Dream Again

Day 106-200

And so, we explore the island. Life giving green beauty in the middle of an ocean that so nearly claimed our lives. And yet our cruel jailor. Becuase of course if we'd drowned we'd be free again in heaven or in hell. We're captives instead.
I don't awake and wish to dream again. But the island is beautiful. A half moon shape, we were camped in the crescent bay, the other beaches we'd scouted to be mostly rock. Now we take our time. We have little else to do and can spend each morning exploring then the afternoon foraging and starting a fire. We take our time, after all there's no schedule for us except mere survival wishing for a better dawn.
At the base of the cliffs there are sea caves, a good number of them. Luke is too afraid of the water to join us but we may need to shelter from storms in them, so we may have to force him to swim it. For now though they're just a good hiding spot.
We venture into the forest only in the day, to visit Luke's father's grave, and Miranda's. That's all. The rest we try to leave mostly undistubred, following trails from the stream, and finding fruit where we can. Some plants are edible, between Luke and I we have a reasonable knowledge of plants and River insists we try to eat them, some leaves and things in our diet have to be better than not, and I know full well we need any citrus we can find to prevent scurvy.
Luke and I save our shirts the worst of the wear, going mostly barefoot on the beaches with our shoes around our necks. River goes barefoot but keeps her shirt on. She braids her hair tightly and ties it with itself to keep it from her face. Luke and I have her cut ours as best she can with the knife. Just not hanging in my face is best i'm used to slicking it back.
We all try to bathe as best we can in the ocean. River's period is a challenge we're unable to overcome, beyond cloth that we can't properly wash. She thinks my old socks are better than leaves. That's all we can manage. We're all constantly filthy, despite our best attempts, sand and dirt is everywhere. 
I'm old enough to shave but can't grow a beard, never could. When I catch my reflection in the water I still look like a boy. I don't know how that is. I never felt like one at all.
No medicine, no basic hygine, is a recipe for athletes foot and even worse ailments, we all have worse acne than we ever did, and there's a limited amount ocean water and natural remedies can do.
The backpack we do have, seems to have a spirit of its own. It brought us the playing cards, extra clothes, cords we long since ruined, and a memory of home. Sold black, kanken, it's got terrible painful straps when weighed down and it's durable as hell and I completely love it. It's a school bag someone jammed clothes into the cards are probably old. There were coins as well we use those to lure fish. So primitive. I'll thank whoever bought the thing in heaven. I rest my head on it each night.
Food is birds if we can catch them, fish that fall into our crude traps, any berries and leaves we can pick, and when we get creative sea weed. Drying it it's not as salty and nice as the snacks you find at the store but it's not half bad and actually a welcome change from the usual meats. We try to get fancy, wrapping the fish in the sea weed to cook it, things like that. It does relatively little, but the effort amuses us at least.
Sometimes, oftentimes, we hear noises in the woods. Twice I see a shape, not as clear as that first time. But it's there. I won't hazard a guess it's the same creature, or just of the same group. I maintain it's likely a type of orangutans maybe that we personally just don't know about, that's unusual large. Or something. Whatever it is it has yet to hurt us or even try, so I just figure we stay out of its way.
we have no interactions with the Soceity for many days after the fated poker game. We do run into a foraging party of theirs though, entirely by accident. It's a girl about our age, and two guys,middle aged, with make shift weapons. She sees us.
"Max tells us to look for you, you should go," she whispers, blonde hair hanging in her face.
"Okay," I do not need to be told that twice, "It is a very small island but we'll do our best let's go—,"
"What cause we stole the drugs? One of ours was dying and we did trade," River whispers.
"Don't take it personal—he's also looking for that thing—that came out of the trees. He wants to shoot it. He—," she looks around nervously.
One of the men calls to her.
"White whale eh?" I ask, dryly.
"No, it's like really bad—I should go. Just be glad you left," she says, then she hurries back to her party.
We take that at face value and retreat to the other side of the island. I can't say I'm surprised the idiot wants to hunt whatever naturally lives on the island. Whatever. I'm guessing the island is stronger than he is.
We get on, mostly. We have to. If we get cross then we bicker like siblings. I'm oldest doesn't mean I'm in charge but a little bit I'll try guide the others.. River still makes an effort to keep track of days. Luke asks us questions incessantly and doesn't sleep when he ought and is a kid. I'm probably not the best person at minding a kid but we're here and I do my best.  River does too, she's better at it than me.
And we try to be happy. It's a force of human nature I suppose. The attempt at least. We force ourselves to talk of home. We sing songs that we remember the words to, and some we don't. I teach them to play every card game I know. That passes away the hours in front of the campfire. A hundred thousand stars overhead. And just the three of us alone in the dark.
One such night we've had the forethought to camp up on the cliffs, overlooking the water. We have enough fish from our traps and are having actually a very filling supper, playing go-fish, Luke's preferred game.
I'm shuffling in one hand, idly, like I'll do when I'm not thinking of it, and the other two are dishing out our fish onto some larger flat rocks we use as plates. They're not good plates no but it's easier to eat off of.
"Where did you learn to do that?" Max asks.
"Spent a lot of time alone as a child," I say, automatically. It's not forbidden to talk about the past. They think I do. I know I don't. There are certain things I make a point of not saying.  And talking about the world we once knew makes us feel more sane. Makes us all believe that this could only be a dream. And one day we'll wake up and we'll be home again. So we talk about it.
"We noticed," River pushes my foot with hers.
"Show me," Luke says.
"it's really super hard to do it slow, my lonely arse probably watched a video I really don't remember," I say, doing it as slow as I can. Then I deal one card into my other hand, and promptly flip it behind my fingers to make it disappear.
