My head hurt.
Everything was blurry for the first little while. I laid on my back, basking in the warm sun, trying to process any kind of information at all. I tried to watch the clouds roll by. Tried to find recognizable shapes in them. The throbbing in my head denied me concentrating on even that though.
Time rolled on. I tilted my head to the side a little, just enough so that the blazing sun wasn’t directly in my eyes. The thing certainly wasn’t improving my headache. Tall shoots of grass quivered in the gentle breeze. Getting past the pain, it was all actually quite serene. The sensation of absolute peace was calming, a feeling that I haven’t had the luxury of since then, and eventually I was able to push the pain out of my immediate thoughts.
I closed my eyes and listened to the wind.
I don’t know how much time had passed when I finally found the strength the at least sit up. It didn’t change anything. Not really. Instead of the pale blue of the sky, I was then surrounded by the deep blue of ocean. Miles and miles of ocean. Off in the distance behind me I saw a small patch of green and tan jutting out of the endless navy. Suddenly I realized that something was amiss. The calm was quickly replaced by terror.
My heart began to race.
Where was I?
Who was I?
These are questions I still don’t really have the answers to. At this point, I don’t think they really matter. But I’m getting ahead of myself. If I’m going to tell this story, I’m going to tell the whole story. You might want to grab a snack, this is a long one.
As a million questions about what was going on raced through my mind, I frantically looked around me for anything at all that might give me a clue about anything. But there was nothing. I was sitting at the peak of a small island. It jutted maybe five meters high out of the ocean, at most. The whole thing was covered in unspoiled green grass. The only shoots that were bent at all were the ones that had been under my body. If someone had brought me here, it certainly wasn’t very recently.
Doing a thorough survey of the land didn’t take long. It was an amazingly featureless little patch of land. On the northwest side, some of the grass had grown out of control (I still don’t know how the rest of the island was so well-maintained). To the southwest was a small sandbar which was mostly underwater, and plunged into the depths before it stretched too far from the land. The east side was host to a wall of dirt, and looking out in that direction was all I had if I wanted to see more than blue leading into more blue.
The faraway island didn’t seem as far away as it did when I first noticed it. Perhaps that had something to do with my newfound feeling of necessity to escape this tiny landmass. The other island looked significantly bigger than the one I was standing on, too. It must have been at least three times the width. While it was the only ray of hope for me, I couldn’t help but despair, as despite its larger size, the other island appeared just as barren as mine. But if there was a larger piece of land that way, maybe there was an even bigger third island farther out! And more beyond that!
In any case, I had to come up with some sort of plan. I had to find something, anything that wasn’t grass or water or dirt. Despite the dire situation I was in, I started to get a little excited that I was going to be able to explore lands that appeared completely untouched by humanity. My body’s need for sustenance was becoming more noticeable too. At the very least, I would need to find something to eat. That would be my priority for now.
I waded into the water, eager to start my hunt. And suddenly I was submerged completely.
As it turns out, my island wasn’t your typical island, and wasn’t an underwater mountain, but rather a very tall spire pointing out of the earth. Aside from that one sandbar, the land basically all dropped straight off as soon as it went underwater. Everything I felt like I knew about geography was screaming out at me that this was a very unlikely way for land to form, but so it had.
And then I was attacked by an audience of squid.
“Attacked” might not be the best word to use though. It was more like I fell into the group of cephalopods as they were swimming by. I couldn’t remember if I liked calamari or not, but I figured that this was a pretty good opportunity to find something to fill my belly, so I grabbed the tentacle of one the the squid and punched it repeatedly. It tried to flounder away like a spineless coward (ha!), but it was no match for my furious fists. Much to my chagrin, the thing just popped into nothingness when its life expired. It did leave behind a trio of ink sacs, but they were decidedly not edible. Looks like squid were not the answer.
I continued swimming over to the next island, and as I’d surmised, it was completely devoid of anything that I could use. The entire west half of the island was a flat square with little beaches capping its corners and a submerged shoal connecting it and the grassier east side. The island’s overall geography did seem a little less like a third grader’s doodle of an island than mine, with outcroppings of dirt here and there. There was a single, lonely flower growing on the north shore, which I thought odd. The flower’s bright yellow petals stood out brightly against everything else. Between it being the only real landmark thus far and being completely useless to me, I decided to leave it there.
