Play With Me ✔️|| 2 || Off the Ice Series

10 | Arden

The shack is barely holding together. It creaks and groans with every gust of wind, but somehow, it stands. The wood is brittle and darkened with age, the roof patched with palm leaves and tarp scraps that might have been white once but are now a dull, lifeless grey.

Still, it's shelter. A real roof over our heads, a break from the constant beating sun.

I kneel on the dusty floor, brushing away layers of dirt and leaves. My hand aches but I ignore the dull throb, and the piece of fabric wrapped around it, not letting my mind wander.

Jason left a while ago to collect sticks and dry wood for a fire. I offered to go with him, but he shook his head and told me to stay here, to "make it liveable." I think he just didn't want me to trip over another branch or fall down a hole and injure myself again.

My fingers scrape against something hard buried beneath the dirt. At first, I think it's another rock, but when I pull it out, I realize it's a coin.

It glints faintly in the dim light filtering through the gaps in the walls. I wipe it off with the edge of my shirt, but the engravings are too worn to make out. Whatever country or history it belonged to is long gone, smoothed away by time and touch.

I rub my thumb over its surface, feeling the smoothed over grooves and scratches, and slip it into my pocket.

I keep digging through the mess, finding more small things, trinkets. A button from a shirt. A bottle cap flattened and bent at the edges. Then, buried deeper, I find a photograph.

It's black-and-white, the edges curling and discoloured. Most of the image is lost to water damage and dirt, but I can just make out the faint outline of someone's head, turned slightly away from the camera.

I sit back on my heels, staring at it.

Who were they?

It hits me then, the weight of this place. Someone was here before us, someone who left behind all these tiny pieces of themselves. A coin. A photograph. A life. And yet there's no sign of them now. Did they make it off this island? Or did they...

No. I shake the thought from my mind and slip the photograph into my pocket alongside the coin and continue searching.

I smile lights my face when I find the blade, its small and rusted but sharp enough.

Jason's voice cuts through the quiet. "Arden?"

I look up just as he steps through the opening that serves as the shack's door, his arms full of sticks and dry branches. Sweat glistens on his brow, and his shoulders and his chest, droplets racing down . . . I look back up to his eyes.

"Found enough to last us the night," he says, dropping the wood in a pile near the fire pit.

"Good," I say, brushing my hands against my pants and standing and hold the blade out towards him. "Found this, figure we could make use of it."

He takes the knife, twisting it in his palm. "Could make a spear, for fishing, protection." He looks lost in thought as he thinks of the possibilities.

I look at the pile of sticks he collected. "The fire pit looks safe enough. There's even a hatch in the roof to let the smoke out."

He nods, then looks around the room. "You've been busy."

"I cleaned up as much as I could. Found some... things." I hesitate, unsure if I want to show him the photograph or the coin.

"Things?"

"Yeah, just stuff the person who built this left behind. It's... sad, I guess."

Jason crouches by the fire pit, arranging the wood into a pyramid. "Sad, but useful. Whoever built this, they knew what they were doing. We might actually have a shot at surviving if we keep finding things like this."