When her eyes found focus, Anni was falling again. She frowned down at her starting lake. It was big, possibly kilometers long. It had an irregular, boot-ish shape, with most of its banks covered in reeds, but some areas of sand or large rocks.

The reeds nearest her splashdown point were where she’d met the snake that had ended her last attempt, which was some serious bullshit. She remembered reading somewhere that river snakes weren’t even supposed to be dangerous!... Granted it had been tree-sized, but still!

There was a river outlet at the bottom middle of the boot, and a big towering structure far past the top of the boot. Everything she could see was inside a raised kind of valley between several mountains. It might have been scenic If it were less terrifying. Also, it really hadn't been her imagination: She really had... died those times...

Anni shook those thoughts away and re-re-refocused. She controlled her fall with practiced ease, aiming for the only part of the lake deep enough to survive. She went through her mental checklist: Don’t panic, deep breaths, arms and legs straight on entry, kick off from the bottom…

You can do this.

She swam away from the reeds, and eventually managed to claw her way out of the freezing lake for the first time.

She took a moment, kneeling there on the rocky shore, to cough up a good amount of pond and scum.

Fucking finally! Progress! If this works consistently, then I can-

The triumphant thought was cut short, along with the rest of her consciousness, when a big rock hit the back of her head.

----------------------------------------

When his eyes creaked open, Dan had his back against a palm tree. He frowned at his surroundings.

Here again? Stupid beach… hmm?

The thoughts drifted slowly through his sleep addled mind, eventually sinking to the back of it. It was a poor feeling, as he reached for where he normally kept his meds on his side table.

The zipper tabs on his travel backpack jangled.

Dan’s eyes had found their way back to being closed against the bright morning sun, and he had to repeat the process of cajoling them open.

He squinted at the bag as he patted around it to find the pocket that rattled like pills.

Opening the bottle, he saw only five capsules, and somewhere in the murky bog of his morning brain, the idea ‘tha’s too low’ burbled whinily to the surface.

His loss avoidance reflex answered: Could I take less so it las's longer?

More squinting.

“Dannon Byrnik, adderall, blah blah blah, one-eighty mig, one perday.” He mumbled aloud; reading just to remind himself, as he swallowed one with a sip of the water bottle from his lap.

Reading label’s annoying. Gotta ‘member it nex’time.

He closed the bottles and his eyes.

Dannon…Tha’s my name, right? ‘S gotta be.

He pulled his phone from his pocket, only to find it still dead. He dropped it with a sigh, and accidentally dozed off again.

The heady haze of morning drowsiness stole a solid minute or two as Dan sat there against his tree, just trying to convince himself he was awake, before a glint of light in his peripheral vision caught his attention.

Dan had many issues with the pugnacious little pinpoint, but the one that finally started his excogitative engines was the simple fact that his eyes were still closed…

What the shucking fit!??!

Something inside him snapped and he was suddenly wide awake. His sharp gaze crusaded through his surroundings, as the stress pulled his back taught.

Empty beach and rough ocean stretched away from him as far as he could see. The shiny whatsit from earlier was a few meters away on a sand dune, right next to… his shoe? Dan glanced down and sure enough, he only had one. His wallet was open in his lap, and his driver’s license was in the sand near where he’d dropped his dead phone. He was wearing comfy pj pants, and a long sleeve shirt with… an unfamiliar design?

I should probably know what that’s supposed to be… or is it not my shirt?

Dan scratched his itchy, stubbly face as he mused.

Memory loss… or mental tampering? Cognitive functions impaired? Just a dream?

His dreams were always complicated and strange… but was this really one of them? If he couldn’t tell, best practices dictated that he should assume it wasn’t and act accordingly, in which case…

Stolen story; please report.

A tide of panic and bile rose in his throat, but he choked it down.

Can’t afford to waste pills on a good day, let alone whatever this mess is… No, but surely this must be a dream? What other explanation could there be?

There were several reasons for why one might find themselves stranded on an island, and many more for why one might develop amnesia, but having both occur together pared things down nicely.

It being a cheap plot device, might mean I’m a character in some kind of shitty survival story, in which case, I should ignore it and focus on ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶l̶o̶t̶ survival...

That’s handy, since that’s also what I should do normally…

Why would it being a story… matter? Taking things at face value, the situation is: I need food/shelter/water, and soon. Why was my first thought about stories?

This, he felt, did not bode well for his chances.

So the impairment thing? Maybe earlier. No way to tell, now… Unless? Quick, how do I know if I’ve suddenly become dumber? Joke about how frogs wear jumpers. British sweater. Sweating. Britain’s too cold for frogs though, innit? Wait, if there’s a jumper, is there a jump-ee? Oh, yes actually, I do need to pee.

