorry. I don't."

Her brother had sat back down on the bench, staring out at the water, and he spoke, "Where you come from? How you end up out here?"

Felicity was silent for a long moment, then finally murmured, "My family didn't make it. I swam as far as I could."

"You eaten or drank anything since?"