@Polybius @Dark Light @Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock @Voltus_Ventus

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"Curling your fingers once more, you overcome the lingering doubt and draw up first the red book as it sat nearest to you in its wooden coffin. Flipping through its pages, one knee kissed to the sands of the shore, you discover it is a manual of fighting men. While written in a seemingly incomprehensible script, vivid yet somehow simplistic sketches of men at arms remain."

"Setting it aside, you curiously hover over the next piece to select. Opting for the simplest of answers in this confusing time, you draw out the vanilla leather, its bleached surface much like the island's. Thumbing through it, it appears encrypted as well, although it too appears to have a decipherable meaning; was it truly a work of a holyman, a journal of some priest?"

The book of the priest catches my attention, I was never a man of great piety but perhaps my very survival is the design of the Divine? I will try to begin deciphering the bleached leather journal in the hopes of such answers.

@DocRock

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"Upon the sunny shore of your prison, do you begin to browse the apocrypha that your fate has granted you. Through the first few pages you discover that the words and imagery are all very strange in themselves, much like the others you dared browse in passing earlier. Whereas those others filled you in this weary time with a variety of emotions, as you hope this book soothes your soul. Sadly, for all your efforts, you cannot make out the text's meaning, at least not in this moment, but it is a bright point of light to see such terrific and truly awing imagery of what appears to only be paradise. What a contrast this moment is in relation to the darkest of