Unseen Messages(116)

But that was a lie I could no longer believe.

The chances of rescue became more and more irrelevant every week. We were living on borrowed time.

Hard-earned time.

Time that wasn’t kind nor had any intention of giving us a break.

We’d all healed from our crashed arrival, but it didn’t mean we wouldn’t suffer other injuries, illnesses, mistakes, and consequences.

We wouldn't come out of this unscathed. No matter how much we might wish.

We were on the brink of extinction.

And we couldn’t let our guard down.

Ever.

.............................

Bad luck visited us a second time.

This time...it brought hazardous weather.

On the fourth day after Conner’s accident, the clouds galloped over the sun in the late afternoon, blanketing our island with false darkness. The wind sprung from nowhere with the clamouring hooves of thunder and lightning forked as if Zeus himself waged war on his brother, Poseidon.

Our task of cooking dinner was put on hold as rain droplets the size of school buses fell in a heavy sheet a second later. We all dashed into the home Galloway and Conner had built and gnawed on coconuts and salted fish as rabid winds snapped and masticated our roof, tearing away our window coverings, boring a hole for an impromptu skylight, and threatening to destroy the walls.

Once again, the storm reminded us (just like the stonefish had) that we were insignificant; entirely unsubstantial and dependent on the mercy of whatever the world wanted to give.

Memories of the helicopter crash kept us somber. The tally of how many days had passed since we’d been protected by glass and metal, rather than bamboo and flax, repeated with sorrow.

We huddled together beneath a spare blanket, each consumed with thoughts of loved ones back home and the fact that they would never know we were alive...or dead, if we didn’t survive.

It was a long night.

Luckily, as Fiji slowly lightened, the squalls gradually quietened. The walls held and the sky grew bored trying to kill us.

By the time we climbed from the relative safety of our bungalow, dripping wet, with the mammoth task of patching up our home and food stores, we left optimism behind as we surveyed our island.

Everywhere, the sand was littered with flotsam. A jumbled hodgepodge of broken rubbish, regurgitated by the ocean. Seaweed slithered on the white sand like entrails of a giant squid while plastic shopping bags from purchases long ago fluttered in the trees.

We didn’t say a word as we drifted to the shoreline, collecting useful items given through the charity of the storm.

By the time we’d sunburned and needed to retreat from the noonday heat, we’d collected a broken deck chair that’d been on the ocean bottom for decades (judging by the barnacles on its rusted frame), an empty oil barrel, a few dead seagulls, rotting fish, and a tangled green fishing net.

Apart from the carcasses of dead creatures, every inch of the marine litter would be given a purpose.

Somehow, bad luck had tried to ruin us but the opposite had happened.

We’d been given things that we didn’t have before.

Things that would increase our lifespan for the better.

Instead of always being known as the night from hell, it was christened Christmas morning. The holiday season might’ve been delayed by a few weeks, but Santa had finally found us with his sleigh and reindeer.

.............................

Even though happiness had come from a night of disaster, I still couldn’t shake the memories of what it’d been like when we were first stranded.

The first panic.

The first helplessness.

The first prayers for salvation.

I’d forgotten the depth of craving for home or the endless begging for a rescuer. Time had adapted us and along with physically becoming able, our thoughts had evolved, too. Days passed where I was content. Weeks even.

I was happy with our life and consumed with lust and need for Galloway.

We’d all become guilty of forgetfulness. And soon...who knew what the word home would mean. Would this island become home? Would this wild existence become preferential over the rat race of society?

I didn’t know.

I didn’t know if I wanted to know.

Because if this did become home and our mismatched bandits became a real family...what did that mean for future goals? Did we never try to leave? Did we accept that this was our fate and plant roots more permanent than the ones we already had?

I didn’t have the answers and, a few nights after the storm, when no one was around to see my betrayal, I tore out a page of my notebook with simple lyrics to a song I’d written in my darkest days on the island.

I rolled the parchment.

I stuffed it into one of the plastic bottles donated by the sea and tossed it as far as I could into the tide.

Messages had been what brought me to this place.

Perhaps a floating ownerless message would be the one to set us free.

.............................

The third bad luck strike wasn’t so much our doing or the world trying to kill us...but more of a forgotten date that ruined a little girl’s joy.

Pippa turned eight.

And we didn’t celebrate.

It wasn’t until her sniffles, a week after the monsoon, made me crawl out of bed and go to her that she told me. Holding her in the dark, she broke down, unable to keep a brave face anymore and told me the most awful thing.