the isle

4/25/20 - Writing sprint with a friend. The exercise was 20 minutes to spew out any narrative concerning an old story idea. Pretty rough, but I remember having fun with it.

The isle always trembles before a new arrival. It’s a sort of warning, the rumble beneath feet, vibrating up spines like a shockwave. The gods’ way of telling them that whoever arrives on the island has the power to move it, move them.

MC happened to already be on the beach that day. Grains of sand sticking between her toes, sea spray intermingling in dark hair. One moment, the placid sea stills in front of her as the shock wave reverberates. The next, the ocean spits blood, the waves brackish enough to sound like a hacking cough as it spits out dead weight.

A sword in his side, gushing blood, salt and iron filling the air in equal parts. MC knows this, has done this time and time again, but still she can’t get used to the way the seafoam licks up the crimson, turning a mollified shade of pink against the gore. The newest hero is dark haired, tan even beneath the sick pallor of his skin. MC kneels, cupping pale hands to staunch the flow of life.

She does not speak as the hero lays dying, unseeing, choking on words that must belong to somewhere, someone else. The ?? has told them this was for the best, waiting it out. They are here to be healed, to have their wounds smoothed over alongside their memories. Pain was often so much worse when it wasn’t physical.

This was the Isle. The only identity given wasn’t even a name, not to the isle, the people, the ?? herself. They were just what they were. Clean and whole in existence as it was.

The hero was lolling his head now, delirious. Footsteps behind her, the charioteers reading to lug another champion to safety. The hero closed his eyes, asleep.

When she looked into the water again, her face rippled. The tall noses, bronze skin, and light eyes from the last hero morphing into delicate features and silken dark hair. As the hero dreamt, the island came alive. And when he woke, they will still be here.

They are remembered as healers - something distant triggering the minds of heroes when they returned, when they scratched their heads and tried to recall a lost journey. MC has always considered them more as scavengers. Thieves. Stitching together their flesh only to pluck a wound in their minds. The story of their would-be deaths. ????????????