Read Part One...

Wreckage.

He winced as the splintery wood parted his skin like a knife in butter. It wasn’t too deep, or at least it didn’t feel too deep. It was however, bloody. Very bloody. His world was swimming, stars dotted his vision like an evil kaleidoscope. Pieces of waterlogged wood lay scattered up the coastline as far as he could see. His eyes were heavy and his arms were rubber. A soft thump sent drifts of diamond white sand from under him as he collapsed on his back. His eyes narrowed against the sun, a white fireball dangling in the sky like an ornament. And not a cloud in that sky. Perfect blue.

If it wasn’t for the seismic pressure inside his head, he might have enjoyed it.

Gulls squawked around him, not coming too close yet. The ocean’s rush and recession started to hypnotize him. It reminded him of lying his head against a lover’s chest. That steady heartbeat. That quiet but firm pulse that held everything together.

Remembering. Remembering is a dangerous drug. And what Fin remembered most of all, was that he couldn’t remember very much at all. That was what made the remembering so very memorable.

How he washed up on this beach or the shattered ruin of what must have been his raft was as empty as the sea before him. When he reached out to the how of it all, the information wooshed away. As soon as he stepped back from it, the knowledge would tease him and flow back in. Gentle crashes letting him know whatever had brought him here was right there. But whenever he reached for it, the waters would leak through the palms of his hands.

He drifted in and out of consciousness for what felt like a long time. The sun never changed its place in the sky, though. In his delirium he thought it was waiting for him. Eventually his mind seemed to reclaim a sort of functional awareness. He forced himself to sit up, his bloody hands digging into hot sand. The salty air helped clear his head, a little bit, at least. The beach stretched on for as far as he could see, in either direction. After a painstaking effort to crane his neck around, he discovered the forest behind him. A deep fear and admiration for it was sewn into his mind all at once. It wasn’t until later he’d even realize the sort of divine reverence he had for it, it was seamless work.

Something about the overhang of trees and the darkened space beneath their canopy offered both shelter and danger at the same time. The forest said that one could never know its every path or every tree. It invited him in and cautioned him all at once. He wasn’t sure how, but since that first look he knew: No two trips into that ever-changing jungle would be the same.

A sort of restlessness turned his head away and back towards the sea. Carefully, he managed to find his feet. His legs bandied out and he fell back down, sending his head back into agony. He rubbed his temples until the pain in his head stopped making his stomach roil. He felt a sudden and ridiculous constriction that pummeled its way to the forefront of his attention. Quick as a snake, his hands shot down and stripped the waterlogged boots off his feet, with his wet-socks following suite. As he stood up this time, his toes burrowed into the warm sand. He began to limp along the beach, examining the debris for some clue as to how he ended up here.

So he searched. Slowly and painfully as every bone in his body put up protest to bending down and clearing clumps of broken sticks and piled boards. He labored at the task until he couldn’t keep his legs from turning back to jelly. He flopped back down on the sand, then he noticed a little glint. He got back to his feet, one more time. At first he thought the shimmer was nothing more than a reflective sea-shell on the beach. As he got closer, he realized it was glass. He bent down and scooped out piles of sand from under the bottle. Inside it was a little sundried note, pressed up against the side of the glass. He placed the bottle down and found a rock to break it open without damaging the paper further. He unrolled the message like he’d found buried gold. Half of the ink had been washed out of the paper though, and he couldn’t make out the message. Despair started to take root in him. He knew, somehow, that this message was for him. The last line was all that he could make out.

Fin.

The little word burned into his brain like a fire sears a brand into cow. Later that night, when he woke up again, he would need to give the others his name. And since he couldn’t recall what his name really was, he became Fin. He became the last line of a waterlogged note that had misplaced all of its secrets.

The clarity of the memory ended here. Time began to lapse back into self on that beach as exhaustion won its war of attrition within him. The sun was still high when he closed his eyes, he felt like it had been in that spot for days. But the moon had taken its place the next time they opened, and the immense amount of pain he was really in prevented him from any more exploration.

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Reality seeped back into focus and the cold water was still freezing his feet. His patience was thinning: It was either catch dinner soon or go home hungry. Fin tuned his reflexes to auto-watch while he retreated back the way he came.

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Weeks after leaving the company of the others he found himself only slightly better off than the first time he’d woken up. The island was still a great mystery to him. Every day he would wander a little further into the forest, learning new secrets and discovering innumerable mysteries. And so he wandered. Certainty lost.

