Author's Note: Fire and the Islands is a continuation of the first story, Steel Water. The link is on my profile. If you read Steel Water, you'll have the best chance of understanding the events. Well, enjoy story number 2!
May Birch.
...
Steven didn't look like a delinquent to me. He looked like a silent head turner, silver haired and blankly thoughtful. I'm glad he was like that, that way only I could read whatever he was thinking, saying or doing. He looked like a rich boy who kept to himself the way all rich boys should. He was distant and intimidating, but no, not a delinquent.
I didn't look like a cheater, to me. I looked like an ash haired do-gooder, always innocent and willing to help. Good thing I hadn't spoken to anyone who thought of me that way. I'd laugh in their faces before I could stop myself. I was wild and prideful, but no, not a cheater.
Steven's voice shook my half awake consciousness. "What are you thinking about? We've got more wood to cut,"
He was holding about four bundles of thick bodied sticks and twigs, one hand on my shoulder to make sure I was awake. I looked down at the stacks of logs and moss that lay out before me, piled high and stretched around the skirts of the woods. It hit me with an internal groan how long it would take to cut all this crap.
"Can't we take five? Look- it's almost sunset."
"And?"
His back was still turned to me, and he dropped the logs into the square of stones that we had arranged for a fire earlier in the day. They bonked together noisily, and I used the sound to drown out my muttered sentence.
"I always break at sunset. You know that,"
He still heard me. "Go ahead. I'm almost done here," he gestured out toward the crack of orange afternoon sunlight that struck through the trees, revealing the dark overhanging of trunks beyond the campsite. "Enjoy Fortune Island before we get kicked out,"
I had already dashed toward the crevice filled with sunlight and slipped into the woods, and I remember wishing Steven would quit being such a pessimist. But even as my walk sped up, I couldn't help but realize how honest he was being. There was no one that could say with a straight face, 'Things will end up great. You'll be accepted again someday.'
I scoffed into the sunlit woods. Yeah. Maybe.
The walk had been going on almost an hour now, and I was starting to wonder how close the edge of Fortune Island was. Probably not far- I could catch wafts of ocean scent and city dust beginning to enter the forest. Instinctively, my eyes shifted to look into the treetops when I was slashed across the face, as if by the arm of a cactus.
I clutched my face in my hand, and from behind my burning eyeballs, I hardly noticed the spiked berry that fell from the tree and rolled to stop at my feet.
"Ow! Ugh!" I grumbled, trying to feel for cuts on my skin. As I stepped forward, I picked up the small berry for me to see. It was blood red, barbed with spikes and sporting tattered green leaves that stuck up from the center. I laughed once I identified it.
A Tamato berry! I always had to have those berries imported, brought to my parent's doorstep and then picked up by my Tropius. Those memories were fresh and new, well, at least they should be. I couldn't help but feel distanced from them, refusing to give up enjoying the Sevii Islands. So I slipped the berry carelessly into my pack and kept going.
It was dusk now, violet streaming through the syrup colored sky and casting colorless shadows into the forest over my head. Every tree trunk and leaf was black in the evening.
Suddenly, there was a rumbling in my pocket. I pulled out my Pokenav where my screen was flashing. One name was typed in computer-like scrawl at the bottom: Steven.
I hit receive and his face, pale and distinct against the darkening background became clear on the display. His eyes were coal grey and, to my embarrassment, unmistakably pissed.
"It's been hours already. You know I can't see you on this Hoenn map. Are you trying to drive me crazy or something?" He ranted, and with every complaint I giggled a little bit more.
I hadn't noticed how far into thoughtlessness I'd wandered until his voice blared over the Nav, muffled by the poor reception.
"May, please! Are you listening?"
That woke me up. I blinked twice, uncoiling from my crouch on the forest floor.
"Not really." I grinned sleepily at him, stretching out my arms, feeling the dusk cleanse my mind and erase the time I'd spent lingering. I put some thought into my reply. "We're you saying something I should know, Steven?"
His mouth opened instantly, more than eager to answer, but then he closed it to reprocess my question. He looked back at me with a more relaxed look this time, smiling faintly.
"No, I guess not, if you put it that way. Are you far from the camp?"
I began. "Yeah-"
The Nav fell amongst the leaves in the forest floor, noiseless and abandoned. Somewhere in the blackness of my consciousness I realized I had dropped it. There had been a crack, it was faint, but the break of a twig was clear. Somewhere among the trees, a shadow darted away from my gaze in surprise.
On the ground Steven's voice tried to stab through my wall of terror, but I was struggling too hard and too violently to hear more of the shadow, readying myself to run.
My blood froze in my veins, like a constrictor was snaking along my neck and slyly teasing me, ready to snap my neck in any breathing second. A black gloved hand was creeping up my face, the textured palm scratching my skin, alert and crawling.
I felt his form behind me shift; maybe with laughter, maybe with anger- and he dragged me behind a tree. Still, I couldn't see his face.
All I could think to do was stand there and wait to be released. One too many moments I had felt a hard edge rustle behind me. I swallowed hard to consider that the object could be a knife, with a blade that put the glistening ocean surface to shame. Maybe even a gun. Still, there was the position I was in. If I could just lean down further, maybe I could flip him…
All of a sudden, there was an awful jab that shocked every nerve in my body, like the way the moon scent electricity into my veins. But instead, it was hard, merciless volts. I immediately yelped out, but his hand was tighter than ever on my mouth. Coiling in pain, I decided enough was enough.
With my mind screaming with defiance, I wheeled around and wedged my knee between me and the stomach of the stranger. Satisfaction. He staggered back, and I immediately grabbed hold of his shirt and used all of my weight to shove forward, knocking him onto the ground. I was back on top of him, panting with fury, holding him down.
The only glimpse of him I got was the flash of flame red hair, and then he vanished- a ghost lost in the rows of black trunks.
I could only stare on, clutching the air where I'd been so sure of his presence, and now here I was, holding nothing. I could tell which direction he'd gone in- the leaves were strewn apart in a footprint dappled path right in front of me. It was obvious- he'd simply fled. For whatever reason, he didn't want me to figure out who he was.
I threw up my hands, eagerly heading back to the camp with an anxious bounce in my step. I was in no investigating mood, so I left the stranger to his business.
…...
Still, even as I enjoyed some stargazing up on the densely wooded plateau Steven and I had made our campsite, thoughts of the stranger still crept back into my head. I had always been drawn in by mystery, but never so much that I forgot about any goal I had at the time. But here I had nothing much to expect, it was all so new and vast.
Somehow Steven sensed my aloofness, and turned his head toward me. "What happened earlier? When you dropped your Nav?" his eyes narrowed in confusion.
My heart fell into my stomach, and in that second I didn't know whether to lie or to tell the truth. So I did both. "I just got a little surprised. The forest can be sort of scary, sometimes,"
"Understood, I suppose." Then he added in a thoughtful tone, "You never really know what's out there,"
A shudder rippled my body in the raw night air, involuntary. But I knew he didn't know what had happened in the lower woods that evening. I found some comfort there. I leaned back to gaze into the ivory circle of the moon, low and glistening, in the lit black silk of night and stars.
"Yup," I whispered. "You never really know,"