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Post by Butterscotch on Feb 28, 2009 17:23:05 GMT -5
This is the cleaned-up good version. Once I've cleaned up the old version I'll post new chapters.
Ch.1
How did I get myself into this? I mean, really, I just wanted a vacation. So how come I'm suddenly all Laura Ingalls Wilder, running a ranch?
I set my watering can down, and surveyed my farm. Aside from the small area I had already cleared for my vegetable plots it was choked with weeds, rocks and stumps. Clearing the land for my plots had been backbreaking work and I wasn't in any hurry to clear the rest. It wasn't going anywhere.
I walked over to the shipping bin and sat down in the grass. Watering the four vegetable plots was harder work than I had thought and I was famished. I pulled my rucksack off my back and opened it up. The first thing I pulled out was seaweed that I had scraped off a rock by the beach. Although the seaweed was edible raw, it was more nutritious if it was cooked. Unfortunately, I had no way to cook it, so I set it aside. Next I pulled out some flowers, two different kinds, one white and one yellow. They were pretty, but they weren't food. I set them aside too.
Finally I pulled out several colorful herbs from my bag. These were edible, but first I sorted through them, organizing them by color. Some of them were nutritious than others; these were the ones that I would eat first. The herbs had a bitter, unpleasant taste, but I choked them down since I had nothing else to eat, other than the raw seaweed.
Once I finished eating I put the flowers and seaweed in the shipping bin. I held the few remaining herbs in my hands, debating whether or not I should sell them. In the end I stuffed them back in my bag and left the ranch, heading towards what I called the village. If you can call six people besides myself a village. Yes, seven people was the entire population of the island: me, Taro, his daughter Felicia, her children Elliot and Natalie, and Chen and his little boy Charlie. Even though everyone is friendly and kind, it got lonely sometimes.
There wasn't much to see on the Island. Parts of it were inaccessible: to the East, a huge boulder blocked the path, and to the West is a wide river. I have no idea how deep it is, but the current is wicked. There are remnants of a bridge remaining on either bank. The bridge is just one of many signs of the island's previous inhabitants: there are several buildings, a well, roads, even signs. All of them are in poor condition. Even my own house was already standing when I landed on the island.
I often wonder why the Island became a ghost town. Was there a big disaster that made everyone leave all at once? Or was the decline smaller, more gradual? And I wonder if the island can again be the bustling town that Taro and Chen claim it once was.
I decided to pay a visit to Taro. I wasn't sure what to think of him. He was such a strange old man. He could be kind, and tolerant, but he had a forceful personality. Taro was the man reason I was stuck on this island. He also had this bizarrely accurate way of forecasting the weather. Taro claimed he could feel the weather patterns in his body. I've heard that people can feel dampness coming because it hurts their joints, but I don't quite get how you can tell the weather from how your eyebrow twitches. But the amazing thing is, Taro has never been wrong in the week since we came to the island.
I walked right in the house, not even bothering to knock. Felicia had assured me that it was okay to drop by whenever I wanted. I like Felicia. She's kind and warm and has a motherly aura about her.
“Hello Chelsea,” Felicia said, smiling. She was standing at her stove, and delicious smells were coming from it. My mouth watered. How I wished that I had a stove.
“Hi Felicia, Hi Taro,”
“Hello Chelsea,” Taro said. He was sitting on a chair, whittling on a branch. “From the way my eyebrow is twitching, I can tell it will be cloudy tomorrow.”
See what I mean?
“Where are Elliot and Natalie?” I asked.
“Elliot is packing up the goods that we'll be shipping tonight. Natalie is in the bedroom,” Felicia said from the stove.
“I'd better drop in and say hi to her,” I replied.
Natalie is the younger of the two siblings. She's 17 now, but her birthday is in just a few weeks. Natalie isn't exactly friendly, but I try to say he to her at least once a day. There are so few people here to talk to, I can't afford to alienate anyone.
Everyone in Taro's family shared the same bedroom, but each had his or her own bed. Shoving four beds into one room gave it a cramped feel. Natalie was sitting on one of the beds, reading. She nodded at me when I peered in.
“Hey,”
“Hey,”
“Whatcha reading?”
Natalie held up the book so that I could see the cover. It was warped from the water; Natalie must've brought it with her and salvaged it from the shipwreck. I decided that I didn't want to bother her and left the room. I waved to Taro and Felicia and headed back outside, to find Elliot.
