They sit on carved stones. It is cool in the old dwellings, no matter the heat outside. Dried fish are passed around on dishes, cool bowls of water to drink, and they have Girl Scout cookies from the mainland. Chocolate Mint and the new peanut butter ones. Ruth smiles and then laughs out loud. “The girls have their best customers over here. Where do you store these things?”

“You forget, we have a cool spring. We have to lock them up so the animals don’t get them. Every single creature loves these.”

They talk about the weather and the water. They talk about the people. They talk about Marco. “He was the best. We miss him, too.”

After conversation and time pass, Ruth says, “I came for a reason.”

They look at her and wait. She is shy about her idea, but she tells them. “I have an idea. I was thinking to send word to the people in the north, up to the man who is friend of sharks, octopus, and whales.” She’d heard of him, even if it was from long ago. She wants to know if they could find that man, the Rain Priest, or his relatives, and ask for his help. “I don’t know if he still exists, but why not try? If he was there before, he might still be. Maybe he’s awfully old, but not being fully human, he could be there. Or maybe he’s had a son or daughter. I hope you won’t laugh at me. It’s all I can think. Maybe I’m foolish to think this.”

But they don’t laugh. He might have been one of the immortals, they aren’t sure.

The people believe, some of them, that the immortals still exist.

“Maybe he would come to us.”

There is a long silence. “Yes, I’ve heard of him,” says the woman whose braids are wrapped around and around her head like one of their old baskets made of whale baleen. “He came before. But that was back when they signed the treaty. Even though they had no choice that time, he came to us when the water left. It was not like losing our Marco and the little whale they killed. That man, he was the one who brought the water back to us then.”

“It seems like only yesterday, but that was long ago,” says one of the men. “The oceans were so full in those days. That was when you could have walked into the ocean on the back of fish, they were so plentiful.” He looks out, biting into a cookie. “There were so many. But why would the Rain Priest come to us now even if we could bring him up from beneath a whalebone grave somewhere from the north, or if we called him down from a cloud in the sky? Look at what our people have been and done since then.”

This is considered. The braided woman says to this man with the pipe, cookie, and worn suspenders, “The people are still here and they are visible and thirsty and humble now. They have been through pain. Now their hearts and souls are revealed. In the hard light everything is seen. I can even see the other side from here.” She looked across to where the others lived. “Even their skin is parched over there, they are so thirsty. Maybe they are ready to be Real People again.”