I am not alone.
For two hundred and forty-nine days I have called this island my home. I have hunted and gathered, I have built shelters and made weapons, I have explored it day after day and night after night. I know it as well as I know myself, and yet today I find I am not alone. It's like finding a new mole on your arm. For all I know, it could be cancer.
He stares back at me wide-eyed and terrified, like some punk kid who just got caught with a can of spray-paint in his hand tagging a bridge. For a second I wonder if he's going to run. He doesn't. Neither do I.
I can tell he hasn't been here very long. His skin is still raw and pink from the sun, his hands not yet calloused from building and hunting. He's been here two days, three at the most. I wonder if he's even found anything to eat yet. I hear an all-too-familiar gurgle from a few feet away; likely, he hasn't.
Being alone on an island is a strange thing. Between your daily struggles for food and with nature you've got no diversions but those you can create. There's only so much hunting and storing and building you can do, only so many traps you can make and endlessly check. Your thoughts rage and hone themselves, your fantasies becoming more real than the driftwood in your hands. I think of how many times I'd imagined just such a meeting, carefully scripting and re-scripting what I'd say to another human mind that happened upon these shores. I faintly wonder what this scripted welcome was; all my mind draws up is the look of wonder and terror and hope in this stranger's stark blue eyes.
My much-neglected vocal chords finally sputter into usefulness. "Hi."
"...Hi."
I extend a tentative handshake. "Welcome to Zero Island."
For two hundred and forty-nine days I have called this island my home. I have hunted and gathered, I have built shelters and made weapons, I have explored it day after day and night after night. I know it as well as I know myself, and yet today I find I am not alone. It's like finding a new mole on your arm. For all I know, it could be cancer.
He stares back at me wide-eyed and terrified, like some punk kid who just got caught with a can of spray-paint in his hand tagging a bridge. For a second I wonder if he's going to run. He doesn't. Neither do I.
I can tell he hasn't been here very long. His skin is still raw and pink from the sun, his hands not yet calloused from building and hunting. He's been here two days, three at the most. I wonder if he's even found anything to eat yet. I hear an all-too-familiar gurgle from a few feet away; likely, he hasn't.
Being alone on an island is a strange thing. Between your daily struggles for food and with nature you've got no diversions but those you can create. There's only so much hunting and storing and building you can do, only so many traps you can make and endlessly check. Your thoughts rage and hone themselves, your fantasies becoming more real than the driftwood in your hands. I think of how many times I'd imagined just such a meeting, carefully scripting and re-scripting what I'd say to another human mind that happened upon these shores. I faintly wonder what this scripted welcome was; all my mind draws up is the look of wonder and terror and hope in this stranger's stark blue eyes.
My much-neglected vocal chords finally sputter into usefulness. "Hi."
"...Hi."
I extend a tentative handshake. "Welcome to Zero Island."
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