Even the smoke smelled different.<br/><br/>Orange and red flames licked hungrily at each other as they devoured the soft palm wood and there were frequent hissing pops as the liquid stored in the very wet, spongy wood flashed from the heat and escaped in short-live spurts of white steam.  Near the base of one log, where it had soaked in the ocean spray, bits of purple and blue wavered, the colors of salt and the minerals in the waters of the Pacific.  It was a fire, and comforting against the night in a primal way, but it wasn't the fire she was used to.  Everything about it, from the sound to the colors to the smell of the smoke was wrong.<br/><br/>Asta sighed and looked around at her fellow survivors.  Kim-ly had dressed and prepared the eel for cooking, and the flaky white flesh was delicious and so tender that Asta risked burning her fingers just for another bite of it.  Maybe some of the others had turned up their noses at it, preferring the packaged foor Aerin had scavenged, but meat from a just moments ago living creature wasn't frightening to Asta, it was just part of her daily life.  And eel was certainly easier to skin than reindeer.<br/><br/>Aerin, the man who didn't speak or seem to hear things, looked like a giant in the firelight and his tattoos moved as if alive.  He was frightening in a bogey man way, but Asta knew that like her, like all of them, he'd worked to provide food and shelter and most of all water for the survivors, so if he was a scary figment from a fairy tale, he was also good and on their side.  Handsome too, as she noticed Giulia taking several sidelong gazes at Aerin.  The curvy woman was still trying to find a way to wear her clothing that kept her cool in the heat but also covered.  Asta had spent most of the day nude until urged back into her long thin dress.  Tomorrow, she decided, she would go through the piles of recovered clothing and find something easier to wear, and maybe something that would protect her skin from the sun.  The heat exhaustion had been scary, almost dangerous, and she didn't want to repeat it again.<br/><br/>Just beside her, where she'd chosen to sit, was Alejandro the man who'd seemed hurt but was getting better.  The man who had gentle eyes and a big heart and who'd given her the knife that was carefully wrapped in a folded palm frond and sitting just beside her on the sand.  The man who she had decided to put the dress back on for, because it seemed that her body made him nervous, or at least it didn't sit right with him.  Asta didn't know how much she had offended Alejandro but didn't want to any further.  She'd chosen to sit by him, clothed, in hopes he would understand she was trying to be nicer to him by her actions to thank him for the wonderful, so so so sharp knife he'd given to her.<br/><br/>Tomorrow she would begin to really put it to use.<br/><br/>With one last glance at the fire, and one shorter one at Alejandro, Asta lay back with her head pillowed on her hands and stared up into the night sky.<br/><br/>Like the fire, the stars were all wrong.  The patterns were none she knew and they moved in a ... well it was just different.  Living so high up near the poles the stars moved in a shorter, quicker circle around her.  Down here she could see that the circle was much, much bigger and moved slower.  Or maybe the stars did?  They were different than hers so maybe the were slower.  And there were no auroras, or none this evening.  It just felt wrong, like she was lost and wouldn't ever get back.<br/><br/>Pushing herself up on one arm, she pulled at Alejandro's sleeve to get his attention.<br/><br/>Asta smiled then pointed at the stars, then at the sand beside her and her fingertip poked seven holes in the sand, then connected them with lightly scratched lines, making the shape of the Big Dipper.  Asta pointed to it, to the stars, then back several times and shrugged her shoulders with a questioning look before sweeping her hand out across the entire sky, ending again with a shrug and a look into Alejandro's face before pointing at the sand sketched constellation.