I awoke to the sun’s rays shining through the holes in my hastily built doors. It was already fairly high in the sky. The light was warm and comforting, a nice change from the chilly night air that I had an unusually easy time sleeping with. Maybe it was the lack of energy that kept me out for the duration of the night. Maybe it was just the hopelessness of my situation.
I rose from my corner of the floor and kicked open one of the doors so that I could bathe my entire body in the warm light. It was a new day, but my predicament stayed the same. The Daisy Chain didn’t seem to have grown any food sources overnight, but one of my saplings did bloom into a full tree. I was a bit taken aback by the fact that it had actually worked. Just a few hours ago it was small enough to cram in my pocket, and now it had grown into a tree at least three times the size of myself. Why the other trees hadn’t grown as well was equally as puzzling.
I knocked down the tree and replanted a new sapling in its place. At the very least, I’d have a consistent supply of wood for building tools and other objects. Maybe if I ended up stuck here long enough, I thought, I could upgrade my dirt cave into a wooden shack. Ah, how luxurious that would seem in this land of nothing!
Grabbing anything I felt might be useful, I started over to Gemini, but noticed that there was a figure flailing around on the larger island. More notably, it was aflame! The creature expired and the flames were extinguished before I was able to swim over, which left me more than a little put out. At the very least, I would have liked to capture a little of that fire to heat my den. Then I started to wonder what exactly the being was. And where it had come from. Why was it on fire? How did that even happen?
Questions kept charging into my head. If the being were aquatic and had come ashore from below the waves, why didn’t it jump back in when it lit on fire? Even if it were a land creature, why wouldn’t it have jumped in to extinguish the flame? The islands of the Daisy Chain were creating far more questions than I felt like finding the answers to. Something about the complete randomness of everything around here was very unsettling.
When I made it to shore, I noticed that there was an arrow laying in the grass where the creature vanished. Nothing else remained, which was even more unsettling. The grass around the area wasn’t so much as singed. What was going on here?
I grabbed the arrow and made haste. I was starting to feel like maybe I was in some sort of dream world, or a marionette dancing in the fantasy world of someone else. My hunger pangs were more than enough to convince me that I was real and that I would have to find something to eat, lest the curtains close on the strange puppet show that now was my life.
When I reached the easternmost point of Gemini, I noticed something that I had failed to the prior day. The ocean was disturbingly calm, and more or less silent. If one tried really hard, it was possible to hear the water making tiny splashes on the rocks. But here, my ears picked up on what sounded like running water. Looking around, I saw that there was a small area of water flowing towards the land, but where on Earth was it going? I walked up closer to the rushing water, and to my surprise, it was flowing into a hole! It was barely wide enough for me to fit inside, but the depths of the cave were draped in darkness so I dared not venture into that pit. All I could see inside was a small landing covered in sand, and the stream of water which continued down into the void.
I knew better than to be interested in exploring such a place. I decided that if I could find nothing else on the distant, unnamed isle that I spied the day before, I would make a point of venturing into the mysterious hole. It wasn’t the best Plan B, but at least it was something.
Tree Island looked mostly the same as it did when I discovered it, besides the fact that the tree it was named for no longer existed on it. The peculiar thing here is that I found a few bones and a feather lying in pile towards the north shore. The remains of yet another mystery creature? What exactly was going on here? Why does it seem that any other living things (flora notwithstanding) appear only during the night and are killed at daybreak? Is this even what’s happening? I collected the remains and looked out to the faraway island.
Losing myself in my thoughts, I almost didn’t notice the violent hissing that was approaching me from behind. Luckily, my assailant had trouble containing its excitement at finding prey and continued to hiss loudly, giving me more than enough warning to spin around and face it.
What I saw was a massive spider. While it was a squat little monster, if it stood vertically, it would easily match the size of an average man. The black and brown hairs on its torso and legs stood out like millions of little spines, probably in excitation of locating a meal. The spider lunged at me, but I socked it right in the center of its collection of beady little eyes. They were surprisingly small for a beast if its size, but they were a chilling shade of blood red. I ran toward the beast, planting another fist deep into its head. The blow sent the beast flying back, over the edge of the island. It didn’t take long for the massive arachnid to climb back up (the highest edge was only about three meters above sea level, at best), but I prepared my rickety wooden pickaxe for combat.
