Act 1 - Discovery

Chapter 1

Orion

Day 1 of Landing

Take care of Cass. The chanting of my mother’s words echoed through my head as I spat sand out of my mouth. Take care of Cass. My face was buried in the sands of an unknown beach. Trying to get my bearings, I lifted myself onto my feet. Take care of Cass. I searched for my brother on the strange shore I had washed up on. I searched for anything. If I made it, others would make it. Behind me was a dark cloudy veil over a deep blue ocean. Before me, where the yellow sand met the forest, was a shoreline of rocky hills, flat grass beds, bamboo-like palm trees that reached for the sky, and wide flat-leaf bushes lining the forest’s entrance like a grass fence. I reached for a clearing in the shrubs and trees and began yelling out into the forest for Cass.

My younger brother had a habit of going off on his own, especially in open wilderness like this, despite our dire situation. There was a clearing into the forest and if I knew my brother, his curiosity would take him in there to look for insects and rocks.

Take care of Cass.

Relief came over me as I found a young man squatting down near the base of a small cliff five minutes from the beach sands and into the forest clearing. He was investigating the ground beneath and brushing aside dirt. His clothes, like mine, were wet and dusted with sand from the beach behind us. It wasn’t his green army shirt or gold locks that gave him away but the fact that, despite being dumped here after a plane crash, the young boy was here of all places looking for rocks.

“Cass, thank god I found you. Whenever you can’t find me I told you to stay put,” I sighed.

“Place has good rocks. Not like at home. Really neat rocks.”

My brother’s nonplussed response to our situation didn’t surprise me in the least.

“Do you have your phone on you?” I asked.

“No phone. No Switch either.” Cass continued walking down the base of the cliff, looking for more rocks. The ones he liked he put into the back pocket of his white cargo pants.

“Well, I guess Poseidon has them now.”

“Doubtful. Poseidon has more important things to do than play video games, Rye.” Cass picked up a diamond-shaped rock the color of ink and blankly nodded to himself.

Not wanting to explain my joke, I continued talking. “We need to look for other survivors. I’m worried. Did you see anyone else come by here, Cass?”

Now that my first concern of finding my brother had ended, my second and more important concern was starting to bubble up, the clear and present emergency of being stranded in unknown wilds.

My younger brother shook his head. “I doubt anyone survived. It’s a miracle both of us even survived.”

“I’m sure someone’s going to be looking for us,” I said to reassure him, though it felt more to reassure myself. “What did you remember?”

“I was looking out the window. Lots of lights. Then I woke up on the beach and came here when I didn’t see you. I was waiting for you, honestly,” Cass insisted.

“Let’s go back to the beach. There might be boats or a rescue plane that will come to get us. They should be looking for us.”

Cass shook his head. “They won’t find us, Rye, not here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“These plants aren’t anywhere close to the US. I saw driver ants near the rocks I was looking at. Though they were a different color.”

“And? You saw ants?” I asked wondering what he meant. He did know his ants.

“Driver ants live in Africa, Rye.”

“You might be mistaken.”

“I know driver ants, Rye. I’ll show you.”

“Let’s say they are. Maybe they got introduced here by someone. I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. How can we be in Africa when we were just over the Atlantic off of Florida for an hour?” I didn’t want to believe my younger brother had a better grip of where we are than I did.

“We aren’t in Africa,” Cass said, shaking his head. “The plants don’t match, it’s not hot either. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I have an idea. Maybe we are on some billionaire’s island off of Florida, and he imported all these plants and those ants here himself,” I said smugly.

Cass considered and nodded to himself. “It’s possible...”

“So let’s go back to the shore. They’ll be looking for us,” I said.

We made our way back the way I came from. I kept insisting my brother stick close to me every time he wandered off to examine a bug or a rock or a plant. Cass would constantly flip over logs and try to climb trees as we made our way back to the shore.

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Cass picked up seashells he found on the beach while I sat on the grass watching over him and the coastline. When Cass got bored, he came over, and we passed the time playing tic-tac-toe in the sand and naming games. Every time I got bored, I would always have the urge to reach into my pocket for my phone to browse the web. Knowing my connection to the world was not there and I was unable to access my social media routine pages gave me a slight headache, and I experienced internet withdrawals as the minutes passed. Cass was constantly fidgeting or restless as well.

“I’m hungry,” Cass spoke up after what seemed like an eternity.

“Me too.” The sun was beginning to set in the sky. It would only be a couple more hours until nightfall. I was beginning to get worried. I wasted all this time instead of starting a fire or making shelter.

“Can you gather rocks and pile them in a circle on the beach? We need to make a fire. I’ll find some food,” I said.

Cass’ face lit up with his chance to find rocks. After telling Cass not to stray too far from this area, I went back into the woods to gather tinder and dry wood. After bringing them back to the circle of stones that Cass had made, I instructed him to dig up a small pit and place the beach grass and wood I had found in the pit while I foraged the beach for oysters and mussels.

