-marooned (closed for slut_in_white and me)

[Niceandbrutal]

As the great wave washed over him, Leif Eriksson knew that his ship had been hit by a tsunami.

Only moments before, he'd been standing outside the walkway leading to the bridge of the ship he was first mate on, the "Rikki Maru". He was having a final cup of coffee before going off to bed. One of the filipino crewmembers had worked as a barrista, and the coffee he made was one of the few luxuries aboard the old freighter. The ghost of the coffee's scent still clung to his nostrils as he was lifted up and partially submerged by the monstrous wave that had propelled him away from the ship.

When he resurfaced, still holding his coffee mug, he watched in horror as the capsized ship rapidly sank beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean. No-one else got out of the ship as far as Leif could see. His mind numbed by the swift horror visited upon him and his crewmates, he could only stay afloat as he was rocked and buffeted by the waves of the rouh sea. He stayed where he was for the best part of an hour, calling feebly for help and his crewmates. When it hit home that he was the only survivor of the "Rikki Maru", his rational mind kicked into gear as he weighed his options.

The ship was off course by tenfold nautical miles due to a huge navigational error by the rookie Second Mate. The "Rikki Maru" was on her last voyage, her next trip being that to the scrapyard on some indian beach where she would be unceremoniously cut up for scrap iron. Since it was on its last legs, the owners hadn't bothered equipping the ship with GPS tracking or navsat. They weren't due to check in by radio for another three hours. The chances of SAR launching and searching where they were supposed to be was some time away, and they wouldn't widen the search fast enough for Leif to be rescued anytime soon. He'd die here if he just waited.

He was gripped by a quick flash of despair when he realized the precarious position he was in, but that quickly passed. He was a veteran of the norwegian Underwater Demolition Teams, divers that went after submerged ships and explosives for rescue and salvage. He recalled that they'd passed a chain of uninhabited tropical islands a few hours before the wave hit them. The islands were large enough to sustain life, but they had never been inhabited by humans as far as Leif knew. Kicking off his shoes and finally dropping his coffee mug, he started swimming.

It was tough going. The sea was rough and the sun beat down on him from a sky with scattered fluffy clouds. He had been through severe endurance tests when he was educated as a diver, so he knew his limits. Still, he was pushed to his limits as he fought against a rough and unforgiving sea. It was late afternoon when he found himself close to the largest island.Safety and fresh water and food was within reach, it seemed. But first he had to traverse the coral reef.

He tried timing his approach with a large wave, as the reef was broad and shallow. When the wave hit, he swam with it as fast as he could. But he'd misjudged the distance, and he sank down on the shallow reef, cutting himself. He winced as a gash opened up on his thigh. The salt water stung like crazy, making him grunt and wince as another thought entered his mind: sharks. He had little time now.

He raced across the lagoon, ignoring the twitching pain in his thigh, never stopping or turning around, preferring instead to give it all and reach the shore before all the sharks caught his scent. He made it. Only then did he chance a glance back. Yup. Several fins were evident, following his trail. But he was safe. And miracle of miracles, there was a small stream emptying out into the lagoon.

he drank his fill and looked over the gash in his thigh. It was about an inch deep, but it ran paralell with his muscle tissue. So that was good news. He tore off the right leg of his pants and tore off strips to tie off the wound. It was rough work, immensely painful. After he was done, exhaustion overwhelmed him and he passed out.

 

[slut_in_white]

She remembered her parents, sort of.

Her mother had beautiful, smooth pale skin. She was a very petite woman, with fine bone structure and large, dark brown, almond-shaped eyes. And very straight, very dark hair that she knew looked just like her own.

Her father, meanwhile, had been quite large. Tall, with wild red hair and a big, bushy beard. Broad in the shoulders with a jolly sort of belly. And green eyes that she'd inherited from him.

She was still a child when her father had surprised her mother with a family getaway to her mother's home country. She remembered that - she remembered her mother getting excited about introducing her children to the rest of her family. She remembered being told that she would get to meet her mother's family, and that they would love her. She couldn't remember the name of the country her mother was from anymore. She did remember her mother's laughter when she asked what the pilot meant when he said they were landing in the country's soul, and her mother's kind voice as she explained that there was a city there called Soul. And she remembered liking the name.

