Apollo Wilde
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- May 13, 2003
- Posts
- 3,075
If there was anything close to Heaven on the scarred face of this poor earth, the islands of the South Pacific were it. Oceans that ranged from turquoise to the deepest cerulean caressed white sand beaches, slumbering volcanoes drenched in greens - the sunburst colors of flora and fauna, truly, a paradise on earth. And one that Eden Belmont would do her best to defend. The fact that the island had anything resembling a human population, let alone a bustling tourist area, was enough to make her see red. Not that she held anything against the natives - they’d long learned to live lives that left no footprint on the delicate ecosystem. No, it was the tourists: hedonistic assholes from all reaches of the planet who thought that their money made them more important, that their titles, real and imagined, meant that everything was theirs for the taking. From the littering to the condescending nature of how they treated the “help”- their loud machines, loud voices, everything about them was something to be hated.
Even more when they trashed her beach.
It wasn’t technically “her” beach - she could work for a million lifetimes and never have enough to even buy a house here -, but it was the area in which she worked, lived, and studied. The marine biologist in process, with a special focus on cetology, was, what some people might call a “beach bunny” if they were being charitable (and gross), a "beach bum" if not, and "a meddlesome bitch" all other times. She was the tourist’s worst nightmare: an island conversationist that worked in league with the local island parks and preservations. It was through them that she had her little “home” - really, more of a ramshackle cabin, and the authority to get people removed from the few miles that were under her protection. The home belonged, in truth, to her mentoring professor, Dr. Alecia Nome. Dr. Nome was a flower child from a generation later: white skin tanned into leather from the sun, tattoos of flowers and sea turtles lightened into green by the relentless island sun. Her hair, once a mouse brown, had blown out into heavy silver, always hastily braided back and little fussed over. The land had been purchased by Dr. Nome’s family, ages ago, when these things were still cheap and somewhat exploitive - a sense of guilt, Eden thought, that drove Dr. Nome into marine biology and conservation as well - thought Dr. Nome also had more of an anthropologist’s touch when it came to working with people. She was warm and motherly - and Eden was decidedly not. She’d worked too hard, had too little given to her, to be swayed into an overwhelming feeling of love and good nature for her fellow human. Looking up from the seat of poverty didn’t allow her the privilege of being able to turn the other cheek.
Still, though, Eden did harbor a soft spot for Dr. Nome: Eden was cool and collected to Dr. Nome’s somewhat spacey attitude, with an attention for detail that had played a significant part in her meteoric rise in academia. From her time as a T.A. when she was working on her Master’s, Dr. Nome had come to rely on Eden so much that when it came time for the younger woman to start considering a career after school, Dr. Nome had insisted that she not only join a doctorate’s program, but that she continue to work for her. And, being privy to what made her student tick, Dr. Nome had set her up here. It wasn’t a bad gig at all: though sometimes Eden missed just walking the mall. The most she ever dealt with people was a once a month supply run into the largest town, which was four hours away on roads barely more than slashes cut into the jungle - four hours of ass rattling, teeth grinding, mosquito swatting misery to load up on overpriced supplies that had to either be flown or boated in. Still, sometimes it was nice to pick up old creature comforts: shampoo, body wash. Sugar. New underwear.
As she stretched her legs beneath the threadbare comforter in the wee hours of this particular Saturday, it was with a sense of contentment. Her most recent supply run was behind her, her beach had been free from the most egregious island assholes, and best of all, her dolphins were in the area - at least, that’s what the ancient radio equipment was telling her. The beeps and hisses would all sound the same to a novice, but to her, each dolphin and whale pod had a distinct chime. It wouldn’t take long for her to clear sleepiness from her ears and sharpen that sense to tell which dolphin pod it was - 415-C, spinner dolphins that had a distinct distain for whale watching boats, and seemed to know that the little cove that Eden was stationed at was probably one of the quietest around. Though not too much further - about an hour away, was a makeshift town set up specifically for whale-watching. Her cove would have been open to the same ocean traffic, were it not for the particularly treacherous underwater mountain range which looped around any place that a boat may be able to dock at. A kayak or a canoe would be okay, if they were lead by someone who knew the area intimately. It was a strange little place - on three sides completely surrounded by wilderness, opening only to the ocean, and even that had to be navigated carefully. More than once Eden had wrecked her sad little kayak and spent weeks repairing damage that she was always fated to cause again in just a few weeks time.
