It had taken Charles three hours. Three. Whole. Hours. To maneuver his boat to the shore. Another hour had passed as he fought the sandy beach to drag his daysailer out of the ocean, which, by the time it was far enough from the water to his satisfaction, made him feel as though his muscles personally hated him.

His throat was sticky from thirst. He had to find drinkable water.

As he put both his damp boot and dry boot back on, some part of Charles’s mind knew he should have been freaking out. He was essentially shipwrecked. But his thirst and sore muscles pushed those thoughts back.

Water and food now, Charles figured, freak out later.

In search of fresh water, he pushed his way through brush, over the arch of a stony hill. The hill was large enough that at the top he could see a decent portion of the island… or land ring? Charles supposed it could have been an island, if something had punched a hole in the middle of it.

There was a round, central bay with a small mouth that led out into the ocean - it looked like the bay had once been a crater of some kind, which had filled with water and slowly began to erode.

On the rounded shores of the bay the rocky ground started to slant upwards to a small, singular mountain on the opposite side, shielding the bay from the open winds with its highest point. The mountain was rocky and green, and, even at the distance he was at, a stream could be seen near the top, trickling fresh water down its face into the bay below.

On the more level areas, there were square, wooden buildings, or remnants of what had once been buildings - Charles felt his breath stick in his chest upon recognizing the remains of a village. A decrepit dock in the bay stuck out sorely, attached to a main road bordered by one shop with a large, dusty window. Long grass was parted into trails with no rhyme or reason; game trails, most likely made by a large animal.

Charles had learned about such places in school; settlements founded after the Flood that were abandoned for one reason or another. Usual abandonment reasons were that the fresh water source was toxic, or the fish were too venomous, or violent weather made living there a nightmare.

Walking the broken flagstone roads of the village, Charles noted that two of the old houses had smashed windows and were missing doors.

He decided to search the broken-door homes first, hoping that the previous residents had left something behind he could use to hold water. At the very least he hoped for a couple pots he could boil seawater and catch steam in - there was no way he would make it to the mountain stream with the daylight he had left.

Charles circled the first house, checking in each broken window for any signs that something may have nested inside. While he found no sign of life, he did find an old, rusty shovel in the grass behind it. Having no other form of weapon he picked it up, the split wood of the handle dug into his palms.

He ran his fingers along the front door frame of the first house, noting deep scratches from something with claws.

His thoughts immediately went back to the mermaid who had tried to climb onto his boat. Where there were mermaids there were usually syren; and unlike mermaids, syren were amphibious. They climbed rocky cliffs, much like the ones on the island, and on oily, feathered wings glided down on the unsuspecting.

… Though Charles had never heard of fishpeople breaking into homes.

Maybe a fish hatchery now and then or the distant stories of damaged pearl gardens, but home invasion was rarely something they did. As much as fishpeople were an obstacle, Charles couldn’t fault them for trashing pearl gardens - despite the gentle-sounding name, he wouldn’t want to be stuck in a cage, forced to dig up oysters all day either.

He shook his head. Focus, Charles!

The house was empty save for strange bones scattered on the floor. Wear patterns in the wood boards underfoot showed where furniture had been before the island was abandoned. Charles could tell from the weathering that the bones, while old, came after the people who had once lived there moved out.

“What were you,” Charles wondered to himself, quietly as he could. He knelt down to inspect a lower jawbone the size of his forearm. It had a narrow U-shape and was lined with jagged teeth, scaly skin, browned by rot, still clung to some of the bones. “Reptile. Ocean crocodile?”

At that realization, Charles’s expression soured. Of course he’d be stuck on an island infested with sea crocs.

Charles rubbed his chin with his thumb. “That explains why no one’s here.”

The water in the bay was lukewarm, but was only as deep as Naoto was long. And it smelled funny.

The smell came in whiffs and waves as Naoto swam through the eelgrass. There were grooves in the grass where light currents had parted it, and tunnels made by something large-nereid-sized that had come through before him. The otter dove through the tunnels by his side, parting only to catch its breath at the surface.

