Isle of You: A Visitor's Guide

Chapter 1: Rise

Sun-scorched and well-cured, I woke on an unfamiliar shore under unfamiliar skies. My senses flooded my brain with uncertainty. I wouldn't have bet a dollar on which grainy beach I had washed onto, let alone who I was supposed to be. The salty ocean waters had smoothed my mind like a pebble until only a well-worn sense of self remained.

I opened my mouth and spewed a sinister conglomeration of seawater and sandy bits. The mixture scraped my throat as it rushed to freedom. Tiny crystals stuck to my tongue as I continued to vomit dry air. My nose was jammed, packed with beach particulate. The muddy brick walls in my nostrils disintegrated when I unleashed a quick sneeze.

Next on my agenda was finding my limbs. I couldn't feel a thing where I thought they might be attached to my body. My propioception was totaled, but I willed myself to motion, like a deaf conductor leading an orchestra of blind musicians. My fingers tingled somewhere off to my sides. They lay trapped under moist blankets of beach.

I flexed and flexed, with all my might, until strength returned to my hands. I kept willing myself to life, piece by piece. I reanimated my arms, my legs, my feet, and my torso. All my parts worked in tandem, combining their powers, to dig my body out of the grimy tomb where it lay buried. Finally, my corpse fully undead, I flipped myself onto my back and opened my sand-locked eyesThe sky was aflame in a riot of colors. Golden ambers clashed with murky blues in a battle of attrition. My vision was the clear winner. The sun idled on the edge of the horizon, dangling its fiery gams off the edge of the world. I was unsure whether the golden sphere was coming or going, but the cool sand beneath my back gave me hope it was the former.

Vestiges of constellations lingered in the sky, but nothing about this starscape was familiar. I found no swans, no scorpions, and no ladles of cosmic soup. Searching for such strange icons in the sky seemed like a rather strange habit. Swans and scorpions could not survive in such thin atmosphere. I wasn't sure why I kept searching. The fact that my constellations were absent upset my spiritual navigation.

There wasn't a soul in sight or sound, but I sensed I was not alone in this strange place. The land literally throbbed with life. A pulse traveled through the well-packed sands, vibrating my weary bones. It drove me to stand and move, beating a native rhythm in my foreign heart.

Gazing inland, I saw topography unlike any I had ever imagined, in my dozen minutes of consciousness. A bright blue mountain penetrated the sky, tearing a scandalous hole through a veil of serpentine clouds. The base of the peak transformed into flamboyantly purple crags. A lush forest crawled up to the foot of the cliffs, tickling their toes with foliage. Hundreds of varieties of trees, ferns, and bushes grew together in harmony. Their leaves straddled the color spectrum, creating a thick mosaic of aqua, emerald, ruby, and more colors my eyes were not prepared to process.

Amidst this verdant festival of life, a crooning dirge tickled the back of my neck. Something felt wrong. The beauty was too pristine, too perfect. It was almost unreal. I couldn't figure it out. Not knowing the source of this unease started to gnaw at me; I worried something else might want to gnaw at me.

A thick, sepia mist adorned the mountain and permeated the forest with probing tendrils. The land was playing a tease, wearing the mist as a shifting slip, hinting at what lay beneath but not giving it all away. It wanted to seduce me, urged me to enter more deeply. The rising warmth behind me told me that the mist would soon burn away, but I did not trust myself to return from a journey into the forest at this moment. There was little chance she would let me leave.

I choked down my land-lust and listened to the rhythm of the sand instead. The beat drew my focus out of the forest and carried me along the beach. I moved down the shore, every single step a rediscovery of my body. I swore that some devil had snapped off my original limbs and attached a new pair from a rag doll. My feet felt the vibrations between every grain of sand as they ground against each other between my toes. The pulsing waves made their way up into my belly and I realized the depths of my hunger.