Silvery pale hair whipped around her face, kept flowing by the offshore wind that came in through the front where the rest of the plane used to be and then funneled out through numerous small holes in the walls of the plane around her.  Clean and pure with the rich salt and iodine smell of the open ocean, the wind carried none of the stink of aviation fuel or fire or ozone from electrical shorts that had filled her nose with their fumes and brought clenching terror to Asta's soul when the accident happened.  Even now she could hear the screams of the other passengers, the terrible this way and that tumbling and screeching of tearing metal and breaking plastics as the plane just came apart on the surface of the ocean.  That had been almost comforting though in comparison to the falling through the sky feeling and the initial brutal roaring winds that had swept through the plane right after...Well, she didn't know what.  Only that the enormous plane had suffered some failure and they'd dropped out of the sky.<br/><br/>Asta had been sitting alone in the very back seats of the plane.  It wasn't her first time flying, that had been earlier in the week when she took a ride in a very small aircraft with skis on the bottom that took her far away from the<i>siida</i>and into Jokkmokk.  Normally she and her family would have traveled there on their own as they did every year for the festival, simply crossing the countryside with a small herd for carrying things and convenient fresh meat along the way.  Her<i>siida</i>were more, well if not traditional then less embracing of technology than others.  They did have a few ATVs but largely preferred the reindeer and sled.  Ingrid had told Asta of a group of people in the American world called the Amish who were kind of the same way, but they chose not to use technology because of their Christianity, not because it was just sometimes better and more reliable and easier to use what Asta's people had always done.  Mechanical things and electrical ones were expensive and did not much tolerate the extreme cold or rough living as well as her people and their reindeer.  Tradition and necessity made a great combination.<br/><br/>So while not her first plane trip, it was only her second and she'd been utterly confused by and in wonder of the enormous tube stuffed with chairs and people and electrical lights and even cool blowing air.  The ladies who took care of the people riding the plane had made complimentary noises about Asta's bright blue and red and yellow clothing and touched it often, which made her feel a little bad she couldn't talk to them but happy smiles all around and from her eased any awkwardness.  They'd sensed the other passengers might bother Asta, and knew it was probably more people than the Sami girl saw all year except at the Jokkmokk festival, so they put her in the empty back of the plane.  And they'd given her a Coke which was something she had drunk only a few times before and it was just wonderful.<br/><br/>They'd also put Asta's seat belt on, low and firm across her hips, and insisted she leave it on with gestures.  Gestures that, with the seatbelt, surely saved her life.  She'd seen, worse heard, people being sucked out of the falling plane during the crash and when they'd hit and tumbled, her seatbelt kept Asta safely in the back of the plane.  Water had sprayed in and she remembered that before the tail really spun across the top of the waves before passing out.  Now the water was just in front of her where she sat still strapped in, leaning forward in the heavily canted seat.  It ebbed and flowed with the waves that swayed the tail slightly on its rocky cradle, but the water wasn't coming in to flood it, just licked around the bottom of her feet.<br/><br/>For several minutes she'd been conscious, head hurting and body sore from the crash, but seemingly okay and alive.  There was no one else in the tail section, unless the smear of blood across the rent in the side where someone had been pulled out and left part of themselves on the plane counted.  That might have been her, if not for the seatbelt, and Asta was reluctant to take it off, as if it was a charm that protected her.  Eventually she would have to, she knew, and would have to leave the wreckage but not yet.<br/><br/>She wished Ingrid was here.  They'd talked about her coming to meet Asta in Jokkmokk and traveling with her, but something had come up and Ingrid wasn't able to make it work out so Asta was on her own.  That wasn't worrying, she often roamed out by herself as part of her normal life, but Ingrid would have known what had happened and what to do better than Asta did so she stayed in the plane until the heat drove her out.<br/><br/>The shallow water didn't come over the top of her boots so her feet stayed dry as Asta carefully made her way outside and onto the rocks.  Glare from the sun reflecting off the water, off the sand made her squint and shade her eyes with her left hand, the right steadying her as she climbed across the rocks and onto the beach itself.  It was impossibly hot, like being in a sauna inside a sauna, and her heavy clothing was making it worse.  Panting from it and from the anxiety of where she was drove Asta towards the shade of a nearby tree, trunk curved like a sled's runner and with strange, fuzzy looking rings around it every quarter meter or so and a spiky broad leaved green canopy that looked comical.  Under the palm, though Asta didn't know the name of it, the shade made things a little cooler but still unbearable.  Feeling relief come in waves as she pulled off first her reindeer boots and leggings, then her heavy tunic like dress and fringed shawl, Asta divested herself of more and more clothing until she was all but nude having only her lightest long-sleeved shirt on.  The hem of it fell to the top of her thighs and just covered her bottom but it was blessedly cool and she could feel the breeze drying the sweat from it and her body, bringing instant relief.  Asta used the escape of needing to do something to avoid thinking about what happened to shake the sand off her other clothing and drape it on the curved trunk of the tree to let it dry, keeping only her leather pouch and the heavy woven belt it hung from that she wrapped around her waist.  She also kept her boots on, the sand was terribly hot and it just felt so disturbingly wrong between her toes and across her instep.<br/><br/>It was so hot!  And she was thirsty!  Though her people didn't much get by the ocean she knew the inviting looking water, and so much of it like the endless tundra itself, she knew the water wasn't drinkable.  Was there water, or even Cokes, still on the plane?  The lavatory had been right behind her seat, noisy and with strange swirling blue water in a metal bowl, but there had been a sink with clean water to wash your hands.  Maybe it still worked?  Or maybe -<br/><br/>Maybe there was something in some of the luggages that might still be in the bins that had been above her head.  It wasn't her stuff, and she would never steal, but there might be something useful in it, or a bottle of water or something.<br/><br/>The coconuts near her feet, fallen from the tree overhead, didn't even register as anything but odd hairy, husky rocks.<br/><br/>Asta reluctantly left the shade of the palm, hand still over her eyes as shade, and the hammering sun was like a physical thing on her pale skin.  After clambering up on the rocks and getting near the tail again, Asta paused to turn in a slow circle, squinting to see the land around her.<br/><br/>It was impossibly green and lush.  Trees and plants grew down near to the beach and there were just so many of them!  It was beautiful and a sense of wonder filled her for seeing it so that Asta initially didn't notice the couple on the sandy beach, tiny tiny figures almost a kilometer away but noticeable because of their shape and the fact that at least one of them moved.