Dan took a deep, long breath, then sighed it back out. With no memories or companions to compare himself with, he couldn’t really tell… so he decided that it wasn’t allowed to matter either way, and went to piss in the trees...

After finishing his business, Dan tried to gather his things and thoughts both.

Of course he had already seen his his wallet, water bottle, and medication...

When I read my name on the pill thing, I recognized it… why did I need to recognize it?

Also in his backpack were: his lucky shades, spare contacts, backup glasses…

How did I even get here? What’s the last thing I remember? What’d I do?

A small pencil and (blank) notepad, a plastic folder labeled as “ ̶L̶a̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶A̶r̶t̶s̶ Paperisms” containing papers ranging from crayon drawings to tax documents…

Why did I think ‘here again’ when I woke up? How is it ‘again’ if I don’t know where…

Some exercise wraps, a wrist brace, an opened roll of medical tape, travel-sized hand sanitizer, a nearly empty box of finger-tip/knuckle bandages…

Actually, where was I before? This place isn’t normal, but compared to what exactly?

A folding multi-tool-knife, his key ring and lanyard, earbuds, his dead phone, spare chargers and batteries (none of which helped the phone situation)...

I remember frequently having wacky dreams, but not anything about them. Also…

Some pens, paperclips, a stapler, a rubber band ball, a mini rubiks-cube, a half used-up stick of deodorant, a mostly used-up stick of sunscreen, a ratty hi-vis vest…

What’s wrong with the damn ocean? Those waves are clipping into each other!

Some empty snack wrappers, several loose rags, spare underwear, a plastic shopping bag of damp clothes, a big piece of the kind of silk-film used in upholstery…

Clearly this is just a stranger dream than usual. I should probably stop worrying and play along until the other shoe drops… speaking of which…

At some point, the mysterious shiny by his wayward shoe had stopped its little eyelid-piercing light trick. That might have made it difficult to find, but luckily the little golden ring was plenty reflective without it, and easily caught both the sun and his eye.

Dan inspected it with one hand as he tried to brush the sand from his bare sock with the other, to avoid getting too much in his shoe. Even in a dream, sand was such a pain. When nothing about the simple golden band caught his attention, he tossed it in his bag with the rest of his stuff, and almost immediately forgot about it.

After a final cursory glance around, Dan decided he was ready. He eenie-meenie-miney-moe’d the two directions of beach, and set off south along the winner. He kept an eye out for anything interesting, but nothing noteworthy happened, and his attention strayed.

Four~ish hours after he started walking, Dan stopped to rest in the patch of shade under a big coconut tree.

He was in pretty good shape, but the sun and the sand had made the going hot and difficult.

As he sat against the tree, he drained his water bottle. Any rational thoughts of rationing he might have had regarding it were forgotten at the moment, not that there had been much water left to begin with. Then suddenly…

[Ping!!]

[Quest complete! (Thirsty;)]

[Reward: refill your bottle.]

The bottle in his hand was suddenly full again, as another notice pinged.

[Repeatable quest: (Thirsty;)]

Oh… well then, this changes everything.

----------------------------------------

Half a day later, Anni woke to a horribly clashing duet of percussion in her head.

Looking back, she would realize that it was an interplay between a horse’s gallop, and her own heartbeat. She would eventually recognize the mountain trail her captors were using, and even launch an ambush on them near this very spot…

At the time, however, she was nowhere near lucid enough for that, and in fact, it only barely occurred to her that she was naked. Even when it did, her first thought was to lament the money she'd spent on the schoolgirl outfit, and only after that did she realize her situation. Her struggles against her bindings were muted by pain and exhaustion, but Anni still managed to slip her way off of her captor’s horse.

Unfortunately, her precipitous escape had her bounce-sliding down a rather steep slope, into some rather thorny bushes.

Fortunately, the bushes broke her fall, and nobody tried to follow her down.

Unfortunately, she learned exactly why not, when a long vine-like tendril wrapped itself around one of her legs and dragged her off through the underbrush.

Fortunately, she was able to shield her face with her hands enough to keep most of the thorny dirt out of her eyes.

Unfortunately, when the dragging stopped and Anni opened her eyes, she still didn’t have her glasses on, and so could barely see. From the way the blood ran to her head, at least, Anni could tell she was upside down. Squinting at her surroundings, Anni thought she was hanging from a moderately large tree, and below her some pink and green blur was doing something she couldn’t see.

Fortunately, she lived long enough after that to reflect on this attempt’s mistakes… and not too much longer.

Her next few tries involved reaching the shore at various points around her starting lake, striving for a consistently replicable escape strategy...