It was nearly dusk before Annie and her fellow searchers returned to the village, and the first thing she did was seek out her father, asking anxiously, “So, what happened? What did he say? Tell me, [i]please[/i], Papa.”

“There's nothing to tell, Annie,” he responded after taking a moment to study her face and consider her anxious excitement. “We put him in the quarantine hut. That's it.”

Annie was disappointed, to say the least. She'd hoped to learn [i]something[/i] about the stranger, [i]anything[/i]. She gave her report about what they'd found up the beach – gruesome details included – and answered any questions her father asked; the one he asked repeatedly in different ways was, of course, whether or not she had touched anything [i]foreign[/i], to which she had repeatedly answered [i]no[/i]. 

“What is it about this man that has you so uneasy…?” he asked before then adding, “... excited?”

Annie felt a blush fill her cheeks before she defensively said, “[i]Nothing![/i] I'm … I'm not excited! I'm … [i]curious![/i]”

“Strangers have come to our village before, Annie,” he reminded her. 

“Not like [i]this![/i]” she pointed out. “The others … they always arrived with someone we knew … someone from a Trading Village … someone we trusted. [I]This[/i] man…”

After a moment of his daughter not completing her sentence, he asked, “What about [i]this[/i] man?”

Again, there was silence for a long moment before Annie answered, “I dunno.” She hopped up, saying, “I have chores to do before dark.”

She was moving for the door as her father said sternly, “Stay away from the quarantine hut, Annie. You understand what happens if he is sick and–”

“I understand, Papa,” she cut him off, smiling. “I'll stay away.”

And she did, too – [i]barely![/i] After her chores and dinner, Annie went to sit with those tasked with watching over the stranger. There were three people stationed separately about 30 feet from the quarantine hut such that each could see the other two at the little campfires keeping them warm and the night illuminated. 

They were supposed to keep quiet once night fell to allow the other villagers – and the stranger – to sleep without distraction, but that wasn't what happened. They chatted with each other with muted voices and occasionally [i]peppered[/i] each other with little pebbles, particularly when one of them threatened to drift off. 

Annie sat for a while with Belle, the only female who took a turn watching over the stranger. They whispered to each other about King; Belle hadn't seen the man before he entered the hut, so Annie described him in as much detail as she could recall – which turned out to be a lot, including her opinion that after the two of them had talked a while on the beach,  that Annie thought she'd seen a [i]bulge[/i] grow in the front of King's raggedy shorts. The two young women giggled together about that, telling the other two guards to [i]mind their own business[/i] when they wanted to know what was going on. 

Annie’s father arrived after a while, telling her to get to bed. She did as told, hesitating with the desire to tell King goodnight. She kept it to herself, though, instead simply hugging her friend goodbye, kissing her father goodnight, telling the other guards they were idiots – they'd teased the girls about the [i]handsome[/i] strangers, as [i]boys[/i] do – then headed back to the hut she had shared with just her father since the accidental drowning of her mother three years earlier. 

When her father didn't immediately return, and with her thinking firmly set upon the [i]handsome stranger[/i], Annie found her hands caressing themselves over her young, firm, and otherwise untouched body … over her modest breasts with their sensitive and ever-pert nipples … and down between her thighs to the warmth and wetness of her [i]womanhood[/i]. 

She'd only recently discovered the joy of masturbation, and what with the solitude of the moment and the fresh [i]visual[/i] of these stranger in the quarantine hut, Annie took a few minutes to pleasure herself and, for the first time in her life, achieve the wondrous euphoria of orgasm. After her heart had ceased pounding and her breathing had returned to normal, she drifted off to a deep, peaceful sleep.