This morning, though, it was a good one - she could feel it in her bones as she eagerly got of of bed. Dawn was filtering through the heavy clouds, turning the ocean pale pink and purple, and the morning air was heavy with the scent of salt and upturned rich dirt. She’d go for a quick swim, visit with the pod if she was lucky, then maybe get some gardening done. It was the weekend; she could take it easy! Maybe actually sunbathe - the latter thought she had to nearly laugh off. A year in on the island, and she had permanent tan lines, no matter how much sunscreen she religiously applied. The pattern of her one piece sport suit was etched on the brown skin of her body: pecan where the sun had played with her melanin, bringing it out in depths and hues she hadn’t thought possible, and a paler caramel where her body was perpetually covered. Her eyes, too, were brown - a deep chocolate. And, wonder of wonders, her time at the beach had gifted her with a smattering of smaller, darker, almost black ink flicks of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. The face itself was in a transition between the late teens and maturity of her twenties - a sharp chin, high cheekbones that were softened by how her cheeks plumped when she smiled, a high forehead that leaned on the edge of overly large from how high her brows naturally sat, and the severity in which she raked back her wild curls. She hadn’t been brave enough to shave her head entirely - instead, she had chopped off all of her chemically processed straight hair, forewent any extensions (sewn in or not), and kept her natural hair braided back in the tightest french braid that she could manage without giving her a headache. A combination of the removal of excess chemicals, good genetics, and healthy activity had seen her hair grow in leaps and bounds since that initial cut - the heavy sway of that braid reached her bra line, a length she had previously never imagined. The sun and salt water had each played a hand in bleaching it from its normal dark brown to the color of new pennies around the ends, a naturally occurring ombré that observers would swear was the work of only the best salon in town.
She was of average height, with the slightly chubby body of a woman who spent more time with books and treats than people. That body was being carved away by daily swimming; only her stomach remained stubbornly soft, no matter how many crunches she did to alleviate it. Some of that would have to do with the pronounced S like curve of her back, drawing attention to her stomach and her rear at the same time. A pleasant figure, but it was more of her self-assured walk that caused the eye to linger, to appraise in silence. Not that she had noticed any of the looks, her mind usually miles away from her present.
Swimsuit, goggles, snorkel, beat up sandals. Watch. There was little else that she needed - not for this, at least. And even if she needed more, her eagerness didn’t allow her to slow down. Out the door, down the rickety stairs that leaned more increasingly to the right as they got closer to the sand. Her battered kayak was tethered to the small crawl space beneath the stairs; she wouldn’t need it. She wasn’t going out that far; she could already see the sleek fins of the dolphins in the near distance. She grinned to herself, the expression bringing out the dimples poked into her cheeks, only visible when she smiled widely. Kicking off her sandals as she went, leaving them carelessly on the sand, she had waded out to her knees before something felt terribly, terribly wrong. For one, a dolphin was closer to her - a sure sign that it was injured. It seemed to recognize her, and began to thrash about in the shallower water.
“Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,” stream of words, fear turning it high, making her voice quiver as she waded in deeper, to her waist. As she got closer, it was with a small sense of relief that she noted that the dolphin had no visible injury; didn’t leave trails of blood in its wake. Instead, it seemed to be…almost guiding her. It had to be - she’d been around the dolphins long enough to know that their intelligence and ability to communicate was almost supernatural. There was no way to express it in text without sounding like a lunatic - one of the first bitter lessons that she had to learn, and something that Dr. Nome had been fully sympathetic about, having encountered the same when it came to writing about her beloved humpbacks.
