Chapter 6

The morning had dawned in much the same way I imagined it had done on the Island for centuries. The crisp morning breeze drifted inland from the endless expanse of the Pacific, and the tropical birds in the trees sang their greetings to the rising sun. The soft winds were hardly cold; they were just that perfect degree cooler than the ambient air that wafted lazily around my skin as we climbed the path next to the waterfall and up into the clifftop. The gentle mists of the cascading falls were infuriatingly pleasant, and our group slowed to a near stop to enjoy them for as long as possible.

Everyone in the group had been outfitted with a sling made out of tied-together shirts, and each sling held a few bottles of water and some food. Liz had been clear that she hadn’t seen many fruit trees on her last trip inland.

It was an odd revelation. Since arriving on the Island, I had never been further away from our landing area than the point where I had been woken this morning, just on the other side of the lake. But looking back over the area that had been my home for the past four days, I realized just how small it was. From this elevated position, it looked like the distance from the orange life raft on the beach was little more than two football field’s length away from the waterfall; it only took as long as it did to walk from one to the other because most of the trek was spent walking around trees. As the bird flew, the two points were surprisingly close to each other. From this height, I realized that I had not even explored the entire beach.

“Looks like Steve is back,” Liz said as she stood beside me, nodding to the dark shape sliding effortlessly through the water just beyond the shallows.

“Yeah, that greedy asshole has been fed every time he has turned up here,” Ray said, looking back over his shoulder as he climbed up the last of the path. The rest of our group was strung out along the path behind him. I could already hear the giggles of my girls as Hayley and Robyn recounted the previous evening’s festivities. “He is gonna keep coming back if he keeps finding food, and he is gonna get fat.” He finished.

“Blackbird Betty,” Liz chuckled to herself. Ray and I just looked at her questioningly. “Sorry, something from my college years.”

“Well, we have time,” I said. “Tell us about it.”

Liz giggled again, subtly inching a little closer to me. “Okay, there was this goth chick when I was in college. Her name was Betty; she was a lovely girl. Every morning she would walk from her dorm to class, and on the way, she would stop at this bench and feed the birds. Crows and Blackbirds, mostly.”

“You shouldn’t do that,” Zoe or Caroline said slightly breathlessly as they joined us from their ascent up the path. “Those birds are crazy smart. They can remember human faces.”

Liz laughed again. “Funny you should say that because that’s exactly what happened. After a few weeks, the birds would be there waiting for her, and the flock got bigger over time. Eventually, they sort of back-followed her to find out where she lived. By the end of the first semester, she would wake up every morning to find a flock of Blackbirds waiting outside her dorm for her, and they would follow her to school. It was like something out of The Omen. A goth chick walking through the park with a sky full of crows following after her. It freaked a lot of people out, which she thought was hilarious.

I chuckled, but Ray shook his head. “Yeah, I’d rather not turn a fifteen-foot Tiger Shark into a conditioned pet. All things considered, I’d rather have a dog.”

“Ewww,” Caroline or Zoe said, pressing into the other side of Ray. “I’d rather have a cat. I don’t like dogs.”

Ray just looked at her. “Nope, sorry, that’s a deal breaker,” he teased. “It was a good run, high fives all around, but I’m definitely a dog person. I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like dogs.”

I nodded in agreement, laughing along with Liz.

The four girls in my group, along with a smirking Amy, topped the path and joined us, only Tom and Louisa still making the climb behind them. “What has you all looking so happy?” I chuckled, looking at them.

“Oh, just hearing about your escapades last night,” Amy smirked a little wider.

“What about you?” Hayley grinned, sliding in beside me and changing the subject. “What are you talking about?”

“What would you prefer as a pet: cats, dogs, or sharks?” I asked as my arm slid almost subconsciously around her.

“Sharks?” Hannah blinked, glancing out over the treetops toward the sea as she stood on the other side of Hayley.

“Is that an option?” Katie asked.

“Apparently,” I shrugged with another laugh.

“Um, yeah, I’m gonna go with a dog,” Katie said slowly as if she was trying to avoid a trick question.

“Me too,” said pretty much everybody else, apart from whichever of the Zoe/Caroline twin-like girls hadn’t suggested a cat in the first place. She opted for cats, too, unsurprisingly.

