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 Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 5:25 pm
Once the pure shock had worn off, the island was actually pretty nice in some ways, as far as Kelvin was concerned. And, by now, he was pretty sure it was an island. While he hadn’t yet found the opportunity to try and walk all the way around the landmass---seeing as he had to look after Josephine and everything---he was almost convinced it was an island. He had walked a mile in each direction, only to discover the complete and utter lack of hotels, resorts, bars, and, yes, even cabana boys. It really was annoying until Kelvin had considered the upside of the situation: the complete and utter lack of other people. All the land provided was food, water, and lots of sunshine. Today was being especially generous in the form of sunlight as it filtered through the sky to the beach below.
Two weeks had passed, which wasn’t very long at all, when you thought about it. There was a whole lot of ocean to search, after all. Any day now, he was certain that he would see a ship on the horizon. Until then, he was content to enjoy the solitude. Well, almost-but-not-quite-solitude, since Josephine was there. What had once been, more or less, a few branches cunningly leaning against one another to form a shelter had fledged into a real camp; Kelvin was actually pretty proud of it, considering that all he had to create a shelter was a hunting knife. When you got right down to it, the shelter still was a bunch of branches leaning up against one another and a bunch of leaves to cover everything up, but… well, he didn’t think of it like that, for fear of damaging his ego.
The real pride and joy was the fire, cheerfully flaming away in the firepit. It had taken a lot of wood, cussing, and burnt fingers before Kelvin had gotten it properly going, but it wasn’t going out now, so long as someone kept throwing driftwood at it. Plumes of smoke drifted up into the sky, which was hopefully acting as a beacon for any passing ships.
Kelvin, seated slightly away from the fire because it was a nice sunny day, kept an eye on it as he worked. Carefully, he inspected his newest tool. In theory, it was supposed to be an axe. In practice, it looked more like a lump of rock shoved into the cleft of a branch and then lashed there. Still, it could work. Sort of… maybe. Well, at least it could work as a sort of wedge. At the very least, it could still help as a sort of splitting tool. Maybe, if you were creative. And that was pretty much life for the past two weeks: finding food, water, and trying to be creative when it comes to designing tools. Much more peaceful than life at home, which was mostly full of finding food, water, and trying to be creative when it comes to avoiding people.
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 6:12 pm
Josephine rubbed her forehead a bit. The bright sunlight was harsh on her, and was currently causing a headache. While she would have loved to of taken a nap to make the headache go away, she had work to do, and she didn't want Kelvin worrying about her either.
At the moment, she was trying to cook some food. A bit of seaweed laid out on a flat rock, which was partially in the fire. That way the seaweed wouldn't catch on fire or cook too quickly. Pulling a piece off the rock, she let it cool for a minute before taking a bite. Still a little salty, but much better than the raw stuff they had had so far.
"Here Kel, try this." She said, giving him the rest of it.
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 6:36 pm
Looking up from his current project, Kelvin dubiously accepted the bit of seaweed. So far, that had been making up the bulk of their diet, which probably wasn’t a good idea. But, honestly, it was one of the few plants that could be identified without a fail as edible. The few other plants included some type of cattail and nettles. As the days went by, the bright little fish in the water were becoming more and more appealing… all they needed was a good way of catching them. Nibbling on the partially dried seaweed, Kelvin nodded.
“It’s better like this than completely fresh,” he noted. Still extremely salty, but that was ok. “Maybe it could be dried completely over a fire… or maybe once we find something to use as a pot, we could boil it.” And by that, of course, he meant that Josephine could boil it, since Kelvin would somehow, against all odds, manage to mess it up and give them both dysentery or some other disease. “I’ll go get some more and maybe some of it can be dried out. That’ll make it last longer. Much more effective than just going and collecting new seaweed every day.”
And maybe, just maybe, he could figure out some way to catch those elusive little fish. If he could make a net, everything would be much easier… getting up, he stretched out for a moment, wincing slightly and the stiffness in his muscles. There was a lot of stuff to haul around the little campsite. Bits of wood had to be moved, driftwood had to be chopped up… not easy work, when you got right down to it. Cool water sounded really lovely right about now, especially with the hot sun and the fire right there.
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 7:10 pm
Taking the rest from the rock, she spread it out on piece of driftwood. "I think these are dried pretty well. We can leave a few of them and see how they keep over a few days."
Going into the water sounded good to Josephine as well. Maybe it would help out with her headache. "I'll come with you. It'll go faster if I help."
