Swallowed in the Sea

[Twist_of_Fate]

Swallowed in the Sea​

A roleplay in the theme of Lost...


* * *​

United Airlines Flight 381 was scheduled to take off at 11:20, Eastern Time, from Miami, Florida. Its destination was Madrid, Spain, and the approximate flight time was projected to be a little under seven hours. The plane was delayed by a problem with the fuel, and left Miami International Airport an hour after it was supposed to, at about half past noon, and was reasonably full: about 3/4 capacity.

At 2:00 PM in Madrid, local time, a flight control operator informed his superior that Flight 381 was late coming in. He was told that that flight had been late going out; give it a little more time. Three hours later, the missing flight was headlining news around the globe.

Search teams were sent out; it was revealed that contact with Flight 381 had been lost about four hours into its flight, and also that it had flown into a violent Atlantic storm. Analysts and experts on every station and in every language all predicted the same theory that most people felt to be true - Flight 381 had crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. After a few weeks, the search was abandoned. The families of passengers onboard grieved, but eventually moved on. Flight 381 and all the people aboard had been, for all practical purposes, swallowed in the sea.

But they were not yet dead.

* * *


Cast

Scott Ceridwen ............ Twist_of_Fate
Jessica Rowen ............ Pywakit​

For now, this thread is closed between the two of us. New entrants - if there will be any - will only be admitted through a personal PM invite by me. Sorry, I just can't bear to see this thread die again due to having too many characters, or roleplayers of dubious quality and/or commitment. On a lighter note, feel free (and encouraged!) to read along for a tale of mystery and adventure.

 

[Twist_of_Fate]

Scott Ceridwen

Scott Ceridwen was an affable, smiling man of 24, who seemed - on the surface - to know exactly who he was and where he was going. He was good-looking but not a model, and had a reasonably good sense of dress, all with a very upper milddle-class air about him. Unremarkable except for his wit and opinions, he may not stand out in a crowd but you probably wouldn't forget him.

He was raised by a foster family, his true mother having put him up for adoption for reasons he neither knew nor wanted very much to look into. In high school he had a small group of loyal friends, and studied hard but played harder. Scott graduated near the top of his class, and went on to attend the College of William & Mary.

In the March of his first year there, he dropped out of the university. With no explanation for any of his actions, he severed ties with his foster family and brother, all of his friends, and collegiate associates. He cancelled all his bank accounts, insurance policies, and memberships to any organizations; he disappeared.

For the next four years, Scott held jobs ranging from bartending to stand-up comedy, never staying in one place long. He has his own reasons for travelling out of the States to Madrid, though whatever one he tells you probably won't be the truth.

* * *​

Paging Scott Ceridwen, paging Scott Ceridwen. Please report to the nearest white curtesy telephone and dial 183 for a message.

The woman's crisp, plastic voice sounded through the terminals of Miami International Airport repeatedly, calling out to Scott. None of them had yet penetrated his thoughts; he was sleeping.

Finally, with an almost painful yawn, Scott stretched his long legs, his blue eyes bringing everything back into focus as he blinked them repeatedly. He rubbed his eyes, smacking his lips, ran his supple fingers through his messy light brown hair, and settled back down, determined to sleep until the last possible moment to board the plane.

For the fourth time, the distant woman behind the intercom read off the announcement to Scott Ceridwen in her mechanical voice. He straightened instantly, all blurriness lost from his eyes as they swept to the sound of the voice, before he found himself staring somewhat illogically at a speaker in the ceiling.

Looking around, everyone was too engrossed in their own affairs to have noticed his slightly odd behavior. He was sitting in the area surrounding gate C18, the gate for Flight 381 to Madrid. It was supposed to have left at 11:20, but it was now noon - something had been wrong with the fuel compartment or something, Scott wasn't exactly clear on that.

