It had been a few days since the accident. The most unnatural out-of-earth accident, which was impossible regardless of how seen.
Landing in a world full of constant danger, surrounded by abnormally strongmen, magical creatures that could be even bigger than the highest mountain and most importantly: being stuck there with the power of a under-the-average making it painfully pathetic compared to these monsters. The survival chances degenerated to zero at this moment.
The woman, age 18 almost 19, was having a dilemma of her whole life. More like the worst mental breakdown of her life.
The first hours of her stay here were made up by mostly utter confusion mixed with disorientation about what was going on. It didn't help at all that as the time went on the better she was realizing her current situation. And even more it became hard not to make it seem like an awful dream regarding that she had now idea how she got here in the first place. Her thoughts too hazy and vague to remember what could have happened apart from the sweet scent of her home where she previously had been before the 'incident'.
The nightmare carried on and the thought about it being reality was difficult to accept. Her thoughts raced from her mom, dad, little brother and the very few friends she had. She tried keeping herself together, but after the first few days she had to let go of the attachment, only some though as not to work herself into a panic attack. She had an inkling that in the near future she would have enough shares of it, her home and family being an important, but smaller part of the breakdowns.
Eventually the worry slowly faded away to the back of the mind making it seem like a simple headache constantly coming up at every opportunity.
There was another problem, as the former became less important in this situation.
It was about being stuck an island which turned out to be in the middle of autumn. Moreover it looked deserted apart from the few animals raged from small squirrels to large tigers. Luckily it ended without any direct meetings yet it didn't mean there weren't any, judging by the roars every now and then. The days were quite chilly which wasn't much as the clothing the woman had consisted of a pair of denim jeans, a dark blue hoodie with a red top underneath and a pair of small white in-ear headphones swinging freely around her neck with the cable hidden beneath the clothes with the MP4 player tucked in the front pocket of the jeans. Another reason to believe that she had been at her apartment before she, well, ended up here.
The bad side was that she didn't have any footwear apart from the straw sandals, which didn't help much against the cold. During the day it didn't much matter as she went along the shore in hope of finding at least some living being, but at night the temperature could sink to under 0 degree Celsius. At least it felt like that. So in order to get some sleep she gathered some leaves that could as well be a blanket and decided not to get any deeper into the forest to avoid any tigers. It was also better in case a ship showed on the horizon so she could somehow catch their attention. How, it didn't matter that much, as long as she could remain visible. And like that the few days passed since her arrival.
On the what seemed like the 6th day she let out a sigh and any hope of making her situation better.
"I still hope I don't meet someone like the guy from the first day."
She still remembered the bulky man and a sea creature looking like it wanted to savage the man who was in comparison a flea. The result of the match was obvious from the beginning which the man was either too oblivious to consider or ignored the simple fact. Either way it ended with an eaten man and a delighted expression of the monster which the guy shouted to be a Sea King. She vaguely remembered the term from somewhere but shrugged it off after a while.
"I should stop thinking about it. It's not like it would help me right now," said she while walking through the shore. Her legs had given her a harsh time as it had been a long time for her so-called walk. She struggled some more before promptly falling onto the sand. Many thoughts crowded her mind so she to take a short rest and eat something as the protest came also from her stomach in form of loud growling.
"I'll need to calm down. Simple walking here is also meaningless if I don't think of some sort of a plan," she thought. Meanwhile she staggered to the forest to pick up some of the ripe fruit.
"Thank God, that it seems to be autumn or else I couldn't have lasted so long," she muttered under her nose. She went back to the shore and finally let her poor legs rest for a while and devour her seemingly dinner which consisted of an apple, a few nuts and to her surprise two peaches.
"No wonder my legs ache a lot. Even back home it was easier to walk on the road than on sand. Heck, I'm an in-door type. Makes sense for someone aiming to be a programmer," pouted she.
It was a pretty warm sunny autumn afternoon, a perfect time for a break. It would have been an ideal place for chilling from the day-to-day stress coming from the tests, exams, graduation and any other paperwork altogether with the upcoming collage exams.
"Just a beautiful time to vanish from the earth surface and appear in a what seems to be a kind of island with stupid animals in the forest and dumb monsters in the sea," complained she taking a look at the sky as she lay on her back on the sandy ground.
"At least the sky seems to be somewhat normal, reminds me kinda of home," she thought smiling a bit for the first time since her unexpected arrival. Then realization came upon her and frowned saying out loud:
"There won't be coming any holes or monsters out of the sky, I hope."