“Okay, okay, I got it,” her voice was still shaking, even as she tried to restore her calm. She glanced around: no sign of sharks, anything obviously wrong. Pulling on her googles as she waded deeper, to her chest, to her neck, she quickly dove under once the sand gave way to the bottomless expanse of the ocean. The dolphin was patient enough to realize that this strange creature, one that they had gotten used to, had even come to enjoy playing with, was a poor swimmer in comparison to the rest of the pod. And in the early morning light that penetrated through the water in long shafts of white, illuminating the deep blue world. The rest of the pod were dancing shadows, the water filled with their agitated squeaks, clicks, whines - all beyond her comprehension, but clear in their expression of concern. Once the “scout” dolphin came into view, the pod coalesced around it, then, waiting for her to join them, would not leave until she was secure in their midst. Were it any other time, she would have been excited beyond speaking, thinking that she was in a dream, surrounded by these beautiful animals that it felt, up until yesterday, had only begrudgingly accepted her. She did her best to keep up with them, until the scout dolphin, apparently frustrated with her lack of progress, looped its way beneath her, guiding her to hang on, and took off again. The water was a dull roar in her ears as she was pulled forward, her vision obscured by the strings of bubbles that marked their progress.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been pulled along, but as suddenly as she was moved, she was stopped, the scout wiggling free of her, arching gracefully in the water, directing her towards the thinning line of water, denoting where it was shallower. Unsure of what awaited her, she swam towards the shore, her limbs burning, trembling, when her bare feet finally touched the sand of the bottom. She waded forward, looking around. The rock formations around her were familiar - east from where she was stationed. She’d kayaked past here, in the first months she’d been there, to familiarize herself with the area. It was a smaller inlet, barely able to be called a “cove” - well protected by jagged rock, and the sandy inlet that she was standing on barely accomated her.
So she was beyond startled to see a man laying there, face down in the sand. Or at least it looked like a man; a skim of his body ended abruptly at his waist. It couldn’t have been a tail. There’s no way. Maybe water had gotten into her eyes; irritated them. She had to still be tired; this was a hell of a swim, even with the help of the dolphin. She looked again - it had to have been a trick of the light. Hallucinating the tail or not, there was still very much a man laying face down in the sand, unresponsive.
“H..Hang on!” She wasn’t sure why she was shouting as she charged through the water, running up the small beach to the man. Kneeling beside him, ignoring the fact that he was completely naked, she pressed her fingers to his neck. A faint pulse. That was good. Rolling him over to his back, she tilted his head back, watched his chest. There was no movement. Not breathing, but alive - she had little time, and rudimentary knowledge in what to do. Get him breathing, call for help, wish for the best. It was without hesitation that she pressed her lips to his, blowing into his mouth - pulled back, started chest compressions. “Come on, come on…” Her gaze was glued to his face, panic giving way to the necessity of action. Waited. Leaned over again, her lips against his, hoping that this would get him breathing on his own.
Even more when they trashed her beach.
It wasn’t technically “her” beach - she could work for a million lifetimes and never have enough to even buy a house here -, but it was the area in which she worked, lived, and studied. The marine biologist in process, with a special focus on cetology, was, what some people might call a “beach bunny” if they were being charitable (and gross), a "beach bum" if not, and "a meddlesome bitch" all other times. She was the tourist’s worst nightmare: an island conversationist that worked in league with the local island parks and preservations. It was through them that she had her little “home” - really, more of a ramshackle cabin, and the authority to get people removed from the few miles that were under her protection. The home belonged, in truth, to her mentoring professor, Dr. Alecia Nome. Dr. Nome was a flower child from a generation later: white skin tanned into leather from the sun, tattoos of flowers and sea turtles lightened into green by the relentless island sun. Her hair, once a mouse brown, had blown out into heavy silver, always hastily braided back and little fussed over. The land had been purchased by Dr. Nome’s family, ages ago, when these things were still cheap and somewhat exploitive - a sense of guilt, Eden thought, that drove Dr. Nome into marine biology and conservation as well - thought Dr. Nome also had more of an anthropologist’s touch when it came to working with people. She was warm and motherly - and Eden was decidedly not. She’d worked too hard, had too little given to her, to be swayed into an overwhelming feeling of love and good nature for her fellow human. Looking up from the seat of poverty didn’t allow her the privilege of being able to turn the other cheek.