She stood up and brushed the sand off her legs. While it wasn't the worst place to be stranded, she wouldn't have minded if some lotion. Her skin seemed to be taking all this the hardest. Well, that and her hair. Josephine walked down the beach, into the shallows. She went slowly, adjusting to the cool water. Yes, this definitely wasn't the worst place to be stranded.
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 7:40 pm
Before following Josephine, Kelvin took the opportunity to abandon his shirt because it was a hot day. Besides, going swimming with a shirt on always felt awkward somehow, although his shoulders would probably hate him later when he got all sunburned. So far, he had been luckier than Josephine, but that was only because of… well… spending time in Iraq. Walking into the water more boldly than his sister, Kelvin went to work by peering really, really intently at the water and looking for a flash of green or brown. Maybe they would get lucky and find some kelp or something. That was supposed to be tastier. And, if he recalled his biology correctly, kelp had alginic acid or something.
“Just remember to get the fresh stuff and not the stuff that washes up on shore,” he cautioned her, just as he did every time they went to collect seaweed. “That stuff is mostly rotten and if either of us causes some sort of food sickness, it’s going to be me. And don’t step on any fish. Lots of spiky and poisonous fish out here, I bet.” Or something like that. That was just another reason why he hadn’t been too keen on trying to catch fish: he had no idea which ones were poisonous and which ones weren’t.
“Gotta admit. This is a pretty nice family vacation, all things considered. Aside from the whale, of course. Sure, we don’t have plumbing, pools, alcohol…” he trailed off here, trying to find the positives. Damn. He had lost sight of any silver linings once he recalled the lack of booze. “But, it’s still one step above being trapped in an airplane between a fat guy who doesn’t know the meaning of deodorant and a crying baby.”
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 8:15 pm
Newcomers.
The Wave had shown her the newcomers before they'd even arrived, and she remembered her pleas, her bargained attempts at saving their souls. No one deserved the fate that she was enduring, and if she could somehow bear the burden of another, especially two, then she felt that it would all have some purpose. But the Wave was unyielding, and in all honesty, her tears had been few, in comparison to those she'd shed for the ones that she knew and held dear.
Of course, that had happened when she had still walked on legs.
There was a distinct rift in Alcine's life, a change from the terraneous to the maritime, and in the weeks since the painful change she'd come to accept what she was, just as long as she remained alone, that her visage did not meet the gaze of others. But this mindset made for a lonely person, and even though she was coldblooded, she still felt as alone as when her body had provided its own warmth.
Even so, another aspect drove her away from others, and it was the growing presence of another self within her. Breena, as it called itself, was slowly taking over her thoughts, her mind, her willpower itself. More than her fear of someone being scared of her physical features was an innate terror at the possibility that someone would notice her mental change. How could she still call herself Alcine, with such alien thoughts pervading her consciousness? And yet, how could she not?
The girl fought with herself for many days, but it would seem that the Wave had finally chosen for her. The newcomers were on the beach, preparing a camp. Nostalgia murmured against Alcine's thoughts as she remembered her own first camp, and watched them silently from afar with something similar to curiosity for a foreign culture. Bits and pieces of conversation culminated from the wind, and from that she realized the best way to present herself, if in fact she found the courage to do so at all.
Silently, she dived, then slithered underwater towards the pair, making sure to stay where the waters were murky and dark. To help the two in their obvious search for food, she plummeted to the bottoms, scaring a school of fish towards the surface. With a predator's grace she chased the school, forcing the rather large group to cause a commotion on the waves, jumping into the air and creating quite a splash. She urged the fish further, and momentarily surfaced to breathe before pushing them on, forcing them into the shallows.
After all, it'd be rather easy to catch at least one fish if they swarmed around your feet by the thousands.
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Posted: Sun May 11, 2008 8:57 pm
"I know, I know!" She said somewhat irritably. While certainly she depended on Kelvin, that didn't mean she was helpless. This was something they'd had to do for the past two weeks, and she was pretty good at it by now. Of course, normally Josephine would have been genial, but the fact that they were stranded was stressing her a bit.
"Sorry Kel. I didn't mean to snap." She said as she gathered seaweed. Splashing in the water drew her attention, and she looked up to see a large school of fish swimming their way, many jumping out of the water to escape whatever was chasing them.
Seeing it as a chance to get some meat, Josephine scrambled to grab one. Doing so, she missed the brief flash of dark brown hair that broke the surface. She felt a fish brush her fingers, and quickly clasped her hands together.
"Kel, I got a fish!" She said, bringing up the wiggling creature into the air.