Elliot was nearly 19. His personality was less forceful than his sister's and he tended to be rather quiet. Like his mother and sister he had pink hair and a slender build. All in all, Elliot seemed better suited to the book-keeping parts of the family business than the work he actually did, which was usually packing and lifting heavy crates. I walked over and began helping him out. He smiled sheepishly, but didn't object to my help.
We worked quietly together, talking a little about our work. He asked me how I liked working on the farm; I asked him how he liked packing shipping crates. We chatted about the weather and agreed that it's pretty freaky how Taro can predict the weather with such accuracy. By the time we were done, it was late, and I was tired and hungry. Good thing I saved those herbs after all.
In the daytime the abandoned buildings looked sad and lonely. In the dark they took on a sinister appearance. I hurried home,anxious to get away from the shadows that grew as the sun set.
~*~*~*
A few days passed, each not much different than the day I already described to you. My turnips matured, and I picked and shipped some, and planted new seeds in their place. That night I had raw turnips for dinner. I'm not a fan of turnips normally, but they were a welcome change from the bitter herbs.
On Spring 11, someone new finally came to the island. Gannon was a monster of a man, huge and rather ugly. A carpenter by trade, Gannon could do upgrades to my house, build a barn, a chicken coop. But most exciting of all, Gannon could open new areas of the island to me. He had already destroyed the boulder that blocked the road to the east, and he assured me that with enough money and materials he could repair the bridge that led west.
I was excited to see what lay to the East and I rushed through my chores, watering my crops as fast I could. In my rush, I spilled a little extra water on some of the plants and watered some of them twice. I didn't worry about it. Water is good for crops, right?
I rushed through the village, noting in passing that Gannon had moved into the empty building. He was repairing the roof as I hurried past. As I passed, Natalie came out of her house. She waved at me, and I stopped.
“Are you going to the east island?”she asked. I nodded, slightly out of breath. “Mind if I come with?”
“Sure,” I was glad to have company.
We walked past the spot where the boulder had been. There was no trace of it now, and I wondered what Gannon had done with the pieces. Had he taken them all away? Had he pulverized the boulder into dust?
We continued walking, more slowly than before. The area past the boulder had been part of the village once too. Several lonely houses in bad condition stood alongside streets that were overgrown with weeds. Natalie walked over to one of the buildings and peered inside. She grabbed her apron and used it to wipe off the grimy window, then looked inside again. I used my sleeve to do the same.
The inside looked just as bad the outside. Everything looked falling apart and a heavy layer of dust covered everything. It was even worse than the buildings in west town. I grabbed the doorknob, and yanked hard, expecting it too be rusted shut. The door actually pulled off the hinges because the wood was rotten and fell on the floor. I hesitated a moment, then went inside. Dust swirled around my ankles like tiny tornadoes and I sneezed several times. Natalie followed me in.
It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the gloom, but once I could see, I began inspecting the house. The furniture and appliances were a little old-fashioned, but not exactly antiques. I guessed they were from forty or fifty years ago. I picked up an old rotary phone and dialed my old phone number from before I came to the island. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but nothing happened of course. I didn't even get a dial tone.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Natalie whispered. “I'm going back out.”
“Yeah, me too,” I whispered back.
Back outside, the sun hurt my eyes. I squinted, and saw several patches of flowers and herbs. Jackpot! I started to walk over to them. Natalie followed.
“It's really creepy over here,” she whispered. “I keep thinking that I'm going to see someone over my shoulder.”
“Me too,” I whispered again. “I feel that way back in the village sometimes.”
Natalie nodded, rubbing her arms. I could see goosebumps on her arms, then I realized that I was shivering too. I shoved the herbs and flowers in my bag and stood up.
“Let's go.” I said.
We hurried back to West Town. Neither of us spoke. Several times Natalie looked back over her shoulder, but I kept my head facing forward. If there was anything behind us, I didn't want to know.
~*~*~*
In my own house that night, I sat on my bed, all alone and lonely. Thoughts of the deserted houses crept through my mind and I wished I had some way to shake them. I had no books, no TV, not even a deck of cards. I buried myself under the blankets, but still, all I could think of was the island. What had happened here in the past?
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