She stared a bit more intensive at the white shining clouds and let out a sigh of relief. Taking a look at what happened during the few days she was prepared that anything could happen right then. Especially after seen the sea creature. She took a deep breath and heaved herself up on her two feet. A pair of her dark brown locks fell into her face making her splutter and curse some colorful wordings something between "Should've cut it" and "Hate this so much" in response. "To think that I wanted to have longer hair," muttered she as she fought off the rest of the clingy dirty strand of hair. "Good, that it's only a bit under shoulder length." Thankfully the anger faded away if only for a bit. It certainly added some fire to the pessimistic teen. With the new-found power after the so-called dinner-break and short battle with the hair, she continued with her walk. This time she slowed down a bit more as not to get tired that easily. As she carried on, her mind was clouded with lots of thoughts.
"Though I can walk further in hope of finding some civilization, the plan won't be of much use if it turns out to be deserted island. On the other side there was a man if only for a short time."
She shuddered recalling the memory of the shouting man.
"That would mean that there should be some people. Maybe they are at the shore, a port village, or in the forest …"
She stopped for a moment and looked at the giant forest with its noises. She pondered about the possibility. Then a roar could be heard with an ear-splitting shriek. Her face turned blank and the answer in her head resounded: "No way, definitely no. I'm not going there."
She walked a bit faster, away from the source which in her mind seemed not so far from her. She prayed that the "source" of it would not come near her. It didn't help that she was more stressed than ever causing a mass of panic attacks in her mind. The only thing that calmed her down were: deep breathing to calm her body and in a cold manner thinking about what to do next to at least help her ease the situation like citing philosophical quotes. Her favorite one being: "Smile . . . tomorrow will be worse."
„Heck, I knew that I was somewhat of a pessimistic realist, but not a down-right pessimist," she thought bitterly. At least she knew that in the near future she wouldn't be that alone. Misery and bitterness sure made a nice companion. At any rate sarcasm and cynicism would make for a good laugh.
"Alright screw the somewhat normal sky. It certainly is also screwing with me," she shouted into thin air while looking for shelter under the trees. Just a couple hours ago she was walking, dry, in a better mood, and now she was completely drenched, cold air hitting her like a baseball bat making her violently shiver. "Should have known that, " she said in a more toned-down voice before rising it a higher pitch. "Oh yeas, I forgot, I'm an idiot. How could I forget it?"
She looked around for some bigger than normal leaves but found only some relative small ones. The wind became stronger with every second so without wasting time she grabbed two of the bigger ones. About 40 cm big, which was astonishing in comparison to the one back home, to make some kind of protection for her head, additionally she put on her hood. She thought about staying behind a tree and wait out the storm if not for the giant waves that crashed hard against the sand taking some of the trees. She ran up a bit further into the forest just to see equally giant monsters coming out of the sea. She would have hesitated more about coming into a forest with dangerous animals though the sight in front of her cleared any doubts.
Without further ado she dashed as fast as she could with her legs not taking a moment to look around her. She was too absorbed at her running/stumbling over anything/falling to ground but not caring too much about the mud on her inwardly panicking that she could very well not pay any attention. The storm didn't seem to lessen at all and she still hadn't found a somewhat good shelter. Yet she couldn't stop to look more carefully around herself. Her body had been pumped with too much adrenaline at the moment. Though at day she could calm herself down with some witty remarks and cynicism, then right now she had a full-out panic attack.
Yet not a single scream left her mouth, partly because of not having enough strength due to the running, partly by being too terrified that her screaming could draw some unwanted attention from animals. She wouldn't risk it.
So she ran and ran and ran. Even as her breath was out of control and her legs sore and hurt from the stones, tree branches, that she didn't realize that she was bleeding. Her mind though was a different story.
Cold and calculated as she tried to convince herself a few hours ago. A kind of attempt to calm her nerves. Right now it was a storm of the pushed down feelings since her arrival, fear crawling her spine, panic overcoming her body, anxiety rolling in the pit of her stomach, despair in her mind calling for help, which wouldn't come, absolute angst of what would come and attack her, dread that she wouldn't make it, terror that made her ran faster whether it could be good or not she didn't know and utmost horror of the unknown and her lately known dangers, animals and sea monsters.
She felt like crying.
Better yet, she felt like wailing, sobbing, thrashing and everything at once.
But she couldn't.
She had a will. A will to life.
She was too much of a mess to think about anything else than looking for a safe place.
Till then she would stop thinking about unnecessities or for record anything not concerning surviving for the moment.
That was the only reason that she would keep on going despite the mess she was, not only mentally but also physically with hair wildly thrashing into her face limiting her already blurry vision, with mud, dirt, rain, leaves; tree braches protruding as if on purpose scratching her pale skin, sore limbs with shredded sandals that didn't do much to protect her feet and her eyes reddish from where tears poured making her vision even more blurry than the rain.
