Write Off

By noon, the rain had dwindled. Everything was quiet again. Without crickets or birds, with no wildlife, aside from the jellyfish creature, the island was almost too muted after a storm. Walking out onto the beach felt like entering a tableau, like moving through a still photograph. Barely the rustling of leaves. Surreal.

I was damp. I was cold. My suit felt musty again. I walked the beach some, but had little energy after such a sleepless night. I wandered back in the direction I’d gone on my first day here. The ocean was perfectly flat, a pane of turquoise glass. It seemed I was the only thing moving on the entire island.

As I continued, unhurried, I picked through debris that the storm had washed up onto the beach and then left behind: driftwood, seaweed, natural detritus. I picked up whatever I could, especially anything I hadn’t already gathered. Now that I had my UI, maybe I could work out a way to identify this stuff, figure out its uses. A coconut sure would have been nice right about now. Where were the coconuts?

I rounded the corner and saw the strange white bones I’d spotted on Day 1, still sticking out of the water.

“I’d forgotten about you.”

In the stillness, I could make out that they extended down deep into the water. Were they natural, actual bones? Or were they something else? There was another shape in the water, stuck amongst the bones, submerged maybe a meter below the surface. Less sharp, more spherical, than the tangle of massive skeletal remains. I needed to get closer to make sense of it.

I continued walking forward, staring out into the water, and stubbed my bare toes on a large piece of driftwood that had snuck up on me.

“Owwwww,” I seethed.

The breeze re-appeared, rustling the trees, laughing at me as I balanced on one foot, holding the other in my hand.

“Gah!” I screamed at the log.

Then I noticed something carved on its underside. I stopped shouting, forgot the pain, and knelt down for a better look. The driftwood was a big and it took all my effort to lift and roll it a quarter turn.

S E N

Just those three letters. They were carved into the wood with a crude tool–something I might have made. What did “SEN” mean?

“Is this you?!” I turned to the sky.

Couldn’t be. The sky had its dust-letters to communicate with. Why would it switch to carving cryptic messages in driftwood?

S E N

I dragged the driftwood up onto the beach, out of the rising tide and had another look. For ten more minutes, I rolled the driftwood bit by bit, inspecting every inch of it. There was nothing else. Just S E N. I ran my fingers across the crude contours of the carving. The edges were no longer sharp. This had been carved a while ago. I scanned the tree line. Was there another human on the island?

 

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I spent the rest of the afternoon in no hurry, gathering more things that had washed up in the storm. I explored a little further down the beach, but turned back when things turned too craggy to traverse. I updated my map with what little new information I had and I doodled the bones out in the water as a new landmark.

I couldn’t shake the chill in my bones or the sleep from my eyes. So, I gave myself a break from making any progress and headed back to camp early. The entire walk home I checked over my shoulder, looking for SEN, or whoever carved SEN. I wasn’t terribly anxious. Too tired for that. I was curious. And maybe a little lonely. Truthfully, in the absence of fire, I wanted body heat more than anything. Platonic body heat would be just fine. Any heat at all really…

Back at camp, the cold, the sleeplessness and the difficulty of survival hit me harder still. I forced myself to eat the same thing I’d been eating for days. I drank from the last of my trustworthy water supply. I emptied my pack on the shelter floor, careful not to spill any into the river that ran through it.

A small, bent piece of metal had washed up on the beach. I’d found a torn bolt of canvas material that felt sturdy & thick, the type of thing you’d make a sail out of– maybe three foot by three foot. Some seaweed. Another round, fleshy thing that looked like a lightly coloured rock from the outside, but felt soft to the touch. The inside of it seemed to glow subtly through its soft exterior. Odd.

I tried for another hour to make fire, to no avail.

I was low. I could feel it in my legs. My legs always ached a little when the sadness moved in. My body was exhausted. I’d hit a wall mentally. I could feel it happening, but knew I couldn’t avoid it. I flopped back into the hammock and just lay there, breathing, steeling myself against the urge to mope the rest of the day away.