CHAPTER 1-1
Heinrich
"Welcome, welcome, everyone!"
The sky glowed a boundless blue overhead, and small waves in the sea came forward, one after another, to caress the Europan coast. Heinrich, Phoenix, and a handful of strangers were assembled by the shore as a short, curvy young woman with curly, white-blonde hair and a pale blue dot facial marking between her eyes addressed them. Behind her, a dock stretched its arm a ways out into the water; a medium-sized blue motorboat bobbed gently beside it. As though scattered by some giant unseen hand, dozens of gray-black boulders were littered in an approximate line across a narrow sound, beyond which the island lurked darkly.
"My name is Áthas and I will be your tour guide for this trip to Sidereal Isle. I'm so glad to see you all here, and I furthermore notice that none of our registrants is unaccounted for. Excellent! It always gets a bit awkward, you see, when someone shows up late and must swim across the Drowned Channel in order to join us." This statement was met with uncomfortable laughter, although Heinrich noticed her ice-blue eyes were twinkling. "I kid," she continued wryly, confirming Heinrich's suspicion, "though someone very motivated could, indeed, swim across the channel. That said, we will be using a more convenient conveyance," and here she gestured to the small boat. "Let's get ourselves over and then we can settle in and have some proper introductions. As we cross, take note of any features of the channel that you find interesting, and we can talk about it more later on."
Heinrich had never been on any kind of watercraft before, and enjoyed the novelty of the manner in which it whizzed neatly over the waves, almost as if it weren't even touching the water at all. Several minutes passed as the scenery slipped by - turquoise waters and many of those boulders, some protruding above the water's surface and others resting like black voids at the bottom - and he was so enthralled by it all that the boat's deceleration as they neared their destination came as something of a surprise. Áthas expertly maneuvered the motorboat alongside a short dock that appeared to be of fairly recent vintage, and Heinrich and the other passengers gathered their belongings and stepped onto it one by one.
The inviting white sand of a wide beach soon met their feet; beyond its distant edge lay a thick tangle of verdant forest.
"Alright!" Áthas said, advancing up the beach a short ways and then dropping her own packs unceremoniously into the sand. "How are we all doing? No one's seasick from the voyage, I hope. Everyone good?" Heinrich looked around as the others, following her up the beach, murmured their assent. She had led them to a large, extinguished campfire, around which several thick logs were arranged to provide seating. "Great! Let's talk about how our time on the island is going to work. But first, introductions!" To Heinrich's indescribable horror, as everyone chose a perch for themselves, Áthas turned to look right at him. "Why don't you start us off, then, and tell us a little bit about yourself?"
Had his mouth been this dry the entire time, and he'd simply failed to notice? "I...," he began, faltering. He swallowed, feeling heat flooding into his face, and finally managed to choke out the first thing that came to his scrambled brain: "I have a brother." And he pointed to Phoenix, who was seated next to him.
"So you do!" Áthas responded merrily, scribbling something onto a clipboard as though Heinrich's useless utterance had in fact contained key intelligence she would need for the guided tour. "And your name is...?" she prompted.
"Oh." Obviously, when introducing oneself, one included one's name in the information provided. "I'm Heinrich." He cursed the unintentional crack in his voice on the second syllable of his name with the fire of a thousand stars, and found himself terribly missing the solitary comfort of their little barn and adjacent tidy, endless rows of trees just at that moment.
There was a scattered chorus of greetings from the others. Heinrich noticed a dark-haired boy about his age seated across the fire pit from him. Their eyes met - the other boy's were a rather fetching shade of turquoise that matched the water of the channel - and he gave Heinrich a small, friendly smile that shifted the cyan dot facial markings at the outer corners of his eyes. Heinrich looked back to Áthas, flushing still further.
"It's very nice to have you here," she was saying to him. She was looking him over appraisingly, though there was nothing but kindness in her eyes. He exhaled, grateful as the warmth finally started draining out of his face, and watched as her gaze slid to his left, those kind eyes alighting now on Phoenix.
"And you?"
She was looking him over more than a little appraisingly.
"I'm Phoenix," his brother told the group smoothly, "and I can confirm that Heinrich and I are, indeed, brothers. I know you all have a hard time believing that since we look nothing alike," he continued drolly, to chuckles, "but I assure you it's true."
Heinrich just listened, staring at his shoes in the sand, as Phoenix kept his small audience entertained. Near-identical appearances aside, it was difficult to believe that they were brothers, sometimes; Heinrich knew he would never, for as long as he lived, be as capable and feel as comfortable working a crowd as Phoenix did. He idly wondered what it would feel like, to speak so confidently.
Áthas continued around the circle, and the others introduced themselves: Acair and Siân were an outdoorsy, adventure-loving couple in their fifties; Emyr was the father of nine-year-old triplets named Olwen, Osian, and Owain, all of whom had plenty of energy with an interest in ghosts and legends to match; and lastly, Klara and her son, the boy who had caught Heinrich's eye earlier, were immigrants from Delpoi.
"I'm Fynn," the boy said, beaming at the assembled group. "I'm 17 years old. I love to explore and learn about new people and discover things."
Áthas raised her pale eyebrows. "Anything in particular you're hoping to discover on Sidereal Isle this week?"
"Little out of the way places, I think, plus I have a few other ideas," he replied with a mysterious smile. "We'll see."
"Excellent. Well, I hope you find what you're looking for!" Áthas clapped her hands. "Alright, let's get down to business, everyone. I imagine, if you're here, you're at least passingly familiar with this guided tour program, but let me lay it out for you. And if it's not what you thought you were getting, well..."
"The boat's over there," Acair said, pointing, and everyone chuckled.
"Exactly. So. We're all here for one week. Whatever supplies you have with you, plus the stuff that I keep here for tours, are all we're going to have available unless there's some kind of an emergency. We're going to be all over the island over the course of your time here, hiking and exploring and sleeping in a few different places. Along the way, I'll tell you some of the folklore of the island, which is incredibly rich...in more ways than one." The triplets nudged one another excitedly. "Any questions?"
Heinrich was not surprised to see his brother raise his hand. "You didn't introduce yourself yet, Áthas," he pointed out. "You only gave us your name."
"Hmm, right you are," she said, and Heinrich noticed her looking him over again. "Well, I hail from a beach resort town a ways south from here. I left home several years ago and have been traveling all over the Republican side of Europa, trying different jobs, seeing new things. I've been here, running these tours on Sidereal Isle, for longer than I've stayed in most places, I guess because I just love it so much."
"What's your favorite part?" asked one of the two triplet boys, though Heinrich wasn't sure which. His two siblings poked him, giggling, for no reason that Heinrich could discern.
"Oh, it's all the stories here, Owain. Definitely the stories." She smiled at him and then turned to Phoenix, shooting him an exaggeratedly supplicating look. "Was that sufficient, my good sir?"
He only grinned at her.