All of a sudden there was a stark change of the ground. Instead of the wild undergrowth that reached to her ankles or knees at most, the grass reached over her head altogether blocking her sight. She had to slow down, wrestling her way through it. It didn't take long and soon she found herself falling forward. Very fast to say. Then she got faster. Faster. And faster. Till she realized that she was falling off of some kind of a cliff though because of the rain she couldn't quite see it.
What she saw, was a steep rocky hillside with some bushes that turned out to be wild roses. That was the moment she began to scream bloody hell and whatever came to her mind in this situation while wailing in pain as she crashed into the thorny shrubs. The rest of the way she rolled down in light speed. The short trip to the very bottom abruptly stopped when her whole body hit the trunk of a bigger tree sending her into blissful obliviousness.
As she slowly woke up from her seemingly long nap, she felt more energized than previously. Though the aching and dull pain didn't fade out completely, she could move even if slowly. She could still fell the stiffness of her body, though. The nausea and headache also eased more yet not entire. She took a breath and resolved to check her wounds. Unexpectedly the wounds one her fingers, hands, arms and stomach were only scratches circled with some black and blue bruisers. The hoodie seemed to have done some good protection. Further down were the legs. They were worse than the upper part. Ragged jeans with small blood coming off from various places that were still a bit muddy, big black bruises forming around some of the wounds. The worst part were the feet. Dirty, soggy, filthy with blood streaming from it. Some more gashes and swellings, yet no broken legs luckily. Still, it was not a perfect sight. At all. Especially for someone who didn't take well to any drastic blood stains. She could literally feel the nausea coming back. The only thing that kept her from gagging was heaving a long sigh and closing her eyes.
"All in all it could have been worse…" she concluded. "Though I have to get some dry clothes. And bandages."
Clumsily she ripped off some of her jeans that were tattered enough to rip she made some makeshift bandages for her bleeding feet and legs. As the temperature seemed to continue being warm, this time she would pay attention as who knew if the storm didn't come back, she took off her hoodie and wrung water out of it. The MP4 player clung to her neck so she unwrapped herself from it and securely put the MP4 with the cable and earphones in her front pocket of her jeans. The hoodie though was wrapped around her waist leaving her upper part in only her red tank top.
She glanced at the forest from her right then at the huge oak tree in front and lastly at the vast sea that looked gray perfectly matching with the color of the sky and clouds. "Seems like someone mirrors my mental state," whispered she keeping a blank face.
"Some more accidents like that and I'll get the hang out of having a poker face," she cracked a smile though it turned into a frown as the memories of yesterday's storm came in.
The running, the panic, the crying, the scream. It seemed very fresh to her.
"Alright, to keep on and find a way out of here I'll have to pull myself together. I won't last long if I keep on having mental breakdowns.
What was the saying again: "Smile... tomorrow will be worse."
"Heck, if it's already that bad I can just fake smile and try to get a grip by doing so. Simple freaking mind manipulation. As long as it works and keeps me relatively sane, I don't care," she said out loudly mustering painstakingly a smile on her face that indicated more pain than any real satisfaction.
With that she tried standing up, her sandals in as bad shape as her feet but at least it provided for now some protection for the sole of her feet than if she went barefoot.
It pained her greatly.
Also stubbornly keeping on her smile proved to be difficult even more as it was completely the opposite of her usual frowning or neutral expression very matching for her self-called pessimistic realism. Friendly smiling was only needed when encountered a stranger or out of general politeness though it was really not that much needed.
Though drastic times call drastic measures. And stubbornness was also a way to keep herself alive.
"Up we go," she muttered and began slowly marching forwards while holding the tree. Like that she continued her way holding out her hand from one tree to another to keep herself from falling. Luckily she was on grassy soft ground bordering on also moist sand so the walking wasn't as painful as she expected. After a while she could see the dim red light of the sun setting over the horizon which meant the end of another day. Exactly the 7th day since her arrival and the beginning of the 8th.
Her gaze fixed at the front, her mind fervently going through notions and plans for her unknown future as what to do, where to go, how to survive. But also making her remember the freshly cooked brownies her little brother would make, or the heated discussions what kind of jam was better, her father's smile who made another bad joke regarding school graduates, her moms reddish hair that matched her also fiery temper or the nice scent of her bedroom in her shared apartment with her friend, Alice who also took it upon herself to make her wake up at ungodly hours. And the fact that the possibility of seeing them might be close to none.
She quickly shook her head. No more reminiscing. It would only hurt more.
Her intense gaze faltered for a bit when she took a look at the reddish sun lazily hovering over the sea horizon.
At that moment only one thought filtered through the mass of other ones.
"Will this be the end of me?"