He stood up and hitched his backpack onto his left shoulder, then made his way to the opposite side of the terminal, where a "white curtesy telephone" was located. While he walked, a United Airlines employee made the announcement that Flight 381 was ready to begin boarding: First Class and Preferred Members or whatever system they had were boarding now.

Scott stood in front of the phone, where a blue light was blinking continuously. For a long time he stared at the receiver, before slowly picking it. He dialed in the 183 code almost hesitantly, eyes narrowed slightly in apprehension.

"You have one message from... Mark Black... Press 1 to accept."

Scott's eyes widened, he paled slightly. The name rang in his ears. He stood almost frozen; behind him, a third of the flight boarded while he stood, as the sentence he had just heard repeated itself three more times. Then, hand shaking slightly, he set the receiver back into its place, ending the call. For another long moment he stood motionless, before turning abruptly back towards C18.

As he handed the employee his ticket, she glanced at the name and informed they'd been calling him over the intercom all morning. Expression blank, he reached out and took his ticket stub from her, and walked down the jetway without responding.

Finding his seat - 23B, Scott sat down, stowed his backpack in front of him, and buckled his seat belt. Who knows what thoughts tumbled through his mind.... A slight smile - an ironic, slightly bitter smile - curled his lips, before melting back into one of contemplation.

Flight 381 took off without incident from Miami International Airport, but Madrid was not to be its final destination.

* * *​

The Crash​

The plane had been flying steadily and seemingly without problem for many hours. As time zones shifted and the plane ploughed through the atmosphere, time seemed suspended. The passengers of Flight 381 were passing the time in varying ways: sleeping, talking, listening to music, drawing... however they relaxed best.

A light came on as the captain came on the intercom, informing everyone that they were expecting a bit of turbulence ahead, and that everyone should return to their seats.

Suddenly, without warning, the plane dropped over one-hundred feet. A variation in atmospheric pressure or temperature, who could say the reason? Certainly few of the passengers, most of whom were now screaming. The plane had dropped right into the middle of a storm, and the view outside of the windows was now completely black except for the brief flash of lightning every couple seconds.

Oxygen masks dropped from the overhead compartments, and passengers scrambled to get them. Red lights blinking in the cockpit and miscellanious noises only the crew could understand were drowned out by people's voices, shouting to each other, to themselves, to God.

And then, something very strange happened. Time seemed to slow down, and people were pulled into their seats, pulled out of them, pulled in every direction. Everything seemed to be happening so slowly; it was as if the very air was being sucked out of their lungs. Perhaps, if one looked, they would see a glass of water falling out of someones hand, the droplets of water perfectly still...

And then, all the lights went out. Time and space returned to normal; screams were renewed. In the cockpit, the pilots were stunned: Everything had just stopped working. Every single light was out, every beep was silenced. The throttles were loose and pointless. Gently almost, the plane careened downwards.

The crash was different for everyone. Some remembered it vividly, some not at all. Some would swear that the plane sank entirely into the water, completely swallowed in the sea, while others maintained it glanced off a mountain before it crashed into the land.

No matter what each person percieved, the end was the same for most of them. Most of the plane - the fuselage, one wing, the cockpit, first class and a majority of the business class - was at rest in what was unmistakably a jungle. At least a fourth of the passengers were dead, whether in the fuselage or scattered about the jungle. Passengers woke up in different stages, some where completely unharmed, others had branches or metal sticking through their abdomens. Some never lost consciousness, while others would lie prone for hours.

The tail section and the other wing were no where in sight.

The storm they had flown into moments before the crash was completely gone. How this was possible, none of them could yet say. But they could not deny the sunshine and the gentle, almost mocking breeze that wafted in from the beach to where the plane rested. Behind the broken end of the Boeing 767 a trail of fire had been violently scarred into the land, a distance of about 100 feet which started at the beach.

Despite being somewhere in the Atlantic, the island resembled an almost post-card version of what most people envisioned an uninhabited island of the Pacific to be. It was like a tropical rainforest, where bamboo and palm trees were the norm. It was humid and hot, but the mysteries of climate were only the beginning.

