Tainted Rainbow
Chapter 3 ~ A box in the soil
"Kitty? You OK?" Tilly prodded her friend.
"Yeah, its not deep. Stupid little shitbag didn't want to leave a lasting impression this time, the last one got her in enough trouble."
Angela whistled. "My God, can that girl sink any lower?"
"What the hell are we going to do?" asked Lara
"Well, for a start off, don't give in to her. If she gets to any of us, she'll keep at it. It'd mean she had less opposition." Said Kitty, rubbing her arm.
"Yeah, but what if she starts treating other people like that?"
"Then they'll see what she's like. They're all nicely under her spell at the moment. She's being all chummy and nice, and they haven't noticed what a cow she happens to be."
"It'll be a different story once people start getting restless." Angela said darkly.
"Whatchya mean, Ange?"
"Well, as soon as things get difficult, they're going to blame her. She's going to have to deal with a lot of angry kids if things don't go smoothly."
"That's a point. But until then, what are we going to do? Pretend to like her? Because I sure as hell won't." said Lilly bitterly.
"I think we should be out and out against her. Refuse to accept her rules, live separately and stuff." Ranted Sam
"Er, yeah, but what would she do? Not let us have anything from the plane. We don't know what alternatives there are to live on." Mumbled Lara
"Huh?"
"Well, say they have the food from the plane. We'd have to get food, shelter and stuff from somewhere else, and suppose there's nothing else on the island?"
"She said there'd be fruit and stuff."
"Are you going to listen to her? How the hell does she know that they're not poisonous to humans? And if that's the only thing on the island.."
"Sorry for quoting Bitchzilla, but she said there were fish and stuff."
"And you're going to catch them, how? No nets or lines, remember? And even if you got one, how would you cook it? Lara has a point, we need to investigate this place properly before we do anything drastic." Said Kitty.
Sam thought. "Well, why don't we explore? I mean, if we do, and we find some source of food and shelter and stuff, we'll have an advantage over them."
"Especially once their supplies run out, which they will do, because there can't have been much on the plane." Said Lilly
"So, we're going to look round the island? "
Everyone nodded.
"Well, lets go now before the Goon Squad come back."
The group trudged up the beach, watching the accumulated girls sitting, talking, sunbathing and sleeping on the warm sand.
"Don't seem too fussed, do they?" said Kitty
"About what?" asked Lilly sleepily
"Er, hello? We're stranded on a desert island, possibly in the middle of nowhere, with a possibly very limited food supply. You'd think they'd be a bit worried."
"They're taking Jennifer's word on it being OK."
"Poor fools - OW!" A vine swung and hit Kitty in the face. "Thanks for that, Ange."
Angela looked round. "Oh, sorry."
"Is this where the plane is?" asked Tilly
"No, its further round, by the rocks," said Sam, looking round earnestly at the trees. "This is a gorgeous forest, thing."
"The whole island seems to just be one big hill."
"Maybe its volcanic?"
"Oh, wonderful. Now we'll be blown up, if we don't starve first." Said Lilly sarcastically.
"Oh shut up, just because you're hungr- eww!" Angela jumped back. " I just trod on something squishy."
"Looks like it *was* a fruit," said Kitty, looking at it. "Bit like a mango or something."
"There's a tree of them further up here," called Sam, who'd gone on ahead. "They look OK to eat.."
"Well, don't try one," said Tilly immediately. "You never know."
"I wasn't going to!" said Sam indignantly. "I am not THICK.."
"Feed one to Jennifer," joked Angela. "Test if it's deadly or not."
"More likely she'd try it on us," muttered Lara. "She's not stupid, sadly."
"Guys! GUYS!"
Everyone whipped round, to see Sam poke her head round a large boulder.
"Bloody hell Sam," said Laura "You don't have to yell. What is it?"
"There's a sort of cave thingy here, look.." Sam bent down and suddenly vanished. The rest scrambled round to the other side of the rock. There was nobody there.
"Sam?"
"Yeah?" Her voice sounded a bit muffled.
"Where the hell are you?"
"Pull aside the creepers hanging down the rock."
