Emma Blake — daughter of Harris Blake and the unknown woman Julian had read about — remained a complete mystery to him.
He wasn't sure if her mother had ever made it back and reunited with Harris, or if she was still lost somewhere in the endless folds of the Time Slip.
It wasn't something he could just ask.
Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Still, the unanswered question gnawed at him.
And it made him stare at Emma longer than he should have.
He couldn't help himself.
Julian's eyes lingered on her flowing brown hair, which fell past her shoulders in loose, wind-tousled waves.
Her skin was sun-kissed from a lifetime on the islands, dotted with a soft scattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose.
Her eyes, though — her eyes were something else.
A striking, almost unnatural shade of bright green, large and full of life, framed by dark lashes that only emphasized their vibrancy.
They held a spark of gentle strength, a rare kind of warmth in a place like this.
She wore a simple cream-white blouse and a pair of jeans.
Julian couldn't help but notice how clean and intact they were, especially compared to the worn and tattered clothes most workers wore around the camp.
"So I take it this triceratops is yours?" Julian finally asked, trying to break the tension he felt building inside himself.
He pointed at the dinosaur nearby, still chewing happily.
Emma giggled, shaking her head.
"No, silly," she said.
"That's not a triceratops. It's a chasmosaurus — smaller, but strong enough for what we need."
She gave the beast an affectionate pat as it snorted at the hay pile.
"We haven't been able to tame the larger creatures yet," she continued.
"So we make do with these for now."
Julian's mind raced to the giant beasts he had glimpsed in old history books.
Even these "small" ones looked dangerous enough.
"Only my father," Emma added, with a hint of pride in her voice, "managed to bond with one of the really big ones."
She glanced toward the distant ocean.
"Debra — the deinosuchus you saw the other day? She's his."
Julian swallowed hard, remembering the monstrous creature they had summoned from the portal — the one easily bigger than a truck.
"Just make sure you never get between her and the water," Emma said, half-warning, half-joking.
"We lost someone a couple years back who thought he could 'train' her."
She shook her head with a small sigh.
Julian laughed nervously.
"And where is this... Debra?" he asked, glancing around like he expected her to rise out of a puddle nearby.
Emma smiled, as if amused by his paranoia.
"Oh, don't worry," she said.
"She usually rests out in the deeper waters beyond the fort. Makes this one of the safest enclaves around."
Her voice softened.
"Even Rex doesn't show himself here."
Julian wasn't sure whether to feel reassured or terrified.
The image of Rex — a mutated tyrannosaur from the journal entries — loomed large in his mind.
"I won't even go outside if it's that dangerous," he muttered, earning a soft laugh from Emma as she motioned for more hay to feed her mount.
"It's not that bad," Emma said, still feeding her dinosaur.
"We also need to go out and search for food and supplies. Eventually, you'll have to get used to leaving the fort."
She smiled, tossing another handful of hay into the trough.
"Anyway, it's good to see new faces around here. Just make sure you follow the rules, pay attention to the curfew, and especially — learn to wield a weapon."
She glanced back at Julian, her green eyes playful but serious underneath.
"You can ask Kevin, our blacksmith," she added.
"He's one of the best fighters when it comes to melee combat."
"True," Xavier chimed in, chuckling a little.
"That guy knows how to pack a punch."
He scratched his chin, looking a little sheepish.
"Just make sure if you ever invite him for a drink, you keep things cool. He slapped me once for making a bad joke. My jaw still hurts thinking about that night."
Emma shook her head with a soft laugh recalling the night two two guys quarreled, then turned back toward her mount.
"Oh, and another thing," Xavier continued.
"You actually get paid for working around here."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a few worn coins, handing one to Julian.
"We have our own currency. It was made standard across all the enclaves to trade resources."
Julian turned the coin over in his hand.
One side had a rough, almost cartoonish depiction of a dinosaur. The other showed a simple coat of arms: two crossed swords behind a tattered flag.
Not the most artistic design — but functional enough for survival.
Julian handed the coin back, still wondering what to say. Part of him wanted to keep the conversation going — not just because Emma was the leader's daughter, but because there was something magnetic about her presence.
She was beautiful, yes, but there was more.
A quiet strength that pulled at his attention.
Trying to sound casual, Julian spoke up.
"So, how about you? Do you know how to handle a sword?"
Emma's eyes flickered toward him, a small smirk on her lips.
"Of course," she said without hesitation. "I've been training since I was young."
She sized him up in one quick glance — his lean build, his cautious hands.
"You, on the other hand, don't even look like you could pick one up without cutting a finger off."
Julian felt his cheeks warm a little, but he couldn't exactly argue.
Compared to the hardened survivors around him, he definitely looked soft.
What he didn't realize was that Emma wasn't just judging him for combat readiness.
She was curious.
Curious about what kind of world he had come from — what time period had shaped him — and whether anything from that lost past still mattered in this strange, broken place.
Usually, when newcomers like Julian and the others arrived, they brought stories from their own time.
Kevin, for example, often boasted about his past — claiming he had fought against Indians in the great battles of the American frontier.
He spoke with passion about grand tales of bandits on horseback, fighting for land and slaves, carving their stories into the wild, lawless lands of the West.
But Kevin lacked something that all the others quietly craved.
Updated knowledge.
News of a world beyond these fractured islands.
He claimed to be from 1871 — a time when the great westward expansion was reshaping America, when conflicts between settlers and Native tribes burned across the plains, and when the legends of outlaws and gunslingers were still being written.
Emma had heard his stories more times than she could count.
They were fascinating — romantic even — but they were old.
Very old.
The newcomers, though, seemed different.
They spoke with strange accents, used different slang, and carried devices she had never seen before.
Somewhere between her father's time and Kevin's, they had stumbled across the Time Slip.
Emma felt a thrill of eagerness.
Maybe they held the missing pieces — knowledge that could help them finally escape.
She had been born on the islands, a child of this shattered part of the world.
She had never known the true Earth — only secondhand stories whispered from old survivors, half-remembered memories painted in fading colors.
Each new arrival offered a new glimpse into that lost world.
There was Mrs. Suzi Petrov, for example — the camp's matron and healer.
Suzi had arrived when she was forty-two, and now, twenty years later, she stood strong at sixty-two.
She had lost her husband years ago, in a tragic accident that still haunted the enclave.
Mrs. Suzi claimed to have come from 1941 — a terrible, blood-soaked era when humanity was at war across the globe.
She told Emma, when she was still a child, how she and her husband had fled across the sea on a desperate voyage to escape the horrors of their time.
Only to crash into an island that shouldn't have existed — a mirage trapped inside the Time Slip.
Her husband had worked feverishly to create a time gate that could take them home.
But he failed.
And in his final attempt, he paid the ultimate price.
Emma could still remember Mrs. Suzi's sad, faraway gaze whenever she spoke of him — the kind of grief that never fully healed.