Eelgrass was generally stringy and tasteless; better for livestock than nereids. But certain kinds gave off seeds - salt peas - that were edible.

Small fish ducked into the grass as he passed. Too small for eating by themselves, not that Naoto was a skilled enough fishermer to catch enough for a full meal.

Gradually the eelgrass turned into another type of plant that Naoto had never seen before. It was obviously a water-grass, though instead of being soft and silky, the new grass was thin and wiry. It wasn’t as itchy as sargassum but it wasn’t pleasant to the touch either. The wiry grass clumped in with strange, bright green plants that reminded Naoto of anemones with broad leaves.

Smelling crip yet the taste that came to his mouth was diluted and bland, Naoto noticed the strange smell was growing stronger. It was foreign, though it didn’t seem to bother the otter or feel strange to his sense; therefore it had to have been non-toxic. As he continued to swim through the plants, a static hum started to sound through the water. It grew loudest as Naoto reached the edge of the bay, a rocky incline that lead up into towering cliffs above the surface.

Naoto poked his head above the water and looked skywards, where water crashed down from the cliffs like a never-ending wave.

He swam closer and held out his hand. The water was cool as it splashed over his skin. Naoto held his breath, beaching his upper half on a rock, and stuck his whole arm in the falling water.

It felt oddly refreshing... and familiar.

Sticking his head under the falling water felt even better. A pleasant, soothing chill spread across his skin and made his scales shudder as his tail kneaded the water below. He slithered out of the water to let the pressure splash down on his entire length, before slinking his upper half back underwater to catch his breath.

The otter scampered over his beached lower half before Naoto flexed his tail and the animal dove back underwater. It scraped at the rocky sand, uncovering and immediately losing interest in a curved, off-white object buried in the grit.

Naoto slid back into the water fully, picking the object up between his long fingers, turning it over to get a better look in the light. Palely yellowed by time, it was as long as two-thirds of his index finger and slightly larger around at the base before tapering off into a sharp point.

“Looks like a whale’s tooth,” he observed aloud to the otter. “A really sharp whale’s tooth. Not flat enough to be a shark’s.”

In response, the otter squeaked and chittered, swimming obstinately between Naoto’s face and the tooth, knocking it out of his hand and instead shoving a flat rock into his palm.

“Like, okay, I get it, you’re hungry,” Naoto scritched the otter behind its ears. He reached down to grab the tooth, placing it into his bag. “And you’re not old enough to hunt effectively yet. But don’t think that I can teach you to hunt. I am so totally far from a fishermer it’s not funny.”

In what had one been bright, garish colors, the faded wooden sign above the dust-blinded store window read in an unfamiliar font: Ifland Byss Porte Store.

Charles had marveled at the strange, cursive letters the sign had been written in. The only person he knew who could write fluently in the archaic script was Daren - and even then, Daren hadn’t taught it to Charles. No, the Lieutenant was too paranoid of people reading his private notes. What Charles could read in cursive was what Charles had been able to figure out from Daren’s handwriting.

Byss must have been the name of the island or, at least, the former village. Charles had never heard of it, let alone seen its name on maps; old ghost towns rarely made it onto maps.

He gripped the metal handle of the wooden door and pressed down the latch, but the door was locked and stuck tight to its frame. Charles didn’t know why he thought that would work.

He rubbed his hands together before jamming the shovel blade into the crack between the door and the doorjamb - jimmying the shovel handle as he tried to work the blade into the tight space. Charles pressed his weight against the shovel. The door popped open and Charles fell forward onto the floor.

To Charles’ dismay, the wooden shelves lining the walls and the display table in the center were all barren. In fact, the whole store was empty - save for a worn wooden box, neatly tucked away behind the chest-height counter where it couldn’t be seen from the front. It was set on top of two, small wooden kegs; the box itself only held a scratchy wool blanket and a neatly-folded letter.

Charles felt that it was a little wrong to be reading the letter. But with so much dust on the folded paper, whoever it was meant for would likely have never gotten it anyways. It was written in common script.

