Hello, and welcome to With the Salt Wind from the Sea! I started this a week ago, and now it's this 7k+ trashy monster. You can read it at Ao3 under the same name, if you would like. Thanks!
The cruiser is luxurious, especially compared to the wild jungles of the island, or his faded memories of his father's naval ship.
Ralph shifts, uncomfortable on the floor. The American captain—an impossibly adult adult, with authority and common sense and answers— is standing in front of him, easily gliding the boat over the water which had, only hours before, seemed like the enclosed walls of an impenetrable prison.
And though those walls were now broken and he was free, the curtain had already been flung open, the constant paranoia now slotting itself easily into Ralph's broken and betrayed mind. Even though the ship takes him back to life, to life with food and toilets and-and the opposite of death or whatever people called that cruel game they had been playing—Ralph knew that some part of him would forever lay broken and abandoned on the island, swept away by the tide, broken in half by a fit of anger.
Ralph blinks, eyes dry, all the tears having already been shed. He feels empty, in more ways than one—and tired, and sad, and confused.
Slowly, he turns his head to look out the window, seeing blue skies and the deeper blue ocean.
Freedom. What is freedom? Surely what they had on the island was freedom, no adults, only boys who could do whatever they wanted. And yet still, with that freedom, they had turned into savages, all of them, down to Maurice and Samneric and...and…
Grownups know things, they ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things would be all right—
It hurts to remember anything, anything past the island and fear and death and shards and spectacles and beasties and feasts—there was further knowledge there, something that Ralph wasn't letting himself reach, and quite frankly, he didn't want to bother.
The captain reminds him of his father. Blearily, he wonders if he will ever see him again. He doesn't want to admit it, but his family was next-to-forgotten during that last stretch on the island.
I just think you'll get back all right.
He had vehemently insisted that he was in a different room than the savages—
No, the other boys, he shakes his long, matted head violently, attempting to dismiss the thought of murder and beasts. The other boys who once were innocent, too, and were stranded with him and were part of his assembly and some who had, once-upon-a-time, sang up to C-sharp with the melodious voices of golden childhood.
Ralph sighs deeply, hoping that his heart rate would slow. The throbbing and piercing pain of his chest wound doesn't seem to lessen, though they had been hastily dressed by real bandages a few hours before. The slow movement and rocking of the ship comforts him, a constant assurance that the island was left burning behind them—forever.
I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you.
He jerks, looks helplessly at the captain, hears the eerie, relative silence of the boat and the ever-present drawl of motors working.
There are windows around the room, no other ships or islands in sight. The captain receives a message on his two-way radio, and responds in kind.
The grownups can handle it, the grownups will decide and lead. The burden of authority is lifted, and for a moment, Ralph decides to feel innocent again, naive and trusting of the heart of man.
In an instant, he feels the pull of sleep, the adrenaline crash finally beginning to set in, as sharp, crisp memories of a lagoon and fiery shelters dance just underneath his eyelids. He resists the lull, something out of his control keeping him from sleeping.
Kill the pig.
Cut her throat.
Spill her blood.
