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Waking up

I arose, shaking my head and rubbing my eyes. Who was I? Where? Neither question did I have an answer to, or so I thought when I checked my pocket.

Finding only a passport, I opened it and saw it filled with stamps, some from England, London, Paris, everywhere, the most recent, in a country I'd never heard of, called Eropoa.

I fumbled through the room I was in, finding it was much shorter than me, and that there was a lantern in the corner, lighting it, I looked around, finding a compass, pocket knife, a small gun, and a map, or so the words on it said, for when I opened it, there was nothing but a medium-sized wooden fishing boat on the page, but as I moved around the room, I found a hatch in the roof, and opening it, I realized I was on the boat that was on the map.

As I left the boat, I realized the map was showing places I'd been.

I spent an hour or two walking down a dirt road until presently I came across a small town, it looked like something out of a movie, it had a cloth turbine windmill, a small blacksmith, and an inn, with a large sign that said 'Vacancy'.

It took another hour or so to reach the town, but when I did, everything I saw appeared on the map.

The first thing I did when reaching the town was trade the knife for a smaller one and some bullets for the gun, which turned out to be a revolver.

"You new here?" Asked the manager of the general store, who was a petite woman with a name tag that said her name was Asia.

"I don't know, but I think so," I told her, turning to leave.

"Well, when you figure it out, let me know, I'm interested to learn, seeing as we don't get many visitors, mostly people returning from having left as a child. there's something about this place that makes people born here unable to stay away." She said, handing me my change.

As I walked out, I had a sudden urge to travel again, to explore everywhere on the map. I had about a fifteenth of the map filled in, and I checked the passport again, looking for a name this time.

I soon found it, not able to see how I had missed it, it was on every page, right below a picture of my face.

It said my name was John, John Black.

I spent another few hours exploring the village, looking for anything and everything that could explain how I got here.

Finding nothing, I took another look at the map, and I realized that where I was was in the far left lower corner of the map, and the boat was on the inside of it, meaning this island was as far as whoever left it wanted to go.

After I explored the whole island, I headed back to the boat, boarding it and finding an operator's manual. I read it and learned how to use and maneuver the boat.

After checking the fuel in the boat, I headed back to the town, buying some fuel for it, and paying for it with manual labor.

A week later, I had paid off the price of the fuel, along with enough provisions for a few days of being on the ocean, including worms, lures, lines, and a fishing rod.

After setting out, I headed northwest, having seen a larger island about a day off into the sea.

Upon reaching halfway to the island, it appeared on the map, and I could tell immediately it was almost twice the size of the one I woke up on.

Upon landing on the island, I found a small tree and tied my boat to it, having not been able to find a dock or post.

After walking around the island for two or three days, All I had found was wood, wood, and more wood, so, after replacing parts of my boat, as I had come to see it, that had been damaged with new wood I had gathered from the piles of brush, I set off once again, sailing around the island and picking up my original course northwest.

While I had been traveling, I noticed something following me from the south, what appeared to be a large serpent or eel. I grabbed a bunch of fishing hooks, and, having time, melted one to the tip of my knife, after tying the knife to a pole, I began to jab at the thing, finding its hide was easy to puncture, I quickly killed and skinned it, cooking myself dinner with its meat.

A few days of traveling later, I had reached the edge of the map, so, having grown up solving puzzles for fun, I changed course to travel along the edge of the map, like finding edge pieces.

About a week later, as I began to run low on meat from the serpent, I began to fish, but nothing was biting.

While fishing, I drifted off and awoke to a large bird, which appeared to be covered in scales and had four legs.

I began racking my mind for anything I had heard of or seen in my life, and then it hit me, it was a dragon, but it was unlike most dragons, for it did not appear to want to hurt me, it was more interested in the thing tugging on my line, which, after reeling in, we discovered that it happened to be a smaller sea serpent, as I had come to call the beast I had killed.

I cut it into two, and after eating my half, and tossing the half with the head to the dragon, upon its apparent preference, I lay down in my bed in the hull, as I learned the room below the hatch was called.

While I was attempting to go back to sleep, as the presence of the dragon no longer bothered me much, I heard a thud, and upon opening the hatch, I realized I had hit an island, but, to avoid damage to what I later began calling our old boat, the dragon had raised it's wings and slowed our speed to only a knot or two an hour.

Checking the map, I thought we had found a second inhabited island, so I headed ashore, after coaxing the dragon to hide, for fear it would be hunted if seen.

After exploring the island, which took about a day, I found no sight of inhabitation, except for an axe.

Upon returning to the boat and dragon, I called it out of hiding, and now having seen the size of it, or, him, as I later learned, beside the boat, decided I would have to build a new one big enough for him, yet small enough to where the 100-hp engine could push it without need for rowing or excess gas.

It took me about two months and four attempts, but I managed to build a large boat, about forty or fifty feet long, and another twenty-five wide, that managed gas enough for me to return to the island of Eropoa.

Upon returning to the island, the dragon in the hull, which I had built with stairs wide enough for him, I headed ashore, returning to the general store and selling the serpent meat for gas and salted pork, as I had learned while building the boat that Drag, as I began calling him at that time, loved pork, so I made it a point to keep some for him.

Arriving back at the boat, I gave Drag a cut of pork before putting gas in the tank, moving extra gas into my steering cabin, and setting off for an island close by to the one I built the boat on.

Upon landing on the shore, I realized that this, unlike most of the other islands, was inhabited.

Signaling to Drag to stay hidden, I went ashore, where a small boy with a fishing rod greeted me.

"Hey mister, is that your boat there?" He asked, pointing to the ship.

"Yeah, I built it myself," I said, feeling overcome with pride for being recognized for something I did myself.













12 сентября 2024 г. 18:16 0 Отчет Добавить Подписаться
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Eryndor Kyler Writing is my way of life, I use it as an escape, a way to make friends, and a way to survive. It's why I live, and why I have the will to do anything. I'm not good at it, but hey, it works.

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