King looked up at the return of Annie to the tent, smiling to her. She'd thought he was asleep when she rose this morning, and for the second time, he'd [i]suffered[/i] an involuntary erection as she stripped down and showed him her backside. He so badly needed a bit of privacy off behind some boulder or outcropping; the image of her curves and the feeling -- the [i]hope[/i] -- that she was being so sexually provocative for [i]his[/i] benefit had his cock hardening yet again as she revealed the seabird eggs and announced, “Breakfast.”

It wasn't long before the gear was packed and they were loading the boats again. Annie had asked King to help her with the dishes, and with her father's direction to also carry gear to the shore, King obliged. Annie talked about Mother Nature's beauty and power, then informed King, “The Elders of our village don't talk about the world as it was [i]before[/i]. I know there was a sickness … and a war.”

The Pox had, of course, had the largest effect on human population decrease, with war and the effects of global warming -- unknown to Annie and only a vague subject to King -- running distant second and third. The true numbers of those killed by these and other factors were unknown to King; he only knew that at one time, there had been nearly 8 billion people living on this planet and that today, there weren't.

King knew far more about history than Annie did, of course. For reasons of which he was yet to learn, her people had intentionally suppressed much of the history of Humanity prior to the present. Bran had told King this in a roundabout way, just as he'd told King not to speak of what he knew that his daughter didn't. 

So, it was awkward when Annie said to him, “Papa won't tell me about what happened." 

King finished scraping the frying pan with sand and salt water, slipping it into the heavy bag of dishware. He lied to her, "I don't know much about what happened way back when. I don't think anyone does."

The truth was that in every community in which he'd lived during his 42 years of life had some level of preserved knowledge about their location, their people, and their history. But how much history had been preserved and how accurate it actually was could vary greatly from one community to the next. The decline of Humanity had seen a great shift of fact to fiction, too; when he'd moved about, King had often found the people of his new location living with a version of the past that had little connection to reality at all.

He was contemplating what he could say to Annie without angering her father when Bran called from higher up the shore, "[i]Help us with the boats you two.[/i]"

King was relieved not to have to respond to the girl, turning to hurry up the incline to grab an end of one of the boats and pull it down to the shore before then returning to help with the other. In no time, they were fully loaded and ready to depart. 

"Nej, ikke i dag," Bran said to King as he was helping Paul push [i]their[/i] boat out into the surf. The man switched back to English, telling King, "You are with Annie today."

King looked to the girl for her reaction, then to Paul for his. The latter's was obviously less agreeable that the former's. Still, King was more than happy to say, "Sure, whatever you want."

A few minutes later, they were past the gentle surf, storing the oars, and lifting the sail into place. They caught the wind directly east to move away from the shore, where they could then tack back and forth to continue their course up Greenland's shore. Annie had taken the sail as she had the day before with Paul, leaving King to divide his attention between watching the other boat for directions ... and watching the young beauty work.

One subject had been nagging at him since the first time Annie's father had talked vaguely about it, and with the wind blowing their voices away from the other boat, it seemed like the best opportunity King would have to ask the girl about it. Contemplating his words in an effort not to put his foot in his mouth, King asked, "So ... can you tell me more about this ... [i]breeding[/i] custom of yours...? I mean ... I've seen my share of [i]customs[/i] when it comes to marriage, raising families, and the like. But this is the first time I've heard of a [i]match maker[/i] arranging [i]breeding[/i] ... as opposed to [i]marriages[/i]. Can you tell me more about it ... and ... if it's not private ... personal ... can you tell me about you and Paul? I mean ... how do you feel about that?"

King knew that he was treading on what Annie might find to be a very personal subject, and if she didn't want to tell him anything more than he already knew, he'd accept it. He had a feeling she wanted to talk about it, though.