Bedias,

When you come back from that escort job we’ll all be gone. Small storm hit while you’ve been out. You know the yaguars don’t come out in bad weather. We decided that we can’t wait for IRG backup to start the evacuations.

The two families on Levee Road took what’s left of their belongings, everyone else took only the valuables. Will send for after we’ve reached Smattering.

IRG is still planning on sending one of their ships back this way. We’ve told them to keep an eye out for you. Expect RV NUMINOUS coming from the West in July on the solstice.

Left you two (2) water kegs and one (1) blanket. Don’t go spending it all in one place.

- Vesta

“They evacuated to Smattering.” Charles went over that part again in disbelief.

Since the residents had evacuated there, it had to be within a reasonable distance. The only issue was that Smattering was on the opposite side of the Lantiq Ocean from East Banks.

Charles ran a hand through his messy dark mohawk. Now the freak-out was hitting him.

He was lost. He was thirsty.

He was stuck on an island with fishpeople and monsters.

“How the hell did I end up near Smattering?!” he screamed into his hands.

Charles went over the letter four more times, pacing the floor behind the counter, each time his face scrunched a little more and the paper came closer to his eyes - as if that would make the words make more sense.

Whatever a yaguar was, they were bad enough that the island inhabitants needed to request help from the IRG - the Inter-island Recovery Guild.

When help didn’t arrive in time they had taken the first big opportunity to evacuate, in risky conditions, leaving whoever this Bedias guy was behind.

The IRG sent an RV - a Research Vessel - back that way on the solstice of that year; but there was no date on the letter.

He looked at the two small kegs on the floor, clumsily tipping them sideways as he checked for any kind of stamp. On their ends they came up to his knees and were solidly built. He could hear the water sloshing around inside. But there was no stamp to indicate when the water had been sealed in the kegs. Barrelled water was good for several years, though after two it started to taste more of wood than water.

He tipped one back onto its side, rolling it until the plug was facing upwards before working the plug out with clumsy fingers. It took more finger strength than he would have liked, but Charles finally pulled it free with a satisfying pop! Charles wiped his hands off on his pants before tilting the keg carefully with one hand and cupping the dribbling water with the other, bringing handfuls of water to his mouth until his throat no longer felt like sticking to itself. When he finished, he pressed the plug back in the best he could with his palm.

Staying in the old store seemed like the best option he had, or at the very least the best one he could stand. If he was able to get into the other houses, Charles felt it was wrong to stay there.

Sure, taking some utensils or blankets wouldn’t be too weird, but the village had once been lived in.

After all, those buildings had once been homes.

Wooden pillars of an overlander structure that partially jutted out into the bay and loomed over him as he swam under it. To Naoto it looked like half of a bridge with some sort of house sitting on the end of it. What it was didn’t matter, only that there were large swaths of barnacles and mussels clinging to the old pillars.

Wrapping his fingers around a smaller bunch, Naoto called his Will to his fingertips in a short, bright flash to shock the mussels, making them easier to remove from their bed.

Shellfish farmers would use great blades to slice their harvests from the walls of old ruins-turned-farmland, but Naoto didn’t have the luxury of a giant knife… or the upper body strength to use one by himself.

He placed the shocked mussels down on a flat boulder, which the otter happily whisked away to snack on as it floated above him.

Something next to the flat rock caught his eye: more teeth. These ones were broken in half, with more scattered around the pillars. With a chittering, hungry otter bothering him Naoto hadn’t noticed the indents in the mussel swaths - like something big had raked its teeth along the bed, hoping to scrape off what food it could.

His extrasensories worked better on live beings rather than objects, but occasionally he could piece together vague histories. Naoto looked for the freshest scraping and placed his hand against it, immediately recoiling as he touched a film of cold mucus left behind by the creature instead.

Naoto stuck out his tongue, briefly swimming to the bay floor to wipe the slime off on the gritty sand. “Yuck. Nasty.”

One thing was clear about the slimy, toothy creature that lived in the bay: it frequented the mussel swaths. Staying there overnight was not going to be an option.