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Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 9:36 pm
That was vaguely ironic in a way. When stranded on an island far away from civilization, Kelvin was more cheerful than a hummingbird hyped up on amphetamines and nectar while Josephine turned into a snapping turtle. Normally, snapping at Kelvin would have resulted in a shouting match or at least a few rapid insults. But… well, Josephine was Josephine. It was impossible for Kelvin to stay mad at her for long. Also, the waters around them were suddenly alive with silvery wriggling fish. That sort of thing tended to distract even the most focused of people.
“What the…? Phine, what did I just say abou…” he stopped himself there, deciding that, maybe, just this once, he wouldn’t try to warn her about the evils of poisonous fish or something like that. Besides, since she had grabbed it, it clearly didn’t have any poisonous spines or anything. He wasn’t an expert on fish---he could tell swordfish from sharks; after that, everything was salmon, as far as he knew---but he was pretty sure these were safe. Still, at least he felt vindicated when it came to reminding his sister about the dangers of the sea every single day. Clearly, she needed to be reminded of it, since she would ignore it anyway. “Good job, ‘Phine,” he said instead, smiling just a bit.
The fish were literally swarming; catching a fish wasn’t like shooting fish in a barrel. It was more like dropping a tactical nuke on a barrel-of-fish. Josephine made it seem easy enough and, Hell, Kelvin wanted some meat too. Might as well grab a fish while he could. Plunging his hands into the water, Kelvin closed his fingers around a wriggling fish. Unfortunately, when he got it out of the water, several things became obvious: one, fish were extremely struggly. Two, the fish was bigger than it looked. And, three, the fish was also exuding an extraordinarily large amount of what Kelvin could only call ‘fish goo’.
A few well-placed wriggles and the fish slipped from his hands and flopped on his shirt for a good measure. Well, damn. He felt like he should be thinking something positive like, ‘at least Phine has something’, but he couldn’t. Instead, all he could think of was, ‘years of training and my little sister catches a fish before I do’.
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 5:27 pm
They'd gone for the fish, good. They'd not noticed anything fishy about aforementioned fish, even better. The woman caught on rather quickly, but the man seemed somewhat of a slower learner, so Alcine roused the school of fish again from beneath the depths, catching one between her spindly fingers as she rose to the surface.
She was scared to meet these people, true, but maybe that was the missing link, the reason she kept losing to Breena. She needed to connect with humans to remain human, or else she would lose herself entirely, and Breena would be free to do as she pleased. Alcine's tongue ran over her elongated fangs, and decided that, if nothing else, she couldn't let Breena have the chance to hurt people. She would put aside her self-consciousness, and bring these people to the truth.
Easier said than done.
When Alcine finally did surface, it was a good bit away from either of the two, though closer to the man, so he wouldn't see her as a threat to the woman. She was close enough to speak, but far enough to blur some details, which she hoped would cause her arms to look like a wetsuit more than scales, and her eyes to simply look dark. With the water as murky as it was, her tail was impossible to see, even more so because of how she sat in the shallows, the waves lapping at her waist. From a distance, she could possibly even be confused for human. Wincing as she pulled her fangs back to the upper roof of her mouth in a snake-like manner, she finally found her voice.
"You know, it's much easier if you grip them around the fins," she pointed out in an attempted casual tone. She held the fish she'd caught earlier in one hand, then tossed it up to the sands, where it began to flop in vain for water. "You can go ahead and have that one. I don't want it."
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 8:55 pm
Josephine giggled at Kelvin's attempt. "You'll get one next time Kel." The promise of a good meal had done wonders to raise her spirits.
A strange voice surprised Josephine, however, and as she turned around and saw another person in the water, the prized fish slipped out of loose fingers. "K, k, Kel! A person!" She cried, despite the fact that he had undoubtedly heard her as well.
She started to make her way over to the girl, oblivious to her strange looks. "Forget about the fish, we've been stuck here! You can take us to your house, and we can call the coast guard." She was going to go home!
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2008 9:11 pm
Kelvin, like his sister, whirled around at the sound of another voice, not really believing his own ears. Which was just stupid, quite frankly. If you couldn’t believe your own ears, whose ears could you believe? Come to that, if you couldn’t believe your own ears, could you believe your own eyes? At first, he was merely peeved that someone else besides his sister had seen his bungled attempt at fishing, but his second emotion was far more generous. They were safe! They could go home! He too started to walk closer to the woman, the fish forgotten.