“Alright, I give up,” I said, turning to Ray’s companions. “Are you two related or something?”

“Err, no, why?” One of them answered.

“Are you sure? I’m sorry if I offend you, but I honestly can’t tell you apart. You look almost exactly the same.”

The two of them looked at each other appraisingly. “No, we don’t,” one of them said. I had officially given up trying to guess which one of them it was. “She’s got darker hair.”

“And her eyes are green. Mine are hazel,” The other said.

“And her boobs are bigger.” the first one said again.

Ray and I looked at each other. He was standing between and slightly behind them, his eyes flicking back and forth between them before raising to mine, giving a comical little wince and shaking his head.

“So ... what you are saying...” I squinted at them, unsure that any of those observations were true, or at least not dramatically different enough to be helpful, “ ... is that the only way I am going to be able to tell you apart is if you are standing right next to each other and I am comparing your chests?”

One of them rolled her eyes as the other girls giggled. “What? Do we need name tags?”

“Yes, that would be very helpful, thank you,” I grinned.

“You can tell us apart, can’t you, baby?” One of them purred, turning and pressing herself against Ray.

Ray glanced nervously at me. His eyes flashed to mine for half a heartbeat before going back to her. The look in them was unmistakable. He had no idea which one was which. “You are both gorgeous to me,” he grinned. I snorted loudly.

“Good answer,” one of the newly-named twins giggled before kissing him.

“I can’t believe she bought that,” Liz whispered with a giggle of her own. “Okay, c’mon. Time is a-wasting.”

Tom and Louisa were last up the cliffside pass, not through being slow or unfit or anything else like that. They were simply lost in conversation and were happy in just each other’s company. With neither of them needing a break or a rest, Liz turned the group to follow the river inland.

Looking back towards the sea, I was able to see the entirety of my existence for the last four days, but looking inland was like gazing upon a new world. The only thing I could compare it to, in my admittedly limited experience, was looking out across the Serengeti, the great plains of Africa. Long grass, the occasional copse of trees dotted around, and the winding, calm, crystal clear river snaking its way between the foothills to our left. The land was almost perfectly flat around the ancient volcano, like the harsh ocean winds and wild Pacific storms had scoured any character from the landscape. It was only the lack of roaming wildebeest and grazing gazelles that reminded me of where we really were.

What was most surprising, however, was the size of it all. Liz had been anything but inarticulate in her description, but a statement like “it is about four or five miles across” will only ever be an abstract concept until you see it for yourself. The mountains blocked out our view to the left, but straight ahead and to our right, the land seemed to yawn out forever. I could make out the hazy shadows of hills to the far right, but without consciously reminding myself that the land was swallowed up by the ocean just beyond it, it was very easy to think that it just kept going. Straight ahead was a different story. The grasslands, as Liz had termed this part of the Island, entirely engulfed the SouthWest part of it. The winds seemed to forbid the growth of anything other than the most resilient of trees, but beyond that, in the shadow of the mountain where those wind currents were deflected by the slopes, the darker green outline of thick forests covered the entire northern horizon.

If I believed in that work of fiction, otherwise known as the bible, I would have said we had washed up on the shores of the Garden of Eden.

Well, if Eden was devoid of any form of land-dwelling life.

It felt like ours were the only feet that had fallen on this land in eons. Despite having no idea whatsoever if that was actually true, I allowed my feet to follow Liz, leading us along the sandy banks of the knee-deep and gently moving river and further inland.

I maintained my belief that, from the beach, the volcanic crater looked like a single large mountain. But after walking for the better part of an hour - or at least what felt like that long without any way of being able to measure the passage of time - we had moved far enough around it for me to be able to see what Liz had meant when she called them a series of mountains rather than just one big one.

If you imagined the crater as a clockface, the beach, and the mountain looming over it, were covering the ground from about the six o’clock position, right around to about the eight. We were currently walking past the five o’clock point, and that part of the crater had already been worn down to almost ground level. The land started to rise again by the time it had circled around to four, but not before it had been carved out by the flow of the river, which wound its way into the depression between the ring of mountains. Dozens of smaller streams flowed down the hills, moisture caught and trapped by the sudden elevation of land trickled into flowing tributaries and mini waterfalls as they cascaded down the slopes and into the river. All of that water was being caught by the waterway and caressed out to sea. The entire scene was very tranquil. Even the growing heat of the day was soothed by the gentle winds that blew from behind, tenderly prompting us forward.

