“Yes, please,” Tusker replied and nodded exaggeratedly. She didn’t seem to speak English, but lifted the pot from the burner and poured it expertly into the cup. It was pale with powdered milk already added, and when she handed him the cup, it was scalding hot. “Isthuthi,” he said, hoping she spoke Sinhala, though he suspected this was a Tamil household, judging from the Hindu shrine in the bedroom. She looked at him and smiled.

She said something to him in Tamil. He shook his head quizzically. “Badagini?” she repeated, this time in Sinhala. Hungry? He nodded again and she smiled and gestured for him to sit at the small table in the room. It was a tiny house. The dining table sat opposite the tiny cooking space and beyond it, a sitting room with a simple rattan bench, some pillows, and a few plastic chairs. In the corner of the room was a rolled-out mat and some sheets. This is where she had slept, presumably with the fisherman who’d rescued them. They’d given up their own room for him and Sam.

The woman scraped at some pots in the kitchen and turned to hand Tusker a plate heaped with rice and some curries. He sat at the table and without a word tucked into the steaming food with his fingers. The food, a few vegetables cooked in coconut milk, lentils and dried fish was spicy and delicious. Tusker wiped the sweat from his brow with his forearm between bites. The woman stood and watched him from the kitchen. When he finished, he sat back in the chair and exhaled. She set a small bowl of lime water in front of him to wash his fingers. “Hari hondai.” He grinned, his face flushed. He felt human again. The woman smiled back at him.

“Oyage nona?” she gestured to the room. She thought Sam was his wife. Tusker nodded and stood up. He exaggeratedly tiptoed to the room and held back the curtain. In the light from the other room, he could see that Sam was awake. She was sitting up, rubbing her eyes.

“I just had the best meal of my life,” he said to her. “I don’t know who these people are, but they gave us their room and she just fed me enough food for an entire family.”

“That’s the way it usually is here,” Sam replied. “The ones with the least to give, give the most.”

She stood up and brushed past Tusker, letting her hand linger on his chest as she passed him in the doorway. It was now 7:30, a full day since they’d been brought ashore. They’d slept an entire day and the following night. Where they’d ended up he didn’t know but it was a stroke of luck that the fisherman happened upon them.