800 words, ~4 minute read
Recommended listening while you read: Panic by Forest Swords
Day 4 on the island, evening
If you’re new here, hop back to the Table Of Contents.
Typhoon
That evening was uneventful. I gathered a few more seed pods. They’d been harder to find than the day before, but I laboured my way into five more of them. I was, however, down to my last bottle of water.
I copied everything I’d charted in the sand onto my fancy new map, guessing at the island’s proportions. I ate dinner, repaired my last remaining axe, and then washed in the warm, azure waters as the sinking sun turned the world pink & purple. The day ended.
I went to bed early and fell asleep quickly. The countdown notification falling from the sky woke me up as it crashed into the forest beside my shelter.
[LEFT]
[DAYS]
[20]
Twenty days left... until who knows what.
“Could we make the countdown a little less ominous?!”
The island remained still and quiet. The letters dispersed. I fell back to sleep.
Until the thunder...
I hadn’t been out long when the first clash of thunder startled me out of sleep. It was loud enough that I involuntarily jumped out of the hammock. It sounded as though it was right outside my thin shelter walls. There was a moment of silence, and then came the rain.
This rain made the storm from my first night look like a light sprinkling. It came on hard and fast, then it was deafening. I tried to roll over and get back to sleep, but the shelter groaned and shuddered, its lashings pulled tight. Every gust of wind slammed salty air through the gaps. I worried that if it kept up, even my new, improved shelter would be reduced to a puddle by morning.
I gathered up anything I’d left on the ground and tied what I could to the trees inside the shelter. Still, it poured. Still, it thundered. Rain needled through the walls in bursts, sharp & warm. A sticky layer of stormwater coated my skin.
Thin little fingers of rainwater soaked the sand along the high-ground wall. I worked to push more against the leaks. Within seconds, the fingers of water soaked through my barrier and continued trickling into the shelter again. They erased my drawings in the sand. The ground around the largest tree’s exposed roots slowly eroded away. Above the din of the downpour, I heard distant trees crack and sway. This would be a long night. Then I heard a familiar thud outside. I parted two palm fronds and peeked out into the downpour.
[TRENCH]
The letters disintegrated. The rain was coming down so hard that they melted down into themselves rather than blowing up and away in the breeze. I looked at my sand barrier, a crumbling mound along one wall, desperately trying to keep the problem at bay but failing.
“Trench.”
Right. I stopped trying to build up and instead dug a wide path straight down the center of the shelter. The rain wasn’t letting up. I dug it at least 12 inches deep. Once I’d extended the trench all the way to the opposite wall, I let loose the sand barrier I’d made and the multiplying fingers of water began to disappear, the water flowing into a single river in the trench instead.
“Huh.”
I admired the new water feature. The walls still swayed with every gust, but my floor had largely stopped washing away.
“Thank you!” I yelled skyward. I doubted anyone could hear me over the downpour.
I barely slept the rest of the night. The rain continued straight through until morning. Shortly after I’d built the trench, the wind picked up and threatened to take the entire shelter down. Thankfully, it held, but I’d had a rough night huddled inside my little cocoon of leaves and rope.
By morning, the wind calmed and the rain was just a subtle tapping on the roof. My trench had grown wider, but the trees had held and I still had mostly solid ground beneath me. In the intensity of the storm, I’d forgotten about collecting water. I set my two empty water bottles outside the shelter with their lids off. I needed to collect all I could. And I still needed fire to boil it.
I caught myself blinking a lot. I was running on little sleep. I ate, drank, and hung my survival suit from the palm tree inside the shelter, but the air was so damp I knew I’d be waiting forever for it to dry. Fire…
After the ‘trench’ suggestion last night, I leaned out the door of my shelter and yelled up at the sky.
“I really need fire!”
Nothing.
I surveyed the beach. It was still raining too much to circumnavigate the island today. Too many unknowns to set out in this weather. I decided I’d make the fire myself. I sat down with my green rocks and some dry grass that I’d stored in my pack overnight. The next two hours were spent banging rocks together and cursing a lot.
See the Table Of Contents
Thanks for reading.
Author Notes
This is the first night that I’ve broken the pattern of Marlowe ‘flashing back’ during sleep. Don’t worry, I have a plan, but I liked the idea of Marlowe just not getting far enough into sleep to follow our regular format.
We’re nearing the end of Act I now, so this sleepless night, the violent storm, and the indirect help from above all feed into the next day on the island, which will wrap up the first part, our introduction, to this world of ISLE. Only two instalments left!
See you in the comments below.
What a great start to whatever this is. I could see the deluge! Definitely made me want to read more.
Both hindrance and help from the heavens. I love it!!