Near the rocky flats of the beach, I saw blue birds with several white stripes running across their backs like a racing stripe picking at crabs and sandworms. Upon my approach, they made a screeching sound and flew off. I searched the area, and found a few mollusks wedged between rock formations. They looked like a hybrid between mussels and oysters but were the size of conchs. I picked a handful of them, dumped them into a crater and began to wash them with a rock I had found one by one. I brought them back to our makeshift campfire to see my brother smashing flint together to try to make a fire to no avail.

I told him to step aside, and from the pile of wood that I had gathered, I brought out a few sticks. There were trees near the beach that had lengths of vines which I used to braid into a simple rope that I used to make a fire drill. My brother watched in awe as all the primitive crafting videos I watched on YouTube finally paid off as I raced to make fire before nightfall. When the wisps of smoke started to show, I placed the flaming tinder into the pit we made, and we had fire. I sighed in relief as Cass started dancing and clapping his hands and laughing maniacally.

The mollusks I had foraged roasted over the open flame until they steamed and opened. Normally I would shuck them and eat them raw, but I can’t be so sure with these species of oysters. I sniffed the piece of meat that came off the shell. I rubbed part of it onto my skin to see if I would have a reaction and then took a small bite. I told Cass to wait for a while before I served him his oysters. The liquor of the oyster seasoned the meat perfectly, and I ate the whole thing after a few minutes.

Feeling no ounce of sickness, I roasted the rest of the “oysters” and fed my brother half of them. It didn’t completely drive away my hunger pangs, and I would have to find something more nourishing in the morning for us to eat.

Cass took a bite of the last one left and grinned from ear to ear. “That was so good. They were way better than what we had at that fancy restaurant at Disney World.”

“Could use a bit of hot sauce,” I said, shrugging.

The flame flickered out. I tossed another piece of firewood on it. I guess we could just sleep on the grass by the beach for now. I’ll have to figure out a shelter situation soon but thankfully the weather was mild and a few trees and bushes gave us meager cover. My brother was already on his back snoring loudly near the fire. As I was about to get up to reposition him to a place where the smoke wouldn’t hit him, the flames suddenly extinguished.

A void of cosmos surrounded me, and before me out of that void came a hooded figure in a dark robe. The specter sat on the end of a table facing me, its face covered in blackness. The specter’s skeletal left hand reached into his right palm as he closed his hands together and he reached into the darkness in which his left hand disappeared and drew out one card from his palm and placed it before me.

On the card was a painting of a man in a white hat with a butcher’s knife and a leg of some beast in front of a giant pot, and behind him was a stone oven. At the top center was the letter C on it. At the bottom were the words “Cook”.

Before the specter drew another card, I got up and said, “Where’s Cass! Where the hell am I?”

“Sit,” The specter commanded in a deep croaking voice. “The cards must be played.”

Looking around, I saw nothing but vast empty space. I got off my chair and away from the table and its now lone figure and ran as far as I could screaming for my brother to no avail. Seeing a faint light in the darkness, I caught my breath and approached it with caution. Despite running in a straight line away from the table, I stared in dread as the specter and his table with the exact same cards played waited for me.

“The cards must be played.” The specter croaked.

Feeling helpless, I sat.

The specter drew three cards face down and pushed them toward my end of the table. The specter waited expectantly as I stared dumbfounded at it. As I flipped the card in the middle, the other two unfaced cards vanished into the table, consumed by the darkness.

A man in armor with a chef’s hat was engulfed in flames as he took a bite out of a flaming piece of meat. “Soul Food” was the text read across the bottom and a single “S” at the top. The card shimmered like an oil slick. Upon examination, the description of the card read:

“Food you cook bestows blessings on you and your familiar.”

The card faded away in my hands, but instead of disappearing into the darkness, it disappeared into indigo light.

Two more cards were drawn, and the specter drew them face up. One had an “F” in the top right corner and a “1” in the top left corner, with a man with a woven basket gathering wild herbs labeled “Forager.” The other card had a “C” in the top right and a “1” in the top left corner, with a man holding a torch labeled “Firewielder.”

Again, the cards faded away in my hands. I looked carefully this time and noticed that the swirls of energy disappeared into my right fingertips. I watched as vessels of blue luminescence worked their way to my palms. I reached into my right palm and stared in horror as my left hand was swallowed by my right palm. My arms were in some type of ouroboros as the blue portal in my right palm consumed my left hand to the middle of my forearm. Inside, I felt a stack of cards and pulled it out of the void within---the same three that were drawn by the specter.

“The cards have been dealt. Until we meet again, fellow holder,” the ghastly voice croaked inside of my head.

The specter vanished, and in the next blink of my own eyes, the void disappeared and was replaced by a campfire, the dark nightscape of a familiar sandy beach, and the sound of my younger brother snoring before me. I was still holding four familiar cards that glowed in the dark: Cook, Soul Food, Forager, and Firewielder. I threw them into the campfire and watched as they disintegrated into blue wisps that were sucked into my palms.

Damn. Looks like I’m stuck with them.