Still, though, Eden did harbor a soft spot for Dr. Nome: Eden was cool and collected to Dr. Nome’s somewhat spacey attitude, with an attention for detail that had played a significant part in her meteoric rise in academia. From her time as a T.A. when she was working on her Master’s, Dr. Nome had come to rely on Eden so much that when it came time for the younger woman to start considering a career after school, Dr. Nome had insisted that she not only join a doctorate’s program, but that she continue to work for her. And, being privy to what made her student tick, Dr. Nome had set her up here. It wasn’t a bad gig at all: though sometimes Eden missed just walking the mall. The most she ever dealt with people was a once a month supply run into the largest town, which was four hours away on roads barely more than slashes cut into the jungle - four hours of ass rattling, teeth grinding, mosquito swatting misery to load up on overpriced supplies that had to either be flown or boated in. Still, sometimes it was nice to pick up old creature comforts: shampoo, body wash. Sugar. New underwear.
As she stretched her legs beneath the threadbare comforter in the wee hours of this particular Saturday, it was with a sense of contentment. Her most recent supply run was behind her, her beach had been free from the most egregious island assholes, and best of all, her dolphins were in the area - at least, that’s what the ancient radio equipment was telling her. The beeps and hisses would all sound the same to a novice, but to her, each dolphin and whale pod had a distinct chime. It wouldn’t take long for her to clear sleepiness from her ears and sharpen that sense to tell which dolphin pod it was - 415-C, spinner dolphins that had a distinct distain for whale watching boats, and seemed to know that the little cove that Eden was stationed at was probably one of the quietest around. Though not too much further - about an hour away, was a makeshift town set up specifically for whale-watching. Her cove would have been open to the same ocean traffic, were it not for the particularly treacherous underwater mountain range which looped around any place that a boat may be able to dock at. A kayak or a canoe would be okay, if they were lead by someone who knew the area intimately. It was a strange little place - on three sides completely surrounded by wilderness, opening only to the ocean, and even that had to be navigated carefully. More than once Eden had wrecked her sad little kayak and spent weeks repairing damage that she was always fated to cause again in just a few weeks time.
This morning, though, it was a good one - she could feel it in her bones as she eagerly got of of bed. Dawn was filtering through the heavy clouds, turning the ocean pale pink and purple, and the morning air was heavy with the scent of salt and upturned rich dirt. She’d go for a quick swim, visit with the pod if she was lucky, then maybe get some gardening done. It was the weekend; she could take it easy! Maybe actually sunbathe - the latter thought she had to nearly laugh off. A year in on the island, and she had permanent tan lines, no matter how much sunscreen she religiously applied. The pattern of her one piece sport suit was etched on the brown skin of her body: pecan where the sun had played with her melanin, bringing it out in depths and hues she hadn’t thought possible, and a paler caramel where her body was perpetually covered. Her eyes, too, were brown - a deep chocolate. And, wonder of wonders, her time at the beach had gifted her with a smattering of smaller, darker, almost black ink flicks of freckles across the bridge of her nose and her cheeks. The face itself was in a transition between the late teens and maturity of her twenties - a sharp chin, high cheekbones that were softened by how her cheeks plumped when she smiled, a high forehead that leaned on the edge of overly large from how high her brows naturally sat, and the severity in which she raked back her wild curls. She hadn’t been brave enough to shave her head entirely - instead, she had chopped off all of her chemically processed straight hair, forewent any extensions (sewn in or not), and kept her natural hair braided back in the tightest french braid that she could manage without giving her a headache. A combination of the removal of excess chemicals, good genetics, and healthy activity had seen her hair grow in leaps and bounds since that initial cut - the heavy sway of that braid reached her bra line, a length she had previously never imagined. The sun and salt water had each played a hand in bleaching it from its normal dark brown to the color of new pennies around the ends, a naturally occurring ombré that observers would swear was the work of only the best salon in town.
She was of average height, with the slightly chubby body of a woman who spent more time with books and treats than people. That body was being carved away by daily swimming; only her stomach remained stubbornly soft, no matter how many crunches she did to alleviate it. Some of that would have to do with the pronounced S like curve of her back, drawing attention to her stomach and her rear at the same time. A pleasant figure, but it was more of her self-assured walk that caused the eye to linger, to appraise in silence. Not that she had noticed any of the looks, her mind usually miles away from her present.
