An Alien Land

The hard rock gravel crunched underneath Flake’s bare feet as he walked up the beach. All the while Flake found himself stumbling and falling over continuously, completely unable to keep his balance. As if he had gorged himself on the smelly old fruit that would occasionally dot the ground around fruit trees late in the season. Flake had no idea why he couldn't support seem to support himself on dry land, his only assumption was that he was just weak from starvation, his mind unable to process that his body was simply so acclimated to the rocking of the ocean that it couldn't comprehend the stillness of dry land anymore. Desperate for water first and foremost Flake stumbled slowly but surely up the rocky gravel beach and into the cool forests that seemed to dominate this land as far as his eyes could see.

Dense broad-leaved hardwoods and strange tall thorn leaves trees that were both thickly coated in green moss dominated this alien forest around him. Unknown birds chirped in the distance, as new smells began to seep into Flake’s nose as he escaped the ocean breeze. This land was truly nothing like Flake’s tropical island home that his ancestors evolved for, this was a land of cool forests.

Hearing the babbling of a creek Flake lunged only to trip and fall without truly hurting himself. Stumbling to his feet Flake hurried to the creek and looked around. It was shallow, too shallow to hide anything and it was running with haste. Flaked deep inspected the tree line around the creek for several moments, for taking a drink was when one was almost always most vulnerable. Upon guaranteeing his own safety Flake cupped his hands and drank desperately of the cool, clean, fresh water. This much fresh water was a blessing in Flake's mind, even with his log's rain collecting hole he had never been able to drink so deeply even once while he was out at sea.

Yet this blessing became its own small curse as Flake over partook in the stream liquid. For Flake soon found himself unable to hold so much water and began throwing up on the bank of the creek. His body so long dehydrated couldn't handle the amount of water he actually wanted to drink and in spite of the pain Flake soon followed his body's orders and ease up with the water.

Now that his thirst was somewhat slaked, Flake's attention turned to his shrunken stomach. The only thing he needed more than water was food and he needed it now. So Flake did what he so often did in his homeland. He began to follow the stream in hopes of finding something to eat. After hours of wandering upstream the midday sun drifting westwards and turning to the evening sun luck would once again favor Flake. As he wandered just barely he would see a silhouette in the creek, for a moment it almost startled Flake as it was of a similar shape to the beast that tried so desperately to eat him on his log while he was lost at sea. Yet on closer inspection it was different, it was smaller, closer in size to Flake himself than that beast, and it lacked the armored scales as well. No creature native to his homeland was quite like it, with the strange soft body of a croaker, but with the body shape of a Death Jaw or other reptiles.

Still Flake was desperate for a meal and this was his only hope he'd seen for one in days. So Flake got down and crawled on all fours. On the high edge of the river bank sat a large rock which Flake snuck over to with patient desperation. All the while the strange creature sat oblivious to the danger it was in, the setting sun giving it its natural nocturnal confidence. Pushing the large gray rock with straining difficulty on account of his weakened starving form; Flake sent the heavy rock rolling down the bank with speed. The creature feeling the vibrations of the rolling rock however quickly jolted away with a whip of its powerful tail.

Flake screamed out in frustration, as his would be prey jolted away in panic down stream. Flake was so hungry his human mind was giving out and animal frustration took over. A failed hunt had never pushed him into a screaming and stomping tantrum like he found himself in now before. Yet he had also never been so closely pushed to the brink of death before either. The birds went silent and the croaking of distant frogs stopped before Flake had collected himself and returned to his senses. Flake knew he had to keep calm, all this flaring of his temper was doing was scaring away would be prey, or worse attracting would be predators. Taking a deep breath Flake set out up the stream again, after many moments passed the song of birds and croaking of frogs returned to the concert of the evening. Soon the sun finally dropped behind the Western sky and night fell in full. Flake was hungry and confused but had no choice but to climb a nearby broad leafed hardwood and sleep in the woody embrace of its canopy for the night, for he still had no idea what predators hunt in the land aside from him.

Exhausted both physically and mentally Flake quickly drifted off to sleep once he managed to make himself comfortable in the tangled mass of branches. Flake as always awoke with the morning sun, starving and sore he slowly lowered himself from the tree and back to the forest floor. By now his sense of balance has returned to him and he could walk normally once again, which was no small comfort to Flake. Flake returned to stalking the banks of the creek, as the dim rays of the sun thinly pierced the small gaps in the canopy. Beyond food a couple goals came to Flake's mind as he walked, the first being that he needed to find a steady branch to make some sort of club or spear from. If he had a spear last night he had no doubt he could have properly caught that strange reptilian croaker in the creek last night. The second was that he needed to find some rocks to knap for tools. First food, then tools, and then ideally sparking rocks to make fire with. For last night as he slept naked in the tree he was beset by a deep chill, not enough for true harm, but enough to cause discomfort to his tropically evolved body.