Out to the east of this island, I was very excited to see that there was indeed a third island! Maybe I would find something there! From what I could see, it was even bigger than this one, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, it was even home to a small tree.
I was able to wade between island two and three, as the two were actually connected. More flowers bloomed on the stretch of land pointing at island three. The north sides dropped off into the black depths of the ocean like the entire circumference of my island, but the land stretched out quite a ways to the south, with a fairly gradual incline. This was more like how I imagined islands were supposed to be. Perhaps the first island was just a freak geographical accident.
The third island featured nothing that I hadn’t seen on the last two, with the major exception of that tree. It was considerably bigger than I’d estimated, and I saw potential for forging some incredibly primitive tools from its wood. I didn’t have an axe or anything, so I set about punching the trunk of the tree until it came down.
My knuckles were bleeding pretty bad (in hindsight, maybe kicking the tree down would have been a better idea) once the tree was felled. I had an armful of wood now, and to my surprise, tiny saplings erupted from inside the tree’s leaves when I felled it! Since it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d seen all day, I collected them and figured that at the very least, I could plant them so that they could grow and provide me more wood.
I was hoping that yet another island would become visible from island three, but things were not looking good. Indeed, I did spy another landmass, and it looked like a big one. The hitch was that it was at least twice as far between here and there as it was from island one to island three. I wasn’t sure I’d be up to that kind of swim, especially since I was already getting pretty exhausted from the day’s activities and lack of nutrition. Maybe I’d give it a shot the next day.
At this point, the sun wasn’t hanging quite as high in the sky, and I decided that I would have to create some sort of shelter. Unfortunately, the second and third islands were pretty flat, and I wasn’t about to live in a pit. The first island’s dome shape and relatively flat eastern facing made it the perfect candidate to turn into a cave that I could call home. So, with tree bits in tow, I began my return to the first island.
Because I’m sort of a sentimental guy, I figured I would name the trio of islands that I’d been adventuring on. If nothing else, trying to come up with clever names would help keep my mind of the more desperate nature of my situation. I settled on “Home Base” as the name for the first island. What else would I call it? Island two became “Gemini,” as it was separated into two halves, and island three was “Tree Island,” despite the fact that I’d removed the tree it was named for.
I also decided that it would be funny to refer to the collective islands as the “Daisy Chain” for all the little yellow flowers blooming on the larger two islands. It wasn’t long before I questioned my sense of humour.
When I made it back to Home Base, I immediately went to planting the saplings I’d collected, considering it was probably best to have more basic materials as soon as possible. Considering that entire saplings had spawned from the tree rather than just seeds, I was hoping that maybe they’d grow into whole trees at an accelerated rate too. In this land of mystery, I felt like anything could happen, no matter how ridiculous.
I then set about tunneling to the creamy candy center of the island. I would have liked if there had been candy there, or any kind of edible substance. What I got was dirt, dirt and a bit of rock.
Hollowing out the dome took the bulk of my night. It wasn’t much of a living space; the ceiling was just high enough that my head didn’t rub against the top of it when I stood upright. I broke down the wood, and used it to fashion a crude table. From there, I used some more wooden bits to make some rather ugly pickaxe-like tools. I tried using one to dig through the rock, but it was only marginally better than using my now very bloodied fists.
There wasn’t really much else I could do. The night had set in, and the hot sun had given way to cool ocean winds.
It was the least I could do to huddle in the corner of my cave. I put up some makeshift doors, created with the rest of my wood, in hopes of keeping the westerly wind out of my den.
I have no idea why, but fate really had it out for me. I mean, amnesia and being lost in the middle of nowhere I could deal with, but why couldn’t I be lost in a forest or on a mountain instead? You know, somewhere where I could easily forage for food and gather survival supplies. Out here on the ocean, with no trace of civilization, what hope did I have? The only life out here besides me were the flowers on Gemini and Tree Island. Squid too, I suppose, but a fat lot of good those would do me.
I laid down in the dirt and closed my eyes. If I didn’t find something edible tomorrow, that would be the end of me.