Friendship And Hardship

[Chapter 10] - A Questionable Past

No one expected that. To see a bunch of unnamed headstones and small littered bones surrounding them? Wasn't on the plan for today, that's for sure.

Patches of the grass had been dead for what looked like ages now, as if they were burnt to a crisp. "What even is this place?" Parker muttered, looking around. "I've never seen it before... and I've been on this side of the island more times than I can count."
"Have you ever been to this specific area before?" Barnacles looked at her.
"It doesn't look familiar, but I've been on the path we took to get here."
"And you've never been here?"
"Never."

"It's just empty, like a death stricken wasteland," Kwazii exclaimed, walking forward, completely unprepared for anything that might come diving his way.

"Hold it!"

He froze dead in his spot. "What?"
"Wait just one second before going head first into this, Kwazii."
Parker held up her hand, crouching down on the ground.

"Traps. Simple ones, yet they work very well." She looked up at the trees. The wires reaching all the way around the sunlit land.
"Well, we could just..." He kicked the string, sending it shaking back and forth.

She looked at him like he was crazy.

"You're actually insane!" she shouted, springing off the ground and grabbing him by the arm.
"Just wait for it..." he muttered, crossing his arms and tapping his foot as if he were waiting for something.

But nothing came.

Nothing came?

Nothing came, which was a bit of a disappointment to him, but a relief to everyone else.
"The traps are probably older than the sun. Calm down." Kwazii looked down at her.
"Well how was I supposed to know that, pirate boy? Was I supposed to walk over there and inspect them or something?" Parker sarcastically asked.

"You two are idiots," Shellington stated out of the blue.
"We know."

It was weird walking around in what felt like an abandoned, forbidden place to the public. The whole area had an odd feeling to it. "None of these stones have names, or any kinds of carvings. Are you sure this is a graveyard?" Peso asked softly, looking up from one of the stones.
"I'd go into depth about how I knew that they were gravestones, but that would take too long, so I'm not doing it."

They all looking up with a nagging stare.

"Oh. Okay then, I'll continue if you want. It's not that interesting."
"Go on," Barnacles said.
"Uh, okay..."

...

"Hundreds of years ago, in an attempt to colonize this island, most of the people who tried died. These headstones are probably our best guess as to where they were all buried- or where their bodies were abandoned." Parker traced the tips of her fingers over the top of one of the stones.
"Do you know how they died? You know how all that happened, did they all die at once?" Kwazii cut in.

"That's the problem," Parker froze, letting the rest of her hand rest on top of the headstone, "there's so many records of so many possibilities as to how they all died. Thing is, they all died on the same day. That's the only thing that all the records have in common."

"Disease?"
"Did they all go insane?"
"Famine?"
"Some sort of attack?"

Those were just some of the ideas that they all had throw out there.

"It's an island, maybe they tried to escape and they drowned?" Parker noted.
"Wouldn't we have seen at least some evidence that they drowned? Even if it was just bones? Since we're under the water?" Barnacles added.
"True..."