Reilly+M

Reilly M

Stranded

The Easy Days

I wake up to an unfamiliar surrounding and see three other people washed up in a similiar state as me, dazed and confused. On one side is a dark, loomy forest, the other an extremely steep mountain top. Once I get to my feet I check on Cody, wake him up while Riley and Alex snap to their senses on their own. Trying to decipher what happened, I remember being on a plane headed to Australia and a terrifying explosion destroyed the front half of the plane and then black. After discussing what had happened, Alex chimes in, "What supplies do we have?" At this point we look through our pockets and I find a knife, Cody finds a compass and Riley has a basic first aid kit.

Nearby, Alex spots a coiled up rope on top of a beat up tarp. Alex immediately checks the tarp and rope to see if they are both still intact, which in fact they are. "We could make a shelter using the tarp. It will provide cover from the weather. All we need is some sticks to set it up," says Alex.

Cody and I volunteer to venture into the forest to get sticks, and firewood. The outskirt of the forest was surrounded by shrubs and many different plants and greenery. As we walked further into the forest, it became reality that we were all alone and surrounded by nature. The only way we could make it back was to mark our way, so we stabbed dead branches into the ground as a trail marker, making them point the way out. By this time it feels pretty early, the sun is still shining bright, but the forest was very dark. The only light was the sunlight filtering through the trees and leaves, providing a slight idea of where we were headed.

Once we had collected a significant amount of supplies for shelters, we returned to see that Riley and Alex had collected coconuts as a food supply. We quickly get to work making our shelter near the mountainside. To create the shelter, we place sticks accordingly to make a house shaped roof with the tarp. The next day, early in the morning, Alex emerges out of the gloomy forest carrying a dead rabbit and I could tell everyone's thoughts were the same, we finally have meat. "We should make a fire and use my glasses as a magnifiying glass to light the fire." Cody states. It wasn't even a challenge to get the firing going, we had all the necessary supplies for it.

That night, I have a nightmarish flashback in my dreams recalling the events of how we ended up on this god forsaken island. We were all headed to Australia for a school trip. Everything was going fine until we enter a storm and turbulence. Now, turbulence is nothing new when on a plane, but from past experience it felt a lot more violent than regular turbulence. The cabin is now pitch black and everyone is screaming. An explosion dazes me, and temporarily deafens me. I then wake up sweating bullets even though I felt relieved to be rid of that horrid memory.

The next day I suggest that we make a bonfire just incase there is a rescue party searching for us. The resources for the bonfire were easy to gather, and we venture around the mountain to try and find how to go to the top of it. After what felt like half an hour, we reached the other side of the mountain and it was a magnificent sight.

The forest ends almost immediately where the mountain begins and it was possible to walk up with no effort because the mountain is just a huge slant of rock leading to the top. "We should use Cody's glasses to light the fire," Riley chimes in.

It's already Day Four on this island and all four of us have learned to cooperate;we weren't exactly friends in school.

After basking in the glory of the bonfire, we realize that we're out of food so Alex and I go and look for food; possibly for something to hunt. Now Alex and I have never been hunting before. I quickly make two spears by carving a stick nearby into a pointed tip and give one to Alex and the hunt begins. We are just walking along when I see something rustle in the bushes to the left of me and instinctively I turn and throw my spear.

Alex says, " What did you hit?" I reply, "I'm not sure." We both creep up to the bush to discover what we were both hoping was meat.

The Calm Before The Storm

We peer through the gruff bushes to see what I had killed. Just another youthful rabbit, unfortunately. We were both hoping for a change in food.

Back at the camp, Alex finds and displays the debris he found from the destroyed plane. It was just rubble, which means that we were the only survivors. We begin discussing other options to get off the island. Riley suggests that we should begin manufacturing a raft, and we all agree instantaneously because it was pretty clear we had no other choice. It feels like we are all young again, and this whole situation just feels like our imagination is playing tricks on us. I think we all wish that that was true and this wasn't reality and it was all a dream.

The next morning after catching some crabs for breakfast, we all head into the forest to collect some logs to drag back to camp. After about an hour of searching, we managed to gather four decent size logs, which Cody pointed out that it's clearly not enough for a raft, especially for all four of us.

Alex suggests, "We should make a make-shift axe so we could chop some trees down."

To make the axe, Alex searches for a rock that is shaped somewhat similiar to an axehead. After fiendishly searching, he returns with a rock and a tough branch for a handle. He then passes the materials to Riley who then tapes the rock to the branch and thus creating a feeble, but very useful axe. Alex puts it to the test and it works, but nonetheless it will take a long time to cut anything down with it. Later, Alex and I venture through the forest again, in hopes to find a variation of food somewhere on this island. The ground is rough, and littered with leaves and other excess foliage. It all seems like a very tropical forest. The trees were tall, so tall that they appeared as if they were in the clouds, with no leaves except for the top. There were many different colour flowers and bushes. The vibrant colours of the flowers stood out compared to the trees surrounding us. The bushes had berries on them, but after some inspection we all couldn't recognize them and didn't risk eating them. After wandering around for a while, Alex spots a tree with fruit on it.We quickly head over there to find a a small group of banana trees. Luck seems to be in our favour, because the bananas were ripe, and we could perhaps set up traps around it incase an animals try to eat them.

