Page 4 of Outcast Island

I run my tongue over one sharp canine as I scan the dark forest. My vision makes everything seem bright, but I know it’s nighttime. The sun is nowhere to be seen, and the moon hangs in the sky, cowering behind weighted clouds as if it’s an ominous omen of dark things to come.

Hide,it seems to say.

Looking around, I survey my options. There’s a burning escape pod that I recall being jolted around in like a rag doll. Then there are the trees, and the water.

Water is death,my instincts tell me. There’s nothing out there for me.

But whatever is waiting for me in the trees is not much better.

How do I know all this?I wonder. My senses pick up sounds, smells, and every stray glimmer of light with ease. There’s a quiet pattern in the tree line, betraying the passage of skilled predators.

Three of them?

No, four?

I decide on five, at least. But one is separate from the rest and has heavier footing, as if it doesn’t feel the need to hide its approach.

And the sound is becoming louder. I don’t have much time.

My mind automatically catalogs how many minutes it thinks I have until I’m discovered, which doesn’t match up to how much time I need to heal.

How do I even know all that?

Everything about my abilities seems natural, but I can’t remember why I would be able to see in the dark or why my senses are so sharp.

What am I?

Because I’m not human, I don’t think.

I don’t know what I am.

I don’t even knowwhoI am,I realize as I wet my lips with my tongue, trying to get rid of the vile taste.

What’s my name?

And why can’t I remember that?

The ache on the side of my head might explain the diluted memory of my body slamming into the side of my escape pod. It was as if a god had reached down and slapped me onto a new course.

And then shook me around a few times just for good measure.

For the initial push, I’m grateful, because my escape pod had a malfunction and had been about to crash into the sea. I shouldbe drowning right now. Even if I don’t know what I am, I know being trapped at the bottom of the sea would eventually kill me.

But I can’t say I’m doing much better right now, because I’m a mangled mess on the ground.

I seem to be able to clearly remember everything immediately before and after the crash, but nothing beyond that.

Doesn’t matter,I think.I need to figure out where I am. I need to explore?—

Stay,my body seems to tell me, but I reject that absurd idea.

I have to move. When I try, pain slices up my legs as if they had shattered into a million pieces and turned into glass.

Heal first,I decide.

The appendages are stuck in wrong angles and I force myself to adjust them. A cry bubbles in the back of my throat, but I swallow it down. It feels like a trained skill my body learned to master a long time ago.

Maybe I don’t want to remember my past.

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