Flight 381 had reached its final destination. Welcome to The Island.

* * *​

Vague, dully-colored images wandered across Scott's conscience... Bursts of light and muted sound danced beneath his eyelids, enticing him and denying him, before his eyes opened slowly, as if stuck together.

He was staring at the sky, and for a moment his slowly-turning brain could only wonder why he was so damn uncomfortable... Stirring, he attempted to roll over, and almost fell out of a tree!

Fully waking up instantly, he flailed for a moment in utter confusion and panic, as a sound that was something between a scream and a wail tore from his throat. His grasping hands found a branch, and he stabilized himself, breathing heavily, his heart pounding fit to burst.

Not daring to move, he uttered a cry for help, only to hear for the first time the screaming and crackling of fire that his shock-numbed brain had previously hidden from him. What the hell had happened?

Taking a better look around at the tree he found himself in, he decided he could climb down himself. After a minute or so he was standing down at the bottom, and as he attempted to calm himself, he gazed around at the wreckage of Flight 381. It didn't help his nerves much.

Bodies - live or dead - were strewn around the smouldering area of the forest. People were either screaming or in shock; one man, he noticed, was clutching the bleeding stumps of what was once three fingers on his left hand. Scott felt nauseauted, but restrained his urge to vomit.

He quickly checked his own body for wounds, but could find nothing more than cuts and bruises. He had fallen out of a crashing plane, landed in a tree, and had not broken a single bone? Gazing around, the thought occurred to them that they should have all died, and yet many people were like him, similarly unscathed... How could it be possible?

 

[Pywakit]

Jessica Rowen

Age: 19
Height: 5' 8"
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Black and wavy, just below shoulders in length
Weight: 130
Nationality: American
Pierced ears, nose, and lip; tattoo of a coiled snake on lower back

Jessica Rowen never really had a real childhood. A daughter of high society, an American raised in England, she was expected to be every bit the proper lady as she grew up. Dance lessions, music lessons, and horseback lessons filled nearly every non-school hour as her parents groomed her to excell. Yet Jessica quickly grew to resent their overbearing manner, and even though she rather enjoyed the violin in particular (at which she was a gifted artist), by the time she'd reached the age of 15 she'd bloomed fully into the model of rebellous youth. She fell in with the goth crowd, intrigued by their mantras of alienation and gloom, got several piercings and a sizable tattoo, and after she was caught smoking pot in her abusive stepfather's library, a fight broke out. Her stepfather struck her, and she retaliated with a blow of her own. Unfortunately for him, her blow caught him off balance and he slipped and fell, striking his head on a low marble table. Horrified and convinced she'd killed her father, Jessica fled home at the age of 16, and with the aid of a credit card stolen from her mother's purse, bought a ticket and flew to America where she worked odd jobs until finally a private detective caught up with her. He'd been hired by her mother to bring her back home to face punishment for her misdeeds, but in the airport she gave him the slip. She stole a boarding pass from a woman who'd fallen asleep in the waiting area and managed to sneak on board Flight 381, bound for Madrid. She thought she'd managed to avoid trouble by escaping the detective. She couldn't have had been more wrong...

 

[Pywakit]

Jessica

Jessica gasped for breath, then doubled forward and fell into a tremendous fit of coughing. Seawater spewed from her mouth as she continued to hack and cough, her eyes screwed shut in pain at the wracking sensation in her chest. When she was out of breath and gasped in a new one, the feeling only redoubled the urge to cough. It seemed to go on forever, and when the urge finally passed, she wasn't sure if she was relieved or not.

For now that she could breathe again... what she saw as she looked around was something she'd wished she hadn't.