Flake would finally find luck and reprieve from his hunger in catching a few finger sized frogs and eating them raw. They weren't much food but he happily took all he could get, as it was better than nothing. Still he wouldn't restore his body at this rate, at best he was just keeping himself from deteriorating further. As he wasn't exactly starving to death by this point Flake would experiment and hit rocks together to see what type broke in what fashion. The round river rocks were all too grainy in their structure to be broken into real tools. They didn't chip into flakes, they just crumbled into chunks on account of their grainy sand like structure.

Though one small cobble of a rock, black and silver in coloration with an ivory like texture and tight grain pattern would chip into a sharp flake. Flake himself elated, now he had more than just his bare hands again. Breaking the cobble into a crude stone blade with a river rock he found the cobble quickly became his first blade since entering this alien land. Quickly Flake also set about finding a sturdy seeming branch about the ground and cleared away any side branches before sharpening the end into a point. This new spear had nothing on his ironwood masterpiece back home but with it he had the option to spear animals again. Either small animals for food, or if need be to defend himself from unknown potential predators.

The evening sun once again began to sink in the western sky by the time Flake finished with his knapping and spear carving. Once again Flake took to the trees for his night’s sleep, the spear was nestled between two branches and the stone knife Flake simply held in his hand, relying on his curved fingers and natural positioning to keep the blade held tight while he slept.

Except he didn't sleep that night he couldn't sleep through his sheer panic. For all through that horror of a night Flake's ears were beset by the terrible wailing calls of various unknown distant beasts in the night. Long bewailing howls echoed across the night before the terrible bleating screams of an unknown being torn to shreds took its place. Flake had no idea what any of these animals could be as they sounded like nothing he had ever heard of before back home. Yet he had lived long enough to know what the sounds of prey being rendered to shreds by a predator was no matter the creature.

As soon as the sun arose in the East, Flake climbed down the tree and began to rush as fast as his broad feet could carry him back down the creek, spear and blade clenched tightly in each hand. Only once his meager strength and energy gave out did he sit and rest by the creek’s edge, panting in desperate fear. As he calmed down Flake would quickly drink his fill of water and march back down the creek again. In his worry he didn't hunt for food nearly as vigilantly in spite of his starving body. Because of this he made better time and distance than in the past two days and found himself back at the beach in the evening of that day. The only he managed to eat being another couple small croakers he managed to spear, he wasn't lucky to see the giant lizard-like croaker he did the day before yesterday.

Once again Flake was back where he started with the log he rode upon for so many days sitting in front of him well past the water for the tide had gone out. Though fate would be kind in rewarding him this day, as he would see the numerous tide pools and all the creatures trapped within them. The greatest of which being a large eyed fish with light gray scales, a white belly, and yellow fins. The fish was nearly a third the size of Flake himself and was trapped helplessly in a deep tide pool well too small to offer it any chance at escape or long term evasion. So Flake with great glee went to the pool’s edge and speared the fish through its side. The fish thrashed about and even slipped from the crude wooden point but it was already dead as it soon floated belly up in the tide pool to where Flake easily grabbed the thing.

Flake ate the fish raw, and it was the best meal he had since he caught that turtle out on the ocean. Its meat was sweet, almost having a mild fruity tinge to its taste and with Flakes shrunken stomach there was enough to feed him for a couple days. Over said days Flake would return to the stream for fresh water and hunt the land for sparking rocks so he may start a fire to warm his bones through the night. None were found so Flake had to make do with a makeshift nest of dry grass high in the rock formations on the beach. There he could keep his stone blade as well as other tools like what turtle bones he could find from his raft while he wasn't using them.

After the sweet fish ran out Flake found himself inhabiting the beach for two more weeks, living off of what he could spear in the tide pools. Typically he stayed away from the more strange and unfamiliar animals like starfish, urchins, crabs, or really anything that wasn't just a fish. Especially after one day, having speared a small octopus he went to eat the thing raw only to almost choke when one of the tentacles stuck to his esophagus. While Flake did begin to recover his ribs still showed and his hip bones still jutted out sharply. Though now he could at least drink down a healthy amount of fresh water every day, and hold more than a pittance of food in his tiny stomach.