Swimsuit, goggles, snorkel, beat up sandals. Watch. There was little else that she needed - not for this, at least. And even if she needed more, her eagerness didn’t allow her to slow down. Out the door, down the rickety stairs that leaned more increasingly to the right as they got closer to the sand. Her battered kayak was tethered to the small crawl space beneath the stairs; she wouldn’t need it. She wasn’t going out that far; she could already see the sleek fins of the dolphins in the near distance. She grinned to herself, the expression bringing out the dimples poked into her cheeks, only visible when she smiled widely. Kicking off her sandals as she went, leaving them carelessly on the sand, she had waded out to her knees before something felt terribly, terribly wrong. For one, a dolphin was closer to her - a sure sign that it was injured. It seemed to recognize her, and began to thrash about in the shallower water.
“Oh, oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no,” stream of words, fear turning it high, making her voice quiver as she waded in deeper, to her waist. As she got closer, it was with a small sense of relief that she noted that the dolphin had no visible injury; didn’t leave trails of blood in its wake. Instead, it seemed to be…almost guiding her. It had to be - she’d been around the dolphins long enough to know that their intelligence and ability to communicate was almost supernatural. There was no way to express it in text without sounding like a lunatic - one of the first bitter lessons that she had to learn, and something that Dr. Nome had been fully sympathetic about, having encountered the same when it came to writing about her beloved humpbacks.
“Okay, okay, I got it,” her voice was still shaking, even as she tried to restore her calm. She glanced around: no sign of sharks, anything obviously wrong. Pulling on her googles as she waded deeper, to her chest, to her neck, she quickly dove under once the sand gave way to the bottomless expanse of the ocean. The dolphin was patient enough to realize that this strange creature, one that they had gotten used to, had even come to enjoy playing with, was a poor swimmer in comparison to the rest of the pod. And in the early morning light that penetrated through the water in long shafts of white, illuminating the deep blue world. The rest of the pod were dancing shadows, the water filled with their agitated squeaks, clicks, whines - all beyond her comprehension, but clear in their expression of concern. Once the “scout” dolphin came into view, the pod coalesced around it, then, waiting for her to join them, would not leave until she was secure in their midst. Were it any other time, she would have been excited beyond speaking, thinking that she was in a dream, surrounded by these beautiful animals that it felt, up until yesterday, had only begrudgingly accepted her. She did her best to keep up with them, until the scout dolphin, apparently frustrated with her lack of progress, looped its way beneath her, guiding her to hang on, and took off again. The water was a dull roar in her ears as she was pulled forward, her vision obscured by the strings of bubbles that marked their progress.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d been pulled along, but as suddenly as she was moved, she was stopped, the scout wiggling free of her, arching gracefully in the water, directing her towards the thinning line of water, denoting where it was shallower. Unsure of what awaited her, she swam towards the shore, her limbs burning, trembling, when her bare feet finally touched the sand of the bottom. She waded forward, looking around. The rock formations around her were familiar - east from where she was stationed. She’d kayaked past here, in the first months she’d been there, to familiarize herself with the area. It was a smaller inlet, barely able to be called a “cove” - well protected by jagged rock, and the sandy inlet that she was standing on barely accomated her.
So she was beyond startled to see a man laying there, face down in the sand. Or at least it looked like a man; a skim of his body ended abruptly at his waist. It couldn’t have been a tail. There’s no way. Maybe water had gotten into her eyes; irritated them. She had to still be tired; this was a hell of a swim, even with the help of the dolphin. She looked again - it had to have been a trick of the light. Hallucinating the tail or not, there was still very much a man laying face down in the sand, unresponsive.
“H..Hang on!” She wasn’t sure why she was shouting as she charged through the water, running up the small beach to the man. Kneeling beside him, ignoring the fact that he was completely naked, she pressed her fingers to his neck. A faint pulse. That was good. Rolling him over to his back, she tilted his head back, watched his chest. There was no movement. Not breathing, but alive - she had little time, and rudimentary knowledge in what to do. Get him breathing, call for help, wish for the best. It was without hesitation that she pressed her lips to his, blowing into his mouth - pulled back, started chest compressions. “Come on, come on…” Her gaze was glued to his face, panic giving way to the necessity of action. Waited. Leaned over again, her lips against his, hoping that this would get him breathing on his own.
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