She also remembered the way the plane had started shaking abruptly, waking her while she'd tried to sleep through the flight. She remembered fire, and her mother and father holding tight to her. She remembered her stomach jumping up into her throat and choking her screams as they fell. And she remembered the feeling of the plane slamming into the water, and her body jerking back into her father's chest. And later, coming to the realization that her father had died to save her, by using his own body to protect her from the impact of the crash.

How she'd ended up on the island, she didn't know. One moment, she plane was crashing into the water, and the next, she woke up on the beach. She'd been small - about 10 or 11, she couldn't remember exactly - and she hadn't started keeping track of the seasons here until some unknown number of years after she'd arrived. She had no idea how old she was now, beyond the fact that she was an adult woman, still in the prime of her life.

She had counted 10 rotations of the seasons here, and if she had to estimate, she would say that she'd probably have been here for 15, though she couldn't remember exactly how long she'd been here before she started counting. Maybe it was only 12, and those first two seasons had felt very long because of the terror that marked them. Or maybe it was 17, and the act of counting made the years seem longer now.

For the first little while, she had survived on sheer luck. Luck had seen to it that she would never grow to be much larger than her mother was - short, petite and fine-boned - which had probably helped her in that she had required less food to survive for those first few years. Luck had similarly seen to it that she had learned to make a fire with only what was available in the woods. She'd been a girl scout before the plane crash, and they'd taught her things. Things she never would have imagined she needed, but things that had, as it turned out, saved her life. She knew how to light a fire, how to determine which plants were safe for her to eat and which plants were best to be used as tools.

The young woman was out gathering water for herself when she came across the body of... what was that? Uncertain, both curious and afraid, she crept down the stream, keeping to the shadows of the trees, towards the strange-looking creature lying on the sand. He looked like her, sort of. Bigger, obviously. And his body was shaped differently - more hardened lines than the curves she bore on her waist, hips and chest. He had yellow hair and... She froze, realizing abruptly that he was a man. A person. Like her. A man, like her father.

He seemed utterly unaware of her approach. She knew she was pushing her luck, creeping closer and closer. He might have been a predator, lying in wait for her to get close enough, and then spring into action... But she couldn't stop herself. She kept approaching, her eyes wide and uncertain. He was wearing clothes, she noticed, and remembered that most humans did that. It was something she'd forgotten. His had strange markings on them. Markings like the ones on the men who drove the plane that crashed. His face was different than she had expected. She remembered her father's face being very red, and covered in little brown dots. She had little brown dots, too. But this man had neither - his skin was reddened, yes, but that was from the sun. And where he wasn't sun-reddened, his skin was darkened a little, even though his hair was very light.

She crouched next to him, tilting her head slightly. Clearly he wasn't going to wake up, since she was leaning over him and he hadn't reacted at all. Either he was injured too badly to care about her presence, or he was sick. Or maybe just very tired. He was bleeding from his leg. She could help that. She took off, her feet silent on the sand, and returned a minute later with a handful of leaves, which she was chewing up in her mouth. They tasted foul, but they were good at making sure cuts like that didn't turn ugly colours and start burning. She pressed the wet clump of chewed leaves against the wound and then re-wrapped the bandage he'd made for himself around the cut to hold the leaves in place.

With that finished, she looked up into the sky. Nothing stayed out on the sand in the heat of the day. It made her sick if she didn't take cover under the canopy. The heat made her sick. It would probably make him sick, too, she reasoned. Moving him might wake him, and that thought scared her too, since she didn't know what he might do. She was queen here - she always had been. The island wasn't that large, and she was the largest creature on it. Or had been, until he arrived. If he had been a monster from the other, bigger island, she knew she would have left it to die from the cut, or in the sun. She could use the body for lots of things. But he was like her, and so she couldn't bring herself to do it.

She poked him, her whole body tense and ready to flee the moment he reacted. But there was nothing. She pushed his shoulder. Nothing. She grasped him under the arms and lifted. Still nothing. Well, maybe he wasn't going to wake while she moved him after all. She dragged him across the sand and into the brush under the nearby trees so that he was in the shade. She'd only just managed to bring him entirely under the canopy when he made a noise. She panicked and dropped him, his head thumping against the (thankfully soft) soil of the ground, and, in a flash, she was gone.