Tilly reached forward, and pulled them back. A large hollow under the rock was exposed, in which Sam was sitting. It was surprisingly big - the rock was above it like a porch, supported by a trunk of a fallen tree, and the hollow was completely covered in a roof canopy of twisted vines and leaves stretching from the tree to the rock. The space itself was quite big, about 4 meters across and several deep. Sam waved up at them.
"You can climb down using the bits of roots and stuff. I guess that tree used to be here and got uprooted..look, there's little holes in the walls where the roots used to go."
As she spoke, Kitty, Angela and Tilly had come down into the cave to join her.
"There's little burrows going through it as well," pointed out Tilly "That means something must live on this island."
Angela was scraping the soil away on one of the walls. "Guys, there's a weakness in this wall. There's something - ugh, I'm covered in mud now - buried..here.."
Kitty went over and banged on the soil. "There is, but probably just a tree root or something."
"No, because look," said Sam, pointing to two dents either side of where Angela was digging. "There were two huge roots here, before the tree got pulled up."
By this time, Lilly and Lara had also come into the pit. "There IS something in the soil here, look." Said Angela, kicking at a certain spot. It made a distinct thud sound, like kicking at wood. "Help me get it out."
The whole group started scraping away the soil, and soon exposed the side of some wooden box. Lara had the bright idea of going back out of the pit and getting some flat stones to use as spades, and soon the box was beginning to work loose. After about an hour, with a sudden wrench, the earth below it crumbled, and it fell out into the pit, leaving a niche in the wall. It landed upside down, with a heavy thud. The group gathered round it.
"Does it open?" asked Kitty, nudging it with her foot.
"Bet it's got a body inside," said Lilly, grinning.
"Don't be so gross, sick child. Anyway, its far too small. Look at it, its far too small." Said Tilly, testy after all the digging.
"How are we going to open it?" said Angela impatiently. "Its got a lock on."
"Roll it over, and we'll see." The group took hold of the heavy box. It was covered in old soil, and was very wet and cold to touch, like it had been buried for a long time. With a heave, the girls managed to turn it onto its side.
"And again," puffed Tilly. With another heave, the box was the right way up, and the lock snapped off at the movement. Kitty picked it up.
"Rusted right through," she said.
Lara and Sam were tugging the hinged lid of the box. "It won't open!"
"Everyone try together. One, two, THREE!" Everyone simultaneously hauled on the edge of the lid, and it sprang backwards, throwing them back into the mud. A stink of old, wet paper and decay drifted out of the box. Inside was a leather bound book, some sheaves of old yellowing paper, bottles, empty and full, an old fashioned long coat, and a bag of something that stank so badly that everyone gagged. Tilly reached into the box, and lifted out the bag.
"Ugh! That reeks Til', get rid of it!" grimaced Lilly. "What IS it, anyway?"
" I think it used to be meat.."
Sam turned pale "Uggh! Chuck it away, please!"
Tilly hurled it out of the hollow. Everyone breathed again.
"What's all this stuff?" asked Angela, reaching in.
Lara picked up the book, and promptly had it snatched off her by Kitty.
" J. Reeves. Log, 1909." She said, looking at the front.
"Whoops.." said Angela, looking at the map she'd just tried to pick up. It had just crumbled in her hands.
"Oh, Ange...."
"Sorry! What does the book say?"
"It's a diary.." Kitty opened it, very carefully. "Jonathon Reeves, First Mate of Sea Spryte..it's a bit blurred here.." She turned the pages carefully. "Its just about his voyages on the sea.it says he was returning from..I cant read it.. somewhere Island."
"That's helpful.."
"Shut up.." Kitty turned to the last pages. "Hey! Its says..it says they were lost..they hit an island away from here, and he..he offered to scout to this island to see if there were anybody civilized..he took the rowing boat..and they..oh! They left without him...."
"That's awful.."
"It says all he had with him were the provisions for a few days scouting..that must be the stuff in the crate.."
"But he hasn't eaten it, it was still there.."
"He's written here...'the fruit was good to eat, better than my salted meats and biscuits....and there were small rodents, which could be skewered..'.Eww..oh! It says here, on the last page, that he saw another ship on the horizon..and he left all his things here because he wanted to row out to it, and they'd slow him down.."
"So he just left everything, and went haring off after some boat on the horizon? Even his diary?"
"I guess. I wonder if he got home?"