That is, until he noticed a few details that seemed a little… off. Her hair, for one. The ends seemed a little lighter than the roots. That was a bit strange. Well, there is such thing as hair dye. She just dyes her hair. Nothing wrong with that. Go closer, find help, go home! But a few other things niggled at his senses… her arms were dark. Well, in addition to hair dye, humans had also applied inventiveness to create something called a ‘wetsuit’. That would have explained it, except her torso looked pale. And who wore wetsuit arms, but not the shirt? Did wetsuits even do that at all? Come in different parts? Kelvin had always imagined them to be a full-suit type of thing.
“Wait, Josephine… something isn’t right…” he said quietly, trying to keep his sister away from the stranger. “We don’t know anything about this person. She just popped up out of nowhere, Phine. The beach was empty when we came into the water and suddenly she appears? And look; there aren’t any footsteps around her, in the sand.” Actually, there could have been some footsteps; the distance was a bit too far to see that amount of detail, but Kelvin was grasping at any straws he could to keep his sister back, just until he was sure that this stranger didn’t mean any harm. He considered bringing up the possibility that there weren’t any phones here at all, but held back. At the very least, there should be a radio somewhere. “Just stay back for a bit, ok?”
Turning back to the mystery woman, he tried his best winning grin and waved. “Hi! We’ve been stranded here… would you mind telling us exactly where we are?” as far as repertoire went, it wasn’t exactly witty… but, it got the job done. “Do you have a radio we could use to contact the coast guard? Or anyone, for that matter?”
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 6:31 pm
Alcine hesitated under the man's stare, her selfconsciousness swallowing her senses and keeping her from movement. She could tell by his gaze that he didn't trust her, and she absolutely relied on trust for her plan to work.
Suddenly, her plans seemed rather stupid.
"I...don't know where we are," Alcine admitted, tilting her head with a sad look on her face. "None of us do. We've all been stranded here for, well, it's felt like years."
"The last I remember, it was February '07."
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:04 pm
Josephine wanted to get closer, but her brother's arm was in the way. It was like him to be overly cautious, but she trusted his judgment, so she stayed back. "A-alright."
She couldn't keep the shock out of her voice when she responded. "February '07?! It's May '08 by now!" There was no way she could believe someone had been stranded that long. This was the girl's idea of a prank, and she was going to go home. Right? "Wait, we? Who's we?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2008 7:18 pm
For several moments, Kelvin simply stared at the girl, as if, by the sheer power of his disbelief, she would break down and admit that it was all a lie. Surprise! You’re simply in a coma! Or, perhaps, ‘Surprise! You’re on the coast of California! You’ll be home within a matter of hours!’ something like that. Anything besides, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know where we are, but here’s a fish’. February 2007. But that just wasn’t possible. She mentioned a group, which meant there were others. That also wasn’t possible. It just… couldn’t happen. Real life did not let things like that happen. It did not allow for entire groups of people to be stranded on the same island!
Wait, wait… he was thinking too quickly. She didn’t say that they were all stranded at the same time. Perhaps they were each stranded one at a time… no, he was still thinking too much. She had to be lying. “For the last few days, me and my sister have been just trying to survive,” he said, trying to keep his patience. “So, you can go ahead and assume that I don’t have a sense of humor. I left that in my other pants, I’m afraid. If this is your idea of a joke…” he couldn’t really finish that threat, not in front of Josephine. “Ok… who are you, and who is this ‘we’ you keep talking about?”
She looked honest, but… over a year? That couldn’t happen. Maybe if he disbelieved it just a little bit more, it would all go away.
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Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 6:55 pm
Alcine hesitated again, and in the stares of the two began to subconsciously squirm underwater, causing ripples with her tail. After a moment, though, she regained her composure, though she did it only by inching away, now shy to these normals.
"'We', well, we're survivors from shipwrecks, storms, all sorts of things. People have just trickled here one by one for over a year now. I was one of the original five or sssix," Alcine explained, biting back her hiss. She looked down at herself, her body stiffening as she realized what she'd really come here to say, and that it needed to be said sooner as opposed to later.
"But there's something you two need to know," Alcine explained, biting her lip, "And as much as I don't want it for anyone...well...I guess I'm qualified enough to prove my point." Again, she looked down, somewhat angrily, into the murky waters where her tail lurked.
"This island--this Lagoon--it...does stuff to people. Changes them. And after a year..." She lifted one of her scaled hands out of the water and spread her thin, wiry fingers, displaying the webbing beneath it, an ominous tone in her voice. "...None of us are the same anymore."
Had that been gentle enough? She honestly didn't know: her breaking of the news had been an entirely different affair.
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