Upon such a dark mourning as this, Eos graced us. The wreckage of the bird marred the line of the horizon, consuming our vision in a twisted heap of sadness, a daunting reminder of the trials we were soon to be submitted to. I turned away. Ahead of me trees loomed, sticks of jet and feathers painted with shadows. Swaying, sweeping, singing, moving... wait. The shadow stretched, turned. A trunk stood, separate. Strange. The fronds made a halo around it, flinching from his touch. the woods receded. The trunk slid to the side, and seemed to be bent by some invisible force. My eyes closed, expecting a crunch and a thump. No such thing reached my ears. My eyelashes fluttered, opened. Widened. The trunk was upright, was falling and rising, was undulating and twisting and turning and exploding into motion. The trunk was a smear of paint, of water, a silken flow of movement... The ribbon spun. It approached. The sun rose, and Eos enlightened me. Rays of light flew through the thickening air, hitting target. It was a human. It was a boy, a man... A predator. The boy- man!- did not merely walk, oh no! No, he stalked like a panther, his body mimicking a great black jaguar. He slithered over the sand, a snake, a blotch of shadowy oil falling towards me over the liquefied golden sand.
And so the man appeared. And so the man approached.
The man made his promise.
Jane entered my range of vision, having taken a step forwards. At some point during my trance, the others had noticed the figure. He was only yards away from me now. He took another roiling step forwards. He stopped.
His face was covered with a mask of dark obsidian and scraped ivory, tattooed with thin swirls of gold and slashes of mysterious silver. Designs and hieroglyphics decorated its front, while feathers peeked out the sides to merge with slick black hair, elegantly styled backwards. A sharp jawline was left unhidden for my eyes to consume. His neck was a smooth white, and a thick leather choker was strung snug around it. Tall and thin, his muscled figure was draped with a white dress shirt and dark skinny jeans that were dripping chains from the belt loops. A deep blue tie hung loosely around his neck as if it had bothered him in the heat. And his hands were like a pianist's, long and thin... and extending forwards.
He was pointing at me.
His voice startled me further a moment later: "Your hair is a mess, mon chaton. Have you no comb to brush it?"
Moments passed in silence as I registered his entrancing rumble, but also swallowing the generous insult. Did he really just say what I think he said...?
"U-Um" I reached up to brush my hair out of my eyes. "I don't believe you have any right to ask me that. The answer to your question is fairly obvious; The wreckage of my flight lay just yonder. My luggage, my comb included, lay somewhere between that and England."
YOU ARE READING
Shipwrecked
General FictionA girl crashes on an island. Her plane is a wreck. Her friends are distant. Her fears are growing. And the man is growing bolder. "He took another roiling step forwards. He stopped. His face was covered with a mask of dark obsidian and scraped ivory...