Still he was weak though, his body needed nutrients one can't get from fish alone. While he did scour the land for wild edibles he hadn't found any, though it didn't help that the plants here were entirely different in every way to the ones back in his homeland. There Flake dreamed of fresh bananas, succulent mountain berries, and hearty tubers. Though most of all now that his death wasn't essentially one instance away anymore, he mostly found himself dreaming of his family. What he wouldn't give to be back in his cave huddled with Three Fingers and Loud Call, or to hear the playing of his children, even just the victorious hoots of a successful hunt with the fellow men of the tribe were dearly missed. The loneliness was what drove Flake to sorrow the most, it had been over two phases of the moon passed since that storm so cruelly whipped him away from his family. Two months of a deeply social animal and a family man being forced to live in total isolation with trial after trial being hoisted upon him.

After a couple days of no success in the tide pools Flake decided he would hedge his bets and pack up his makeshift camp. All he could carry were his spear in one hand, his stone blade in another, and a turtle arm bone pick he held in his mouth. Everything else was left behind as he decided to walk Westwards along the beach rather than risk bumping into whatever predators he heard in the night by following the creek. As well as the fact the beach seemed to be the best place to gather food in this land so far.

Two days of walking passed, of Flake nomadically living off of what mostly small fish he could spear in the tide pools. Though Flake could tell he was burning more calories than he was actually eating and that this practice wasn't sustainable. For while his unknown homo erectus ancestors were evolved for long distance treks like this, Flake's species had secondarily evolved traits for better tree climbing and maneuverability on their island home. Traits that helped him excel at climbing the many imposing rock formations, but left him with a short stride and large awkward feet.

On the third day of his trek Flake would see smoke of all things in the distance, assuming it was a natural bush fire and knowing the potential for food gathering that brings, along with it being his first source of fire since he arrived to this land. Flake rushed to investigate the smoke only to see something he hadn't actually considered yet, other hominids. Yet these ones were strange, from a distance Flake could tell they were easily twice the size of himself on average, and they seemed to have some sort of strange patchwork of fur over their bodies that never seemed to be consistent between each member.

Flake panicked deeply, for his species was a territorial one. His island home was so small and only had so many resources to go around so each tribe had to fiercely protect whatever patch of territory they currently occupied. Interchange between tribes only happening when exchanging members to avoid inbreeding. With this race of giants before him Flake knew he could easily be killed by them. Still he hesitated for a moment, for he was so lonely and desperate for human connection that his human brain began to override his animalistic fear.

So Flake sat in the bushes of the rock outcropping he scouted out from and just watched the tribe of giant hominids from a distance. They seemed to be gathered around a great bonfire on the beach, they numbered around twenty or so adults and five juveniles a similar size to Flake himself. On the beach near the water’s edge sat a series of peculiar logs, they were streamlined as if carved like a spear and largely hollow with their upper halves being mostly removed. Did they get swept out to sea and end up floating to this alien land as well? Flake wondered for a moment what land of plenty could produce such massive people, as all he knew of size were that children like him. Who were born and raised in plentiful eras usually grew to be larger than their contemporaries who were raised in less productive times.

Flake sat and watched this tribe of humans for what must have been hours in both fascination and longing, that was until he heard a sharp gasp behind him. Panicked Flake jumped and screamed a warning, turning around to see one of the giant humans looking at him with horrified wide eyes and a hand across her mouth. She had a tan complexion with long black hair that billowed past her shoulders. She had a strange slight protrusion on the underside of her lower jaw beneath her lip and almost no brow to speak of. Along with a flat face who's muzzle didn't stick out all. Her features to Flake were almost infant-like in appearance.

To the woman, a homo sapiens Flake looked like a child in absolutely deplorable condition. His skin was covered in scabs from healing sores, he was so starved most of his bones showed through the skin, and he stood completely naked to the elements. Flaked desperately jumped and hooted, waving his spear about in the hopes of scaring the woman off, so he could make a break for it before she would go get the men to kill him. The sorry sight of Flake almost drove the woman to tears before she raised her hands in the air in an attempt to show Flake she meant no harm. In truth she was on this rock outcropping hoping to find nesting albatross chicks to catch for dinner only to find Flake instead.

Reading the signal, a universal sign between humans denoting a lack of harmful intent, Flake settled slightly. His spear was still raised high but he no longer jumped about and shouted. What the woman did next would surprise Flake the most, she would reach into a curious calloused skin pouch and produce a piece of strongly smoke smelling red meat and then held it out in offering to Flake. Kindness, the first time he met an alien species of humans in this alien land and the first thing he would receive wouldn't be spear tips and shouts; it would be genuine human kindness.