That was the first time he had discovered the trees. These trees were never in the same place twice, or what Fin believed was the same place. Dark hollows were carved deep into the bark of these hardwood giants. He wasn’t sure what marked the old members of the forest from the young, but these seemed old. Their bark wasn’t brittle, and their leaves seemed full and healthy enough. It was the faces. It seemed like these ancient looking carvings were as old as time himself.

Bright reds and venom tipped greens were painted into the bark. His heart always beat a little faster when they were near. He could almost swear they whispered things. More secrets and even more riddles. All of the whisperings brought him terror; some of them brought sobering truths. He never heard the old trees’ utterings. He felt them.

They showed up in bunches. Little grottos that Fin would stumble through, and always at the worst of times. The days when he felt most lost, or when the strongest anger that he couldn’t recall something so fundamental as his name was present. The oaky-bastards were always around to provide sardonic insight then. He made it a point to walk faster through those parts of the forest. He figured if just passing through was enough to impart the level of discomfort he felt, it was in his best interest to keep it moving.

The weeks, or months, or years ahead were blurry. Fin lost track of time on the island. Days and nights had become inscrutable blobs that fed into each other. As the blobs multiplied his senses had dulled from dehydration and hunger pangs. He rolled the dice on berries from time to time, and usually got lucky. The others had shown him the “eats” and “don’t eats” (they had done their best to accommodate his tongue). They were right for the most part, he supposed that the occasional bout of leaky gut was preferable to death via berry but, he was open to a well-formed argument on the subject.

And the blobs went on. Crashing into each other and marring the timeline of his stay further and further from being understandable.

The others still showed up from time to time. They had helped him grow his beachy landing into a house. His berry gambling’s had become precise too, after realizing that the trial and error approach was liable to conclude his stay on the island, and life, prematurely. His wounds eventually healed, and were replaced with fresh ones. Those healed too, sooner or later. He learned to hunt. He learned to survive. And so he lived.

Then he met someone. Not one of the others, either. A genuine, bona fide, someone. Most importantly, this someone was like him. Her name was Leaf. Fin thought it was a good name.

She – Fish – helped – Fish – him – Fish – the – Fish –

The memory was yanked away like the fish from the water. It was a big one too. Perfect.

Once he was sure the fish was secured on the end of his spear, he waded towards the creek’s bank. His stomach grumbled eagerly while his feet negotiated their exit on the riverbed stones. Just the thought of roasting his catch (and warming his feet) by his fire was elating. It hadn’t even rained, yet. A little closer to the beach and his chilled nerves would be screaming while they thawed. A necessary evil, in Fin’s book anyway.

Starlight twinkled down through the forest’s canopy. There was something entrancing about its beauty tonight. Still, he was careful where he stepped. Usually calloused skin after an hour in water could lead to a nasty bite from an ornery twig or a stubborn rock. It was for the best that his food be the only thing that got impaled tonight. The tempo of the ocean’s rush and recession reached him first. The salty air mixing into the forest’s crisp air came second. Then the trees parted, and the moonlit ocean opened its vast and forlorn void in front of him.

The fire started easy tonight. Funny: whenever one thing went right, the rest of the evening seemed to follow suit. He chose not to acknowledge the counterpart to this. God forbid something went wrong and all of his cowardly problems would dance for Fin like they would never dance again. He concluded the forest was moody.

Few things were better than cozying up to his campfire when the moon was out, and the tree frogs were singing. It filled him with a light. A small, but bright beacon that fought that emptiness the sea suggested on these clear nights. It gave him a lamp in the confusion that was the forest. It gave Fin something that felt real. Underneath the ink coloured sky he drank in the beach. Ah, his broken house. The thought popped up like a weed in what was otherwise a perfect night. Fix Me. Tomorrow.

The nagging was replaced by the taste of river fish. Its warm juices dribbled down his stubbly chin, dotted with blonde peach fuzz. The rainbow scaled catch was sweet, and drank up the fire-smoke flavor. He ate greedily. The others had taught him to clean and season his catches. He’d gotten creative after having the same dinner options night after night and began to take their advice. Salted meat with a paste he’d created from some of the fruits he’d picked that reminded him of lemon and basil. Around the side of his house was a little vegetable garden that he’d tended as well. None tonight though, his crop was still on the small side. But his favorite part was the smell. Fin loved the smell. The wood burnt sweet, smothering the air in his camp and sticking to his clothes. He’d wallow in it for days. A breeze wandered through his camp. Cool, but not cold. Just enough for the fire to wash over him like a hot bath after a long day. Sleep came without him ever realizing.

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Dreams came quickly, probably something in the seasoning. The dreams were vivid. The dreams were Leaf.

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