"We'll never know, but we now know two things." Said Tilly.
"What?"
"One : nobody lives on this island, and two, there's food."
Lara looked up. "And three, there's a cave that gives good shelter...."
Angela looked round at everybody.
"I think we've found our new home, people."
*~*~*~*~*
The group were walking back along the beach to where the other girls were.
"Look, there's another meeting thing going on."
"Nice of them to invite us.."
They hurried along to the assembly, where Jennifer was just summing up her orders.
"So it's agreed? We use the supplies from the plane, and we use the plane to sleep in, and shelter in. We ration the food, and we also ration the bananas." She looked up at the group arriving. "If you lowlife's had bothered to come along, you would know that we have found three banana trees. You are not to take anything from them."
"Why not?" said Angela heatedly
"Because you might pollute them, and nobody here wants to eat freakish mutant bananas." The assembled crowd laughed. "As a matter of fact, you can only have some of our food from the plane as well. I mean, we cant be wasting good nourishment on people like you."
"People like us?"
"Yeah, you know, otherwise known as 'Waste of Spaces'?" Again, the crowd tittered. "You cant sleep in the plane either. We might catch something." Cue more laughter from the girls around them.
"Y'know, that's fine by us." Snarled Angela, glaring. "I'm sure I speak for us all when I say that we wouldn't like to breathe any air that you have."
"Don't you talk to me like that, or you're going to find breathing very hard indeed." Jennifer snapped back. She looked round at the silent crowd. "I don't think we need to talk to people like them. I suggest, for your own safety, you don't have much to do with them at all. I think this meeting is over." And she and her groupies swaggered off to the plane. The crowd looked nervously at Tilly, Angela and the others. A few opened their mouths to speak, but then closed them and walked away. Soon, the group was left alone.
"This is going to be a looong stay.."
*~*~*~*~*~*
Gee, that was a loooong chapter too. Oh well. Um, I may not update this for a while, because of a) ridiculous amounts of coursework..damn GCSEs..and b) Well, because everyone in this fic is based on real people..and some of them aren't getting on too well at the moment, or generally aren't behaving like their characters do. Meh. I dunno. I'll get back to you..
Chapter 3 ~ A box in the soil
"Kitty? You OK?" Tilly prodded her friend.
"Yeah, its not deep. Stupid little shitbag didn't want to leave a lasting impression this time, the last one got her in enough trouble."
Angela whistled. "My God, can that girl sink any lower?"
"What the hell are we going to do?" asked Lara
"Well, for a start off, don't give in to her. If she gets to any of us, she'll keep at it. It'd mean she had less opposition." Said Kitty, rubbing her arm.
"Yeah, but what if she starts treating other people like that?"
"Then they'll see what she's like. They're all nicely under her spell at the moment. She's being all chummy and nice, and they haven't noticed what a cow she happens to be."
"It'll be a different story once people start getting restless." Angela said darkly.
"Whatchya mean, Ange?"
"Well, as soon as things get difficult, they're going to blame her. She's going to have to deal with a lot of angry kids if things don't go smoothly."
"That's a point. But until then, what are we going to do? Pretend to like her? Because I sure as hell won't." said Lilly bitterly.
"I think we should be out and out against her. Refuse to accept her rules, live separately and stuff." Ranted Sam
"Er, yeah, but what would she do? Not let us have anything from the plane. We don't know what alternatives there are to live on." Mumbled Lara
"Huh?"
"Well, say they have the food from the plane. We'd have to get food, shelter and stuff from somewhere else, and suppose there's nothing else on the island?"
"She said there'd be fruit and stuff."
"Are you going to listen to her? How the hell does she know that they're not poisonous to humans? And if that's the only thing on the island.."
"Sorry for quoting Bitchzilla, but she said there were fish and stuff."
"And you're going to catch them, how? No nets or lines, remember? And even if you got one, how would you cook it? Lara has a point, we need to investigate this place properly before we do anything drastic." Said Kitty.
Sam thought. "Well, why don't we explore? I mean, if we do, and we find some source of food and shelter and stuff, we'll have an advantage over them."
"Especially once their supplies run out, which they will do, because there can't have been much on the plane." Said Lilly
"So, we're going to look round the island? "
Everyone nodded.
