The girls and I spent almost two weeks at our second campsite, before we finally moved on again. The intensity of the storms now, were almost mind boggling, and after some discussion, we decided that we couldn’t be certain of finding the ever so useful bamboo at a second location. Rather than take a chance on what supplies await us for the next step of our journey, we decided to travel completely pre-packed this time.
For the first couple of days, we rested to regain our strength and finished building our shelter. Then, we spent nearly a week, taking our time so as to not exhaust ourselves, playing lumberjack and assembling together the walls and ceiling for a second shelter. Bamboo floats better than our previously hacked together walls do – and they still floated well enough to ease the journey up the shoreline for us. By my reasoning, I don’t see why we shouldn’t be able to float at least twice the total load up the edge of the ocean, atop the bamboo.
Another several days were spent after that to gather supplies for the next step of the journey. Then, after the hellstorm (of thunderous hail) had passed and melted, we all began our journey further northward. Dragging the bamboo to the beach, and into the ocean, was the hardest part of the journey under the moonlight, as everything went smoothly for us after that.
Having learned from our previous mistake, we didn’t try and press forward as long into the night. Before the moon had even reached its zenith, the girls and I found a suitable spot to erect our shelter, and stopped. With the majority of pieces prefabricated, assembly didn’t take that long, and by the time daylight came around, our shelter was erected.
Built simpler than our previous shelters, our third one was about the same size, but without the watershed attached. Instead, we had made certain to slop our roof with one side longer than the other. At the base of the shorter side, we tilted a slat of bamboo and used it to catch and direct the rainwater back inside the corner of the shelter. Water ran down the roof, basically into a gutter, and then back into a hole hacked the far wall of the shelter.
By constructing building instead of two, we greatly reduced our assembly time. Lift a wall, lift a wall, lash them together tightly with vines. Lift the next wall, lash it together. Lift the front wall, lash it to the others. Frame assembly was actually that quick and simple. I doubt our construction would pass any city building permit requirements, but I’ll be happy to pay whatever fine the inspector has when they show up to object.
The roof, we had to disassemble and reassemble in place. Even though bamboo isn’t as heavy as many other woods, the weight was still too great for the three of us to lift and simply move into place all at once. Instead, we simply untied the logs which we’d lashed together to float raft-like along the coast, and then lifted them into place one by one. It was tiresome, but we managed to finish the job by the time the sun had risen.
A quick rush to gather firewood and produce a fire for inside the shelter, and we were once again set at our third campsite. We truly are learning and improving our survival techniques with each step up along the north coast of this island.
----------------------------------------
It took us four more times of repeating this pattern of moving, building, gathering, and moving again, before things finally changed for us. Halfway through our sixth move, as the moon was only a few inches high in the sky, we finally came to the edge of the world. Or, at least to *a* edge of the island. Flowing lazily into the ocean was the first source of freshwater that we’d found – and it was a river so wide the other side wasn’t visible in the night!
At first, I didn’t even realize we’d found a river. We were all traveling up along the edge of the beach, when the tide seemed to be a little stronger than previously, making us fight a little harder to keep our raft of building supplies at the ocean’s edge. Then, after a bit, we came to what I thought was a natural curve in the island’s contour. We went from traveling north, to traveling west, but the water was still to our right and beachy jungle was to our left, so I just assumed we had started our journey around the northside of the island.
Imagine my surprise, the next morning, when the sun finally arose enough to see across the river to the edge of the other bank! At first, I though it was a second island further north from us, but then I noticed how its edge mirrored the whole length of ours. When Shadow began drinking from it, that’s when my brain finally started to put the pieces together.
It’d taken almost a week’s journey – which took almost two months to travel that week’s distance – north of where we’d all washed up on the beach to finally find freshwater, and it was a wide river at that! My mind boggled at the implication, as I asked myself on question over and over – How much land does water have to travel over to become that deep and that wide?
When the mighty Mississippi, Amazon, or Nile rivers open into the ocean, they’re great and mighty channels of water, but that’s after traveling across endless miles of landmass and growing. At their base, they’re not that grand. How the hell can a single island produce so much fresh water, as to create a river?? Streams, springs, creeks, or pools maybe. But a river, as wide as the eye can see?
I can’t fathom it. And why the hell is this river going west to east? All my life, I thought all the rivers traveled in a generally north to south direction. Nothing made any sense about the whole mess!
Once again, I was forced to swallow down my doubts about this place – Was I on a Lost Island? – and simply focus on survival. Assemble a shelter. Build the next one. Gather supplies. Bounce the girls. Simply keep moving forward, no matter how odd the place I find myself. One step at a time, I kept reminding myself.
And those “one steps” slowly carried us westward for another two campsites, before we finally came across what could only be called “Niagara Falls of Lost Island”.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
We heard the falls well before we saw them, but once they came into view, they were utterly breathtaking. Hundreds – perhaps even a few thousand feet tall – it rose majestically above the towering tree line and looked as if it was attempting to kiss the heavens.
Seeing the massive cliffs stretching out endlessly north and south of us, the odd weather patterns of the landscape started to make a little more sense to me. Hot moisture from the ocean would accumulate on the eastern edge of the land – I could scarcely make myself believe it was an island any longer – and travel inwards, where it would meet up with the cooler, more elevated air from the inner plateau. It’s no wonder that storms are a natural part of the process for this part of the not-an-island.
“That’s…” Laulaia struggled to find the words to describe the view before us.
“It certainly is,” Alaina agreed, just as awestruck.
