But ocean currents from Antarctica ensure it almost never rains on the islands, allowing guano to harden, locking in layer upon layer upon layer of nitrate-phosphate goodness.
Because the time between breakfast and dinner in the evening increased, people got hungry and they needed food to give them energy - what Anastasia called sustenance.
They had been cast upon a beach of clear sand, which slanted upward from the pool of water at their feet—a pool which doubtless led into the big ocean that fed it.