Page 2 of Not So Stranded
“Oh, okay. I, um… I’m Kit Tennant.”
Hiaka pushed up to sort of stand on their tentacles, making them about four feet tall. Well, technically those were arms and the long ones were tentacles, but that was only if they used the same terminology as applied to squid. Was that what they were?
“Are you an evolved cephalopod from the Architeuthidae family?”
Their blue eyes widened in clear alarm. “Are you…a scientist?”
Kit gulped. “Yes?”
Hiaka rolled their eyes and dropped their head back to groan at the sky for a moment. “Of fuckingcourseyou are. I find a suitable island, and there’s ascientiston it. Fuck my life.”
A laugh jumped out of Kit. He found a new species of sentient being and they cursed like a teenager.
They could glare like one, too.
“Um, if it helps,” Kit offered, “I’ve lost any way of communicating with anyone else because my boat is missing. It came unmoored somehow during the storm and is literally gone I don’t know where.”
“Oh.” They took a deep breath and sighed. “Yeah, okay. I mean, there’s no cell reception out here anyway.” They squinted at him. “Unless you’ve got a dedicated satellite?”
Kit couldn’t believe his ears. “You know about?—”
“Oh, dude, don’t even.” They held up a muddy hand, mouth quirked in disgust. “Save your amazement about how I couldever possibly knowabout human tech. It’s fucking everywhere. How could Inotknow?”
Biting his bottom lip to keep from smiling—because even pissy and muddy, they were still kind of adorable—Kit just nodded.
Hiaka made a grumbling noise and huffed a breath. “Sorry. I’ve had a shit day. I mean, not that you haven’t, but you know…” They tried to swipe some of the mud off their chest but quickly gave up.
Even as muddy as they were, Kit could see that their dark turquoise skin was dappled with a pattern like sunlight underwater. A natural camouflage maybe? They were also leanlytoned, with high cheekbones, full lips, and brilliantly blue eyes. Their gender wasn’t blatant, so Kit decided to keep thinking of them as a them.
“Hiaka!”
Kit flinched and looked in the direction of that holler only to slowly pan back to stare at Hiaka.
“Okay, so that’s a friend of mine,” they said. “Hold on a sec.” They cleared their throat before yelling, “I’m okay!”
“Are you in the lagoon?” the deep voice yelled back. “The mud is terrible!”
A fond sort of look came over Hiaka’s face. “I’m in it, too! And I found a human!”
“What?!”
“It’s fine,” Kit shouted. “I’m harmless! I promise!”
They didn’t say anything back.
Kit stood and looked down the muddy creek toward the ocean. “Do you want to try walking down there? I don’t know how far it is.”
“I don’t have a choice.” They gestured at the former creek. “This is the only way in and out of the lagoon. It’s not an option anymore.”
“Did you need the freshwater for some reason?” He looked in the direction of the lagoon, realizing he couldn’t hear the waterfall. “Is anyone else down there?”
“No, it was just us. Neither of us realized the waterfall could just stop like this.” They moved farther away from the mud, their tentacles coordinating their forward momentum effortlessly.
“Given the amount of rain we had last night, I wouldn’t have thought that whatever feeds the fallscoulddry up.”
“Yeah,” they said with a frown back the way they’d come. “Weird.”
Kit refocused. “Do you want me to go with you down to whoever that was? In case they need help, too?”