“Alright,” Liz said, spinning around to face the group. Conversations between individual members of our band of intrepid explorers had continued for the entire journey, but I had found myself walking in silence. I was happy just taking in my surroundings. Hayley had retreated back to join the others, apparently wanting to be a little more vocal in her appreciation of our journey than my silence was providing. Liz had stayed close but seemed to appreciate the quiet. “We have a choice. We can go up...” she turned and pointed to the mountains we had just passed. “ ... or we can keep following the river and go in. Going up will give us all a much better view and a better idea of the lay of the land. That might be good for spotting good locations for camp. But I warn you, that climb is a lot steeper than it looks.”

“Oh God, yes, it is,” Hannah groaned, remembering her own climb of it a few days earlier.

“We wouldn’t need to go as high as Hannah and I did,” She grinned teasingly at the brunette stewardess before continuing, “and it may be more useful to climb the northernmost mountain so we can get a good look at what is beyond it. But that is going to take all day, which means finding a spot to camp out here tonight before exploring the inside of the crater tomorrow. Or we do the crater today and the mountain tomorrow.”

“Do we have to do both?” Ray asked

“Yeah, I’m afraid so,” I answered this time. “Being able to spot a good place from the top of the mountain is a good start, but I would need to get down there to actually see if the ground is good for building on. If it makes you feel any better, technically, only I need to do both.”

“Oh good,” He grinned at me. “These are sea legs, not mountaineering legs. I’m voting to head to the crater.” A few of the others nodded in agreement; the rest of them looked at me.

“I suppose we could go into the crater today and then hit the north mountain from the inside,” Liz said after some thought. “But I have to be honest; I don’t like the idea of the group splitting up until we are all orientated. You would be amazed at how easy it is to get lost if you lose sight of the major landmarks, and the only one we have is the river.”

“Don’t want to be too far away from our man, eh?” Katie grinned.

Liz grinned and wiggled her eyebrows to the giggles of the others. Ray rolled his eyes teasingly but was quickly distracted by one of his girls whispering something into his ear before sucking his earlobe into her lips.

I just chuckled and looked ahead to our decision, but I didn’t fail to notice the blush on Amy’s face as she and Hannah whispered something between them.
These girls are going to kill me ... oh well, at least I will die happy.
the voice whispered into my mind suddenly. “They recognize your place in the group. All women are attracted to power. You shall see soon. Hurry, I can feel how near you are.”

Well, that’s the decision made, then.

“Alright, let’s do the crater first,” I said, starting to walk forward. Surveying the whole site after looking at the land was counter-productive, but to be honest, I was trying to follow the voice to the western edge. “We can go in, find a central point for everyone to meet, then Liz and I can take that hike up the mountain. Once we have gotten the lay of the land, we can rest up and survey the possible construction sites in the morning before we head back to the beach.” I turned back to look at them. “You coming?” I grinned, suddenly feeling confident in this new role leading the expedition.

“Not yet, I’m not,” Katie smirked back. “But I had better be cumming hard later.”

The rest of the group giggled, even Ray snorted before they started following behind me and Liz fell in step beside me. “Katie had her chance,” she whispered with a purr. “She could have fucked you the other night, but she only blew you ... Now she can get in line. When we get up that mountain, you are mine!”

I groaned quietly, adjusting the growing bulge in my shorts which, in turn, earned another sultry purr from Liz before we all got back to the task of walking.

Alright... I said to myself a few hours later as the group looked around our impromptu campsite. A clearing on the bank of the river at pretty much the center point of the crater. Which way, in the name of Satan’s sweaty ball sack, is west?Yes, yes, I know. The sun. It rises in the east and sets in the west; most children know that. But at that moment, the fucking thing was smack bang directly over our heads. It wasn’t in the east. It wasn’t in the west. It was just ... up. And was being entirely unhelpful.