Piggy waddled ankle-deep into the crystalline water and bent over to pick something up from the ocean floor, his shorts slipping lower on his backside. Ralph wrinkled his nose and turned away in distaste at the unholy view.

"Lookit, Ralph! I found something!" Piggy cried, straitening as he pulled up his shorts. To Ralph he proffered the shell, muddy and wet.

"It's a shell," Ralph told him. "I mean it's nice and all, but…" his voice trailed off.

"No, Ralph. It ent just a shell, it's a conch. It makes a noise like a trumpet. You blow it, right, and then it makes a sound."

"You blow it then," Ralph handed the conch back, but Piggy shook his head and pushed it away.

"I can't blow, on account of my ass-mar. You try. My auntie says that you take it and blow at the end."

Ralph took the conch gingerly, pressed it to his lips, and blew. The noise emitted, however, was not that of a trumpet, but a loud, wet fart. Ralph and Piggy doubled over with laughter.

"Do it again, but my auntie says you blow from here," Piggy patted at the blubber of his stomach, "from your dire-frame"

Ralph tried again, sputtering for a moment, then producing a long, loud note, much like a trumpet.

"We can hold a meetin'! There's got ta be more people, they'll hear, and they'll come, and we can have a meetin'! Keep blowing, Ralph!"

*

A kilometre or so away, a group of choirboys, garbed entirely in black, heard the sound of the conch. Having made their way from the jungle, hot, tired and hungry, their leader gave them a few minutes to rest. They were sitting in the sand, poking at the ground with sticks, when one of them saw something bright orange bobbing in the water, just a speck on the horizon. It was just as he was about to comment on the brightly coloured bird that they heard someone blowing a trumpet.

*

The sound of retching brought Mary out of her half-sleep. Her entire body was sunburned and wet. Like everyone else, she sat in a puddle of cold, muddy water. The midday sun had coaxed most of them to sleep, but Clara's inability to retain her lunch woke them up. Leaning over the side of a garish orange lifeboat, Clara moaned and whined.

"This shit always happens to me. My life sucks, I hate everything," she was near tears, which was nothing new. Unhappy at rest having been wrenched from her grasp, Mary contemplated pushing disgusting, fat Clara from the raft. No one would miss her.

"I hate my life, this is so unfair. I try so hard and this is what happens, I hate-"

"Shut up!" Mary snapped, "You're not the only one here, so quit your goddamn complaining,"

"I'm light sensitive, and I get motion sickness, okay! I can't take this!"

Mary's eyes widened in anger, she was tired and aching, but she would kill Clara if she had to. But, luckily for both of them, Genevieve shifted herself to Clara's side and quietly soothed her nerves. It was as Mary began to close her eyes again that one of the younger girls, Catherine, perhaps, tugged on her skirt with cold hands and pointed to the East. Mary pushed herself up and looked.

It was an island.