1200 words, ~6 minute read
Recommended listening while you read: To Speak Of Solitude by Brambles
Day 3 on the island, morning
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When I woke up, I was comfortable. I refused to get out of the hammock. The sun had re-appeared and I could see its rays piercing through the cracks in the palm frond walls. Little specks of dust floated around the shelter aimlessly. I watched them wander and drifted alongside them, in and out of conscious thought. Falling asleep had been rough last night, but once I had, I’d slept heavy.
When I finally got out of the hammock, I took off my survival suit. That thing still had a musty scent. Before even fully awake, I walked down to the beach, ventured knee-deep into the ocean and gave it a diligent scrub with sand and seawater. I marched back to the shelter, pulled the arms and legs of the suit inside-out and draped it over a tree branch, directly in the sun. I went back inside in my birthday suit; this was now the privacy of my own home.
I had to do some exploring today. I wanted to get to it as quickly as I could. So, I set out three Kehra pods, ripped myself a chunk of hardtack, and took the last big swig from the first of my three bottles of water.
“Big breakfast for the day ahead.”
I retraced the beginnings of my map that I’d drawn on the floor of my shelter. Today, I’d follow the beach in the opposite direction, to the right of where I’d ‘landed’. Maybe having walked the beach in both directions, I could get a better sense of just how big the island was. I emptied my backpack of all but the bare necessities. I needed capacity to gather as I went. As I set out, I rubbed my fingers on the draped survival suit, still damp. Nothing worse than putting on damp clothing... I really wanted to get moving...
“Am I gonna do this naked?”
“I’m gonna do this naked...”
I set out, in all my glory, morning sun warming my skin. This put a time limit on exploring. I scanned the horizon, looking for other landmarks to situate myself. It was astounding how little there was that stood out. There was an odd-shaped tree every few yards, but when everything is bizarre, nothing stands out. I rounded the corner in this new direction and gave a quick wave goodbye to my shelter as it moved out of my line of sight.
What I really wanted to find was a more reliable food & water source. A plentiful grove of Kehra trees would be good. My limited supplies were going to run out soon. The hardtack was half gone, and I was going through water way too fast. With only 22 days until... something... happened, there was now also urgency in finding some answers as to what was going on.
Up ahead, the beach ended. I could see that it gradually turned into a rocky slope, but I couldn’t make out what happened after that. The rocks gradually pulled up and away from the water. I kept walking, squinting against the sun, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. As I got closer, larger rocks replaced the soft beach sand. I climbed the steady incline slowly, careful with my bare feet, wobbling every step. At the end of the rocky rise, the land ended abruptly with a steep cliff. The rock face descended at least ten meters below me. It was a deep gulch that had formed around a small river coming from somewhere inland and emptying into the ocean. I hadn’t understood the gulch from a distance because, oddly, the trees that grew below had grown twice as tall as the trees nearer the top of the rocky cliff. The treeline that bordered both the higher beach, where I was, and the lower beach, at the base of the gulch, looked uninterrupted.
I’ve never been great with heights, so I, again, very carefully, lay on my stomach on a large, flat rock near the edge of the cliff. I inched myself forward on my belly, peeking out over the edge to survey the gulch below. It looked like paradise. The river ran through lush forest and then opened out onto another gorgeous, sheltered beach. There, the river expanded outward and flowed into the sea. The lower beach spanned maybe fifty meters before it met another rock face on the far side. I searched for a safe way down. There was no way I could climb down the cliffside I was peering over without falling. My body wouldn’t even let me try. Maybe the descent was a little more gradual further into the tree line, but I was in no state for that kind of bushwhacking. I looked down at my bare skin, warm against the rock.
“The hell was I thinking?!...”
I squinted further, searching for a way down through the trees. I could go get the suit and come back. As I did, I noticed something else that I had a hard time believing I’d missed until now. It had been standing there the whole time. It was easily twice as tall as me, and almost equally as wide. My mind was still deciding what to do with what my eyes were telling it. This, thing, was swaying gently, just inside the tree line down below, resting in the shade.
The closest thing I can compare it to is a jellyfish. A big, fleshy, hot-air balloon with hundreds of thin, shaking tendrils supporting its weight. The ‘body’ was deep black, matte, as though light couldn’t even approach the surface of its skin. Shining, meandering, gold markings traced across its bulbous body and glinted in the sunlight. A massive, inflated, black jellyfish. On land. Swaying slowly. Its upper half still dripped on the sand. It must have come from the ocean up onto the beach.
It didn’t seem to be doing anything. It just stood there. Sand coated its tendrils as though it had ‘sat’ on the beach. My initial fear turned to fascination.
“What are you!?!”
I wasn’t about to go down there now. This thing was big. After ten minutes, the creature gave its bulb-shaped body a shake, water and sand splashing against the leaves of surrounding trees. It stretched up high on its tendril legs and they all twitched a little. It slowly crawled out of the shade and across the beach. I chuckled as it lumbered along.
“Half a spine-chilling monster... half ludicrous child’s drawing...”
The creature went on its way across the beach and slowly out into the waves. It disappeared under the water. I stared.
“Could that thing come up onto my beach?”
The shelter would be like tissue paper to something that big. It wouldn’t even notice as it bowled me over while I slept. I’d be a light snack if it were hungry... As I itemized all the ways the thing could kill me, a message fell out of the sky and landed on the beach below, sending sand flying.
[HARMLESS]
“Right. Don’t think I’ll be testing that theory.”
I tried not to think about what it meant as the word HARMLESS disintegrated into a fine chalky dust as drifted away in the wind.
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Author Notes
Your first question is most likely, “Why is Marlowe naked for this whole scene?” and the answer is that I simply don’t know. I’ve been re-ordering, removing, shifting things around as I work through this rough draft. As I worried that the front end of the story was getting too dense with crafting, I post-poned a few scene where Marlowe made some shoes and clothes. So, when I got here, I no longer had all those crafted items I’d originally written and I thought, “What if Marlowe just heads out in the buff?”. It’s weird, but it shows Marlowe’s spontaneous self-confidence, and demonstrates a newfound comfort that Marlowe has found, alone on the island.
Then, of course, we get to the end of this instalment and shatter that notion entirely :)
I don’t know that the final draft won’t have some heavy edit here, but for now, let’s see where it goes...
See you in the comments below.