Luke grins, immediately entertained, "Okay, how'd you do that?"
"Here," I turn around my hand, "Slight of hand, like I said lot of time alone as child, and no friends."
"I feel like you were that kid in school who sat in a corner reading a book," River says.
"I told you I was always cutting out," I say, dismissively.
"I'm going to learn to do that," Luke says.
"Yeah eat first, I wasn't supposed to be playing with those," I say, putting them on River's leg, "Get them away from me."
"In England do they have that game, heads up seven up?" She asks.
"No idea what you're talking about see my previous disclaimers about no friends and time not spent in school," I say.
"You'd know this, we'd play it in kindergarten, we'd all lay our heads down then—I forget how it goes," she shakes her head.
"I remember that one, I think, the teacher taps one of your heads?" Luke says.
"no—no I've got it, seven kids stand in front of the class, then they go around and tap people's heads, you put your thumb up, then the seven go sit down you have to guess who touched you," River says.
"Absolutely no idea but I don't get invited to things," I say.
"Do you know how to play hide and seek?" Luke asks.
"We call it sardines," I say, "it's reverse of it, oen person hides, everyone else looks, then as they find the first person they have to pack into his hiding place. Winner is—winner I suppose I don't recall watching the other children win anything as I didn't participate."
"That doesn't sound as hard though it's one hiding place," River says.
"It's not that's the point, like I think the point is no one gets lost that way or no one runs off to a super hard hiding spot, I think grown ups made that bit up," I say.
"Why didn't you participate?" Luke asks.
"If you're not trapped on an island with me with no one to compare, I'm not that fun," I say, swatting at his head.
"Well it sounds cute, anyway, would be if you're little," River says.
"That's the point yeah," I nod, "What else did you Americans play on the playground?"
"We—do you hear that?" Luke asks, sitting up.
"What—oh Society members," I say, as I walk to the edge of the cliff. Sure enough there appears to be a little hunting party down below. I recognize Max's now limp gold curls, and bow upon his back, he still has arrows it seems. "They strayed far."
"They definitely know we're up here by the smoke," River says, coming to look with me.
"Definitely, not going to do anything though," I point out, "They're not going to cross through the forest at night. And in the morning we can just go on our way they won't know where we headed."
"Let's ruin their hunting though, idiots,' Luke says.
"Just leave them Be," I say, stopping him from throwing a rock.
"No! They're afterbthe monster," he argues. He has an affinity for the creature, taking it to have buried his father kindly. I don't know if it's true. But as he wasn't afraid we weren't discouraging it. And he's likely right they are after the monster.
"We can piss them off," River shrugs.
"I can't be the voice of reason yeah sure, let's piss them off—no rocks. That's bad," I take them out of Lukes' hands, "May I suggest signing? The best thing I can think of to piss off straight white men is Barbie world but you can never ask how I know all the words to that."
"I can do like, most of Taylor Swift's catalogue unprompted but you two probably don't know that—?" River asks.
"I had Era's tour tickets," I say, folding my arms.
"Shut up I hate you," River says.
"I might hate you too—where?" Luke asks, excited.
"London," I say, primly.
"Those were like the hardest to get what the hell that's less fair than this plane crash," River says.
"I didn't go, if it makes you feel better,' I say.
"It doesn't at all!"
"No not at all!"
"Why didn't you go?" River asks, exasperated.
"It was for me and my sister, she died like six months before the actual date I'd gotten it in advance. So I just went and stood outside and handed them to a couple of random girls tailgating together, and then left. It wasn't my thing really and it was clearly theirs," I shrug.
"Of coruse it got sad," River breaths.
"Not for them! They got to go in because a random creep gave them tickets," they were in the pit, very close to the front or stage or whatever. Of course. "My sister didn't actually want to go either not really It was part of that stupid shit they tell you to do when someone's dying. Look forward to something. I know like two songs so I figured it would be fun for us to go get drunk at it's a concert."
"Those aren't really drinking type concerts but that's still super sad," River says.
"Not meant to be," I say, holding up my hands.
"Do you know any songs then?" Luke asks.
"Oh I can sing the fuck out of Long Live, and Love Story, that's like it though," I say.
"Love Live it is, that's a good one anyway," River says.
And that is how I think we cause Max to have a minor stroke, because he hears three filthy, bratty, children, singing a cappella a country song at the top of our lungs, and laughing hysterically as we sing that badly, together, holding each other's arms. That's a very embarrassing way to have a monster hunting party interrupted, I admit. Like he's aiming his bow at us trying to figure out if we're worth the waste of an arrow that's how mad he is. It's really mad.
We get through two coruses before we're laughing too hard to go on, and we stumble back to camp, hugging each other and laughing. It's a good night.
Such a good night I sleep nearly soundly, head on the backpack, Luke with his head on my feet. I'm not woken till the rosy fingers of dawn reach across the sky.
But when I wake there's a bloody t-shirt, draped across my legs.
I leap up, horrified. But Luke and River are fine my cry wakes them.
"Society?" River guess.
"Not likely," I say, holding up the shirt. There are tears in it. In the shape of claw marks.
We pack up quickly and venture down to the beach. Other camp is clearly gone, the fire cold. It's not that that's of interest.
At the edge of the beach there's a wooden stake. And tied to it, crudely, is a man's body. Dead not a couple of hours it's still warm. He's shirtless, but his chest is barely scrapped from the claws. No the cause of death is much more obvious.
"What did that? A claw?" Luke asks.
"No," I say, examining the man's neck, "An arrow." Hit him in the middle of the neck.
"He was bait," River realizes.
"Yep, monster bait," I sigh, standing up, "and friendly fire got him."
"Or ended him first," River says.
"Still bait," a man's life, nothing more than bait.