Penny tuned to the source of Jude's voice like a prairie dog scanning zeroing in on a hawk screech. God she was happy to see him. She was almost disgusted by how happy she was to see him. In fact, it was that disorienting happy disgust mixture that made her realize just how close she was to tripping over the cliff right into freakoutsville. She had just met that guy after all, under some [i]extremely annoying[/i] circumstances, she shouldn't feel like she'd just spotted her pet dog back from the dead and fit as a fiddle bounding up the beach to her. 

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another, one after the other, trying to breath the anxiety out. Being a terrified kid wasn't going to get her anywhere. She felt the shakes and quakes of her body settle down into tremors. 

She looked back up to answer Jude, a little more composed. "I..uh...I think I'm okay. Yeah, just a little shaken up. Those castaway jitters, you know? You okay?" Was that a joke she'd said just now? Well, Jude was right about one thing; knowing someone else's name around here actually was helping her keep calm. "I don't know where the girl is. If...if you're here, and I'm here, she was so close she'd have to be around here right?" Think this through. Think logically. Penny's mind latched onto the girl, not so much as a person but as a problem that could be solved. A goal to keep her anchored. It didn't help that she felt responsible for drawing the kid back to the sandcastle when she'd been on the way to her parents, presumably. "Unless she got blown up into the treeline." Penny said, staring again into the green jungle just beyond the beach. She cupped her hands and called out, "KIIIIIID?" 

Penny didn't even know her name. She kicked herself for not asking her name. Why hadn't the security asked her name and saved Penny the trouble?

She cupped her ears, listening for any kind of response. She did hear something, though. Soft sobbing, quiet, like a scared kid. Bingo! But it wasn't coming from the trees. She turned her head down the beach, her interest drawn to a pair of girls crouched a ways down the beach. Wait, was that...?

Oh no, it was Godzuki. The local bully wasn't so tough after god kicked sand in her face, huh? Seeing her like that was actually making her feel kind of bad about earlier. Only a little. Just a little bit. You couldn't even call this karma. Even if it had just been her this happened to getting dumped on an island for knocking over a kids sandcastle would be completely disproportionate. 

Suddenly, Penny had an idea. "Look over there." she said to Jude, pointing out the pair. "We might need another pair of eyes and she knows what the girl looks like. C'mon." She started jogging up the beach towards the pair, feeling the sand shift uncomfortable under her not very beach shoes.