Disclaimer: I do not own Mara, Nemo or any of the characters from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, they belong to Jules Verne and the writers for the 1997 movie script. I do own Carchara. There is one specific line that is copied from The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night. Her mysterious island home has some familiar characters, a somewhat toned down frill neck lizard from Journey 2: The Mysterious Islands.

Chapter summary: Carchara becomes accustomed to her new home. Surviving on human instinct alone, she becomes stronger physically while her mental strength begins to wane.

If you like the story, I suggest you return to this chapter, because I will be adding more to it.

The Mysterious Island

Carchara began to explore the island that would become her home. From a small carving knife that her father had given her, she carved a spear from a long stick. In addition to it being a weapon, it acted as a perfect walking stick.

Carchara wondered across the island, looking for some form of shelter. By mid-day she was walking across a barren meadow. Then she had that feeling like she was being followed. She stopped, turned around and looked up. Before her stood an enormous ant that dwarfed her tenfold. The ant lunged after her and Carchara began letting out a series of cries and ran for her life.

Before she could reach the jungle again, she tripped and fell. She rolled over, the ant bared down on her; she screamed short screams over and over. Suddenly the ground shook; there was a hiss and a growl.

When Carchara looked up, she saw an enormous lizard that even dwarfed the ant it was fighting. Quickly the lizard defeated the ant. Then the lizard turned to her. Carchara buried her face in fright and screamed several more times, but the lizard didn't eat her, instead it sniffed her and then licked her, and then carefully picked her up with its teeth and carried her off across the meadow to distant cliffs and to a cave. Inside the cave was the lizard's young, ten baby lizards.

"I knew it, I'm lunch for baby lizards," Carchara cried.

The baby lizards all snapped their jaws, hungry for food. The bigger lizard set Carchara down gently. The baby lizards charged, but the momma lizard hissed at them and they all stopped. The momma lizard hissed at them again and then left.

Carchara sat down, frightened beyond her wildest dreams. A few minutes later the mother lizard returned with the dead ant body. The ten little lizards ran over and the mother put the ant down. The ant was big enough to feed all ten lizards.

Carchara remained where she was. Behind the lizard family, the sun began to set. The mother lizard looked out of the cave, then turned to her children and nudged them back deeper into the cave, picking Carchara up along the way. After a while, Carchara built another fire to keep warm, the family of lizards all joined her. When the lizards all went to sleep Carchara used the end of a burnt stick to make drawings on the wall of the cave, depicting her terrible ordeal. When she finished, she wrote her sister's, her father's, her mother's and her name, in bold letters.

"This way, I can remember what happened to me, who I am and who my family is," Carchara said.

The mother lizard woke up and looked at her. She used her tail to pull Carchara close to her. Carchara realized that the mother lizard must have adopted her. Carchara felt a lot safer knowing that.

…^…^…

The next morning, Carchara stayed with the baby lizards while the mother went out hunting. The baby lizards all went outside the cave and began to bask in the sunlight. Carchara sat and watched them.

Suddenly out of the trees came a strange creature that was also enormous. The creature had the body of a monitor lizard, but the head of a crocodile. The creature hissed and grunted and the baby lizards began to cry out.

Within minutes the larger mother lizard returned, snarling at the newcomer. She attacked it and drove it away. That's when everything made sense. Carchara's screaming was a pitch perfect imitation of the baby lizard's cries of panic. The mother lizard heard her cries and ran in; thinking one of her babies was in trouble. When it found Carchara, it got inquisitive. The animals here on the island, must not only be larger than their normal cousins, but a lot smarter too.