Bodies were everywhere. Strewn across the beach, floating in the water, even hanging from trees. For a moment, she felt as if she was standing on the beach of Hell itself, and when she realized that many of those bodies were still alive, writhing, she suddenly became convinced that she was indeed in Hell. The urge to scream rose for a moment in her mind and then, just as suddenly, it vanished. A strange calm settled over Jessica. Intellectually, she knew what had happened. The plane had crashed, struck down by some storm or something (the fact that the skies above were crystal blue bothered her, but she wasn't yet sure why). A lot of people were dead, or dying, but she seemed almost to be untouched. Soaking wet, sure; she was standing up to her knees in a sloshing tidepool, strips of seaweed hanging from her shoulders and hair, but she was unhurt.

Jessica waded up onto the beach, pulling away the seaweed as she half staggered, half crawled toward a man who had just managed to clamber down from a tree. People were screaming, the surf was pounding, and Jessica knew no one would hear her but she couldn't help but ask.

"What happened? Where are we?"

Suddenly, the weight of the crash seemed to bear down on her. Her knees buckled, and she crumpled down onto the sand in a half-sit, half-sprawl.

 

[Twist_of_Fate]

Scott Ceridwen

Scott looked slowly at the woman - no, girl - who had approached him, as if in a daze. What happened? Where are we? His eyes moved vaguely over the scene of choas and carnage while his mind remained strangely blank. Even the sound of screams and groaning machinery seemed muted. He looked back at the girl who had collapsed in front of him, and some part of him registered that she was asking for help.

Help... He should be helping, shouldn't he? He had a duty...

The beach swam before his vision.

Scott was seated in a cheap folding chair on the lawn in front of the Wren Building, at the College of William and Mary. Some 1,400 other freshmen sat alongside, in front of, and behind him, all preparing to be welcomed to what some called the best state-school in the country. Due to his last name - Black - Scott was seated very near the front, and sat almost on the edge of his seat, his face alight with hopefull idealism, listening to the speaker.

"...As students of this school, the oldest in the country - no matter what some uppity school called Harvard might say," - Some laughs at this - "you all are taking part of a school that has trained the likes of Thomas Jefferson and even Jon Stewart. Here you will all learn to embrace that which our God has given you... You will learn to use your talents to fulfull your duty to help your common man..."

The speech went on for a long time, but Scott held onto every syllable. After passing through the entrance arch of the Wren Building, he couldn't help but grin, he was ready to begin his journey, just as the speaker had said. He was full of elation and promise...

Just then, another, older student came up to him. He looked to be a senior, and shook Scott's hand with a smile.

"Scott Black? I'm Joey Marco... I wonder... Have you ever heard of the 'Order of the Crown and Dagger'?"​

Scott blinked, and shook his head slightly. Swallowing hard, he looked around himself again, and everything seemed to return to 'normal'. A new alertness and purpose came into his eyes, and he knelt down to the girl.

"The plane crashed," he responded, somewhat unnecessarily. "We're on some kind of beach, and... a jungle." He paused. A jungle? Where was there a jungle at this latitude - in the Atlantic?

There wasn't time for that now, he decided quickly, this place was dangerous. He reached out for her shoulder and squeezed it as comfortingly as he could in the circumstances. "Are you alright?"

 

[Pywakit]

Jessica

Jessica looked up at the man who'd approached her as he took her by the shoulder. She winced reflexively, expecting the action to set off a riot of pain, but then realized something strange. Apart from her throat, which still burned from coughing up so much sea water, and her feet and kees, which stung from her staggering and fall onto the rocky land at the edge of the beach... she didn't feel that hurt at all.

"I... I think so..." she replied, taking a quick mental inventory of her aches and pains again. Nothing.

"We... we crashed?" she asked again. She looked around, seemed to take in the sight of all the bodies and the shattered jet for the first time. She tried to stand and only fell back to her hands and knees again.

"OH MY GOD!" she shrieked as her body started to shake. She felt like she was about to fly apart at the seams... all she wanted to do was curl up and close out the world.