Dozens of rainbows reflected the moonlight off the mist of the towering waterfalls, as crystal-clear water lazily washed over the edge and streamed endlessly down to the sandy bottom so far below. A large pool gently caught the languid stream, hissing and bubbling near the base of the cliff, and thousands upon thousands of flowers bloomed and deeply lined the edges. The pale moon reflected and waved back and forth across the surface of the pool, almost as if it was beckoning one to join in frolicking in the water.
The whole scene was one out of pure fantasy. My mind simply couldn’t believe anymore that I was still on an island. The river. The orientation. The cliff. The waterfall. The colors of the flowers and the surrealistically of it all. There’s no way a place like this exists so close to Florida and the Bahamas, without being one of the world’s top tourist attractions. People should be flocking to this place like crazy!
Atlantis.
That’s the only thing my mind could possibly think of to describe where we were. I must’ve driven the boat I’d stolen into the Bermuda Triangle in the storm, and somehow ended up on Atlantis. Legends say it was supposed to be a whole lost continent, and that’s the only thing that could possibly explain what we were seeing. The river before us had to traverse hundreds of miles, at least, to grow as large as it was, and any landmass as deep as that and as tall as what we’ve already journey across, has to be a continent – and I’m absolutely positive this isn’t any part of the United States!
“Let’s take a break here for a bit,” I told the girls, while frantically trying to organize my thoughts. Frowning, I tried to imagine how we were going to get to the top of the cliff above us. If it was a sheer cliff, I’d say ascending it would be impossible for us, but the river had worn several deep trails and passages along the sides from when it had flooded its banks in the past.
Those overflow channels eroded winding trails back and forth into the cliffside, and I could almost make out a path which we could use to follow from the bottom to the top. “It’ll be a bit like Donkey Konging it,” I muttered to myself, but I could see it being possible with just a few ladders at a couple of key points, and maybe one section would require a free climb for a short distance.
The four of us making it to the top was definitely doable – even if I might have to tie Shadow to my back, or pull him up with a rope at one point – but there wasn’t anyway I could imagine getting our shelter up top. The storms might stall out at the edge of the cliff and lose their strength before topping out on the other side, but we couldn’t know for certain, and being caught out unprepared in the wind-whipped hail would be an almost certain death sentence.
None of us are billy goats, and ascending the cliff’s edge would take hours, at best, and be exhausting. With no promise of what might be on the other side, we’d be taking a gamble on whether we could survive, or not. Of course, I liked my odds better at surviving the other side of the cliff, better than my chances of trying to sail back to civilization on a raft. I can dig a hole and hide from hail, but that still doesn’t change the fact that I swim like a rock.
“We’re setting up camp here,” I finally told the girls, decisively. Even though we still had most of the night left, I certainly wasn’t going to attempt any climb without preparing. We need rope. A ladder. To scout the best path up in the daylight. Trying to ascend now would just be asking for Death to take us, and I’m not quite ready to die at this moment.
“On it, my lord-husband.” Snapping to attention in her usual manner, with her right-hand thumping across her left breast, Alaina hurried to do her part.
“Are we going to try and climb that?” Pointing up the cliff, Laulaia sounded dubious at the prospect. “Or are we going to cross the river and follow up the other side of the beach?” Never one to push herself when it came to physical labor, Laulaia was asking about future plans to give herself a little longer to rest.
“It’ll depend on daylight,” I told Laulaia. Sliding over beside her, I snuggled her in my arms for a few extra moment’s relaxation as well. After over a half dozen times building and assembling our campsites, we’ve gotten where we can do it quick enough. There’s plenty of night left before the sun rises, so we’re in no rush in assembling our shelter.
Wrapping my arms around Laulaia’s shoulders, I gently rubbed and caressed across the nipples of her breasts, making them almost instantly completely erect. After the last few months of my endless touching and stroking, they’ve became extremely sensitive and respond with just the lightest of stimulation. Both of the girls still find my breast fetish rather amusing, but neither seems to be actually bothered by it. They treat it like I imagine most women would treat a guy who has a tendency to suck on his partner’s toes – amusing and odd, but yet not so odd as to be unenjoyable and awkward.
“I don’t think we can get too far if we try and follow the cliff back southward,” I told Laulaia, enjoying the view of the moonlight rainbows reflecting in the mist, as I softly caressed her chest. “I’ve never had to go very deep in that direction, before running into the dense bamboo. What I thought might have been a small grove, back when we first found it, is a whole dense forest of it. I don’t think there’s much chance to find anything, or anyone, in it.
“And if we cross and go back to the shore,” I continued, “we’re not guaranteed to find anything different. I can’t honestly tell much difference in one part of the shoreline and the next. I’m afraid we might spend months – or even years – trying to circle around the ocean, and never find anything.
“Our best bet,” I reasoned, “is to climb to the top, if possible. We’ll have a vantage view of the surroundings, and we can follow the river for fresh water and fish. People tend to live and make settlements near large bodies of fresh water, simply because it makes navigating and moving goods easier, like with us using rafts to float our preassembled shelter upon.
Biting her lower lip cutely, Laulaia worried, “But can we get to the top? Falling from such heights would be fatal. Can Shadow make it up? We don’t want to leave him behind, either.”
“That’s what we’ll see when the sun comes up,” I reassured Laulaia. Reluctantly releasing my grip from her soft mounds, I slowly stretched and stood up. Holding out a hand to her, I gently helped Laulaia to her feet. “Come on,” I told her, “Alaina has everything unpacked and is waiting on us. Me and her will hold the sides in place, but we need you tie them together for us.”
“I know,” Laulaia pouted. “I was just enjoying a little time together first.” Taking my hand, she tugged herself up.
Together, we all began to assemble what would hopefully be our last sea-level shelter. If all goes to plan, our next one will be atop the ridge a few thousand feet above us, in a few days.