"Well, lets go now before the Goon Squad come back."
The group trudged up the beach, watching the accumulated girls sitting, talking, sunbathing and sleeping on the warm sand.
"Don't seem too fussed, do they?" said Kitty
"About what?" asked Lilly sleepily
"Er, hello? We're stranded on a desert island, possibly in the middle of nowhere, with a possibly very limited food supply. You'd think they'd be a bit worried."
"They're taking Jennifer's word on it being OK."
"Poor fools - OW!" A vine swung and hit Kitty in the face. "Thanks for that, Ange."
Angela looked round. "Oh, sorry."
"Is this where the plane is?" asked Tilly
"No, its further round, by the rocks," said Sam, looking round earnestly at the trees. "This is a gorgeous forest, thing."
"The whole island seems to just be one big hill."
"Maybe its volcanic?"
"Oh, wonderful. Now we'll be blown up, if we don't starve first." Said Lilly sarcastically.
"Oh shut up, just because you're hungr- eww!" Angela jumped back. " I just trod on something squishy."
"Looks like it *was* a fruit," said Kitty, looking at it. "Bit like a mango or something."
"There's a tree of them further up here," called Sam, who'd gone on ahead. "They look OK to eat.."
"Well, don't try one," said Tilly immediately. "You never know."
"I wasn't going to!" said Sam indignantly. "I am not THICK.."
"Feed one to Jennifer," joked Angela. "Test if it's deadly or not."
"More likely she'd try it on us," muttered Lara. "She's not stupid, sadly."
"Guys! GUYS!"
Everyone whipped round, to see Sam poke her head round a large boulder.
"Bloody hell Sam," said Laura "You don't have to yell. What is it?"
"There's a sort of cave thingy here, look.." Sam bent down and suddenly vanished. The rest scrambled round to the other side of the rock. There was nobody there.
"Sam?"
"Yeah?" Her voice sounded a bit muffled.
"Where the hell are you?"
"Pull aside the creepers hanging down the rock."
Tilly reached forward, and pulled them back. A large hollow under the rock was exposed, in which Sam was sitting. It was surprisingly big - the rock was above it like a porch, supported by a trunk of a fallen tree, and the hollow was completely covered in a roof canopy of twisted vines and leaves stretching from the tree to the rock. The space itself was quite big, about 4 meters across and several deep. Sam waved up at them.
"You can climb down using the bits of roots and stuff. I guess that tree used to be here and got uprooted..look, there's little holes in the walls where the roots used to go."
As she spoke, Kitty, Angela and Tilly had come down into the cave to join her.
"There's little burrows going through it as well," pointed out Tilly "That means something must live on this island."
Angela was scraping the soil away on one of the walls. "Guys, there's a weakness in this wall. There's something - ugh, I'm covered in mud now - buried..here.."
Kitty went over and banged on the soil. "There is, but probably just a tree root or something."
"No, because look," said Sam, pointing to two dents either side of where Angela was digging. "There were two huge roots here, before the tree got pulled up."
By this time, Lilly and Lara had also come into the pit. "There IS something in the soil here, look." Said Angela, kicking at a certain spot. It made a distinct thud sound, like kicking at wood. "Help me get it out."
The whole group started scraping away the soil, and soon exposed the side of some wooden box. Lara had the bright idea of going back out of the pit and getting some flat stones to use as spades, and soon the box was beginning to work loose. After about an hour, with a sudden wrench, the earth below it crumbled, and it fell out into the pit, leaving a niche in the wall. It landed upside down, with a heavy thud. The group gathered round it.
"Does it open?" asked Kitty, nudging it with her foot.
"Bet it's got a body inside," said Lilly, grinning.
"Don't be so gross, sick child. Anyway, its far too small. Look at it, its far too small." Said Tilly, testy after all the digging.
"How are we going to open it?" said Angela impatiently. "Its got a lock on."
"Roll it over, and we'll see." The group took hold of the heavy box. It was covered in old soil, and was very wet and cold to touch, like it had been buried for a long time. With a heave, the girls managed to turn it onto its side.
"And again," puffed Tilly. With another heave, the box was the right way up, and the lock snapped off at the movement. Kitty picked it up.
"Rusted right through," she said.
Lara and Sam were tugging the hinged lid of the box. "It won't open!"