Alex exclaims, "The other two sure will be happy with this find!"

"Yeah, it will definitely raise everyones mood," I reply.

Back at the beach, I see Cody and Riley's eyes light up with excitement and surprise when they see the handful of bananas we had brought back.

Cody says, "I caught a crab earlier today."

Everything is starting to seem better, we all appear that we are getting used to the island by this point. We have two shelters set up and a designated area for a camp fire with logs around it to sit down by and cook food with.

It seems like everything is going well and we were working fairly quickly. But, we know that we will be on this island for quite a while, because we must collect a lot of supplies with the raft, unless we get lucky and a ship sees the smoke from our fire. Thing are seeming to brighten up today.

During the middle of the night a thunderstorm came in and reeked havoc. We were all awoken by the loud sounds of thunder, and lightning striking trees. We looked up to see pure black clouds above us, swirling around in a most evil way. The rain slammed us in the face and ripped apart the beach and the forests ground. The wind was so strong it was difficult to walk, and the trees were bent so far that they were snapping off, which just increased the havoc of this whole event.

Despite not being able to clearly see where we were going, the only way to communicate was to yell but we all headed to the same cave luckily. We all knew sleep was now impossible until the storm passed by. The winds knocked down many trees also, and destroyed our shelters, but luckily we had found a cave and had taken shelter in there for the time being. The next morning the damage was worse than we had all expected. The Storm When we woke up, we immediately evaluated the damage accumulated from the storm. Everything we had built up to that time has been destroyed. Trees layed over each other in pieces, the huts are nowhere in sight. The raft was in ruins, as was everything else. Why couldn't we have foreseen this, I thought, and I was sure that everyone was having a similiar thought process. Judging by the looks of defeat on everyone's face, all hope is seemingly lost. "What're we going to do?" says Riley.

We all shake our heads accordingly, lost in the reality of this unfortunate event. "Our only option is to rebuild," Alex chimes in.

"We know he's right," Cody exclaims.

We begin to search for the axe, and start carrying logs back to the base per say and begin to rebuild. We get a fire going and take a brief break from the hard labour. I turn to my right and see a very busy ant hill, working away, and I secretly wish us as humans could work as well together as those ants. We harvest as much as possible in the time period, getting one hut set up for the night.

The next morning, we get straight to work with more motivation than ever. It seems all of our survival instincts have kicked in like the pistons in an engine. We begin to build a raft, with several logs relitavely the same size as we are. We begin to tie up the logs with the rope. After hours of sweat and hard work, we miraculously finished it in one day. We hadn't realized that we haven't eaten today, and head on the trek for the fruit trees before the dark overcomes the light. We each collect several bananas and devour them in a matter of minutes. The days fortunately seem to be shorter and shorter every day we are stuck on this god forsaken island.

That night, as we are gathered around the campfire, we make the decision to leave the island on the raft in two days. It all seems surreal, how quickly we were able to rebuild after the havoc that ensued the other night. The next two days passed as if they were nothing, and the big day was coming up. We could hardly sleep due to the nervousness we were experiencing. We haul the raft into the crystal blue water, and the ice cold water pierced through our bodies and instantaneously gave us the shivers that would last a life time. Reluctantly, we board the makeshift raft scared out of our minds, yet determined to get off this damned island. The venture has begun, and we have no idea what the outcome of this will be. The waves felt like football players with the power that they were crashing into us. We're in the middle of the ocean, and blue is the only thing in our sights. "This may be our last few hours on this planet," I exclaim.

"Don't talk like that!" Alex shouts angrily, clearly still full of hope. But deep down we all know we are dead men, floating into the depths of a blue hell. As the hours drag by, we hear a ship's horn in the distance and hope is restored for the time being. We all snap out of the depression for a minute, to look around and see no ship, nothing in sight but the calm waves.

We are all awoken in the middle of the night to a storm and violent waves smashing the raft. Quickly after that the raft is overturned and Riley floats away into the depths of the ocean.

We quickly regain clarity and get back on the overturned raft before we end up like Riley, even though in due time we all thought we were dead men.

Later in the long days on the ocean, we see a pack of wild orcas surfacing around our raft. That was the last sight all three of us saw, because we were all awoken in the middle of the night drowning. The ice cold water ran through our veins and the raft was nowhere near in sight, and our death was imminent. We were so close in our journey, yet so far. What had happened was the vicious storms had torn apart our raft. The last thing I saw before death was blue, the calming blue of the ocean.