I let the spider lunge at me again, dodging its attack at the last moment, and countered with a swing of my pick. Despite the frailty of the tool, the spider’s skull was pierced and it collapsed on the ground, letting out one final hiss before the corpse up and simply popped like the squid from the day before. These creatures didn’t exactly pop, per se; there was no sound, and no spray of beast bittles. But their physical bodies just ceased being. In the spider’s place were a few strands of what I assumed was webbing, thick enough to use as a string, and not nearly as sticky as this kind of thing is supposed to be. I grabbed the strings, and contemplated the fact that in my quest for anything useful, I’d become quite the packrat.
After sitting a while to catch my breath and clam down a little, I figured that it was time to start the swim to the northern island. My stomach was rumbling louder and louder. I wasn’t sure how much more I’d be able to push my body before I collapsed from malnutrition.
Halfway across the waters between islands, I could see that the new land was easily bigger than all of the Daisy Chain would be if they were picked up and stack on top of each other. This is where I would find some sort of salvation.
When I made it to shore, I decided to call the island Hope, because it’s the only thing that had brought me any real hope at all up to this point. I was summarily disappointed when I found that despite its size, Hope was jsut as barren as the Daisy Chain. Hope was essentially a big right angle. The southern part was close to the water and was characterized by a small beach, a handful of flowers, and plenty of tall, unkempt grass. As I moved along the island, it slowly rose farther out of the water. The eastern side featured more of the bright yellow flowers that seemed to bloom wherever they liked, and another single tree. I summarily knocked down the tree and gathered the usual spoils.
Looking out to the north, I saw a tiny speck of land off in the distance. This was considerably father than Hope had been from Home Base even, and I doubted that I’d be able to make it there without aid. The rest of the horizon was simply blue leading into more blue, with the exception of the Daisy Chain, which now looked so small and pathetic in the distance. Hope was a lie, a fruitless gamble, and I wasn’t sure that I had enough stamina to swim back to Home Base, nevermind survive another day in the middle of this wretched ocean.
I did make it back home, and I shambled into my den, falling to the ground under the weight of my considerably weakened body. Life was over. There was no hope left for me. I let my mind empty and passed out.
I opened my eyes and saw only a dim orange left in the sky. Maybe, I thought, once night fell I would be treated to a quick death at the hands of one of those mystery creatures out for a snack. But I wasn’t entirely ready to give up. I went outside and started plucking at the tall grass. If livestock can survive on grass, why couldn’t I? Oh, right: dysentery. I began furiously tearing at the grass with the last of my remaining energy, cursing whatever force put me in this forsaken place. I wanted to live, dammit! I dropped to my knees, wishing to the sky that something would come to save me in my last hours. Looking back down, I noticed that small seeds had scattered around, most likely produced by my destruction of the grass.
Logic would denote that seeds that come from grass should produce more grass. But this place is different. I took a chance, the only chance I had to save my life, and put together a hoe from a few lengths of wood. I tilled a bit of the ground on the southern edge of the island, and planted the seeds there. Deciding that calcium would make for great fertilizer, I mashed up the bones I was carrying around and spread the shards about my tiny farmland. I cannot fathom how it happened, but stalks of wheat grew right before my eyes.
I quickly gathered up the wheat and took it into my den. Through a process that I will refer to as “magic,” I transformed the wheat into delicious, edible bread. It wasn’t actually delicious, but given the fact that it was all I’d eaten in the last two days, I was incredibly satisfied. It also wasn’t actually magic that made the wheat become bread, but we all know how that happens, so I won’t bother to detail the process.
So that was that. On an eleventh-hour gamble, I somehow managed to harness the totally illogical nature of this place to create sustenance for myself and survive another day. At this point, I could easily call Home Base my new home, and just stay here for the rest of my days, but where’s the fun in that?
I laid in the corner of my cave, contented and full. It had been a rough day, but I was beginning to understand how things worked here. Maybe tomorrow I would be able to make some progress towards leaving. But for now, it was time to rest.
