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The sun peaked over the horizon all the way out there, where the horizon seemed to be forever away across the ocean, and she stirred. She hadn't really slept, but her progress was slightly noticeable; she was able, now, to at least doze for about half an hour before jolting awake to those memories replaying in her mind. She shook her head roughly as she stood up and unsteadily moved to the very edge of the circle she'd drawn in the sand and collapsed at the edge. Hunger rocked her body but her soul didn't feel it. She looked up to the sky briefly, giving her silent regards to God for the morning's arrival. Despite all that had happened to her, Talitha would never deny that God's designs were going as He had planned them. A lesser being might have stopped believing there was a God protecting them at all, but she had faith that surpassed the sun. She would never give up on Him; bad things were a part of life.
It didn't make it any easier for her to accept, knowing those things. She yawned heavily, and very abruptly and without any warning vomitted onto the sand. There was almost nothing in her system to throw up but saliva and blood — blood that showed just how weak she was from her body's need for food — and that was exactly what it was. A healthy mixture of blood and saliva. Talitha could only stare at it dumbly, unable to comprehend what it could mean, and then feel her face involuntarily screw up as Andre pounded her again in her memory. As he shoved her roughly down and punched her with one hand while ripping up her pants with his other, trapping her with his heavy hips and hitting her harder if she tried to fight him.
And she collapsed next to the mixture of blood and saliva, crying out of fear and loneliness, out of worry and the dead will to live, and because of the fact that the contents of her stomach were nonexistant. She didn't want to eat, but she knew she had to. Presently she was almost too weak to get up and find something, but she did drag herself dutifully to her feet and set off in very slow search of some kind of food that was already dead that she could have, leaving her small mess behind for the sand to take care of.