"Everyone try together. One, two, THREE!" Everyone simultaneously hauled on the edge of the lid, and it sprang backwards, throwing them back into the mud. A stink of old, wet paper and decay drifted out of the box. Inside was a leather bound book, some sheaves of old yellowing paper, bottles, empty and full, an old fashioned long coat, and a bag of something that stank so badly that everyone gagged. Tilly reached into the box, and lifted out the bag.
"Ugh! That reeks Til', get rid of it!" grimaced Lilly. "What IS it, anyway?"
" I think it used to be meat.."
Sam turned pale "Uggh! Chuck it away, please!"
Tilly hurled it out of the hollow. Everyone breathed again.
"What's all this stuff?" asked Angela, reaching in.
Lara picked up the book, and promptly had it snatched off her by Kitty.
" J. Reeves. Log, 1909." She said, looking at the front.
"Whoops.." said Angela, looking at the map she'd just tried to pick up. It had just crumbled in her hands.
"Oh, Ange...."
"Sorry! What does the book say?"
"It's a diary.." Kitty opened it, very carefully. "Jonathon Reeves, First Mate of Sea Spryte..it's a bit blurred here.." She turned the pages carefully. "Its just about his voyages on the sea.it says he was returning from..I cant read it.. somewhere Island."
"That's helpful.."
"Shut up.." Kitty turned to the last pages. "Hey! Its says..it says they were lost..they hit an island away from here, and he..he offered to scout to this island to see if there were anybody civilized..he took the rowing boat..and they..oh! They left without him...."
"That's awful.."
"It says all he had with him were the provisions for a few days scouting..that must be the stuff in the crate.."
"But he hasn't eaten it, it was still there.."
"He's written here...'the fruit was good to eat, better than my salted meats and biscuits....and there were small rodents, which could be skewered..'.Eww..oh! It says here, on the last page, that he saw another ship on the horizon..and he left all his things here because he wanted to row out to it, and they'd slow him down.."
"So he just left everything, and went haring off after some boat on the horizon? Even his diary?"
"I guess. I wonder if he got home?"
"We'll never know, but we now know two things." Said Tilly.
"What?"
"One : nobody lives on this island, and two, there's food."
Lara looked up. "And three, there's a cave that gives good shelter...."
Angela looked round at everybody.
"I think we've found our new home, people."
*~*~*~*~*
The group were walking back along the beach to where the other girls were.
"Look, there's another meeting thing going on."
"Nice of them to invite us.."
They hurried along to the assembly, where Jennifer was just summing up her orders.
"So it's agreed? We use the supplies from the plane, and we use the plane to sleep in, and shelter in. We ration the food, and we also ration the bananas." She looked up at the group arriving. "If you lowlife's had bothered to come along, you would know that we have found three banana trees. You are not to take anything from them."
"Why not?" said Angela heatedly
"Because you might pollute them, and nobody here wants to eat freakish mutant bananas." The assembled crowd laughed. "As a matter of fact, you can only have some of our food from the plane as well. I mean, we cant be wasting good nourishment on people like you."
"People like us?"
"Yeah, you know, otherwise known as 'Waste of Spaces'?" Again, the crowd tittered. "You cant sleep in the plane either. We might catch something." Cue more laughter from the girls around them.
"Y'know, that's fine by us." Snarled Angela, glaring. "I'm sure I speak for us all when I say that we wouldn't like to breathe any air that you have."
"Don't you talk to me like that, or you're going to find breathing very hard indeed." Jennifer snapped back. She looked round at the silent crowd. "I don't think we need to talk to people like them. I suggest, for your own safety, you don't have much to do with them at all. I think this meeting is over." And she and her groupies swaggered off to the plane. The crowd looked nervously at Tilly, Angela and the others. A few opened their mouths to speak, but then closed them and walked away. Soon, the group was left alone.
"This is going to be a looong stay.."
*~*~*~*~*~*
Gee, that was a loooong chapter too. Oh well. Um, I may not update this for a while, because of a) ridiculous amounts of coursework..damn GCSEs..and b) Well, because everyone in this fic is based on real people..and some of them aren't getting on too well at the moment, or generally aren't behaving like their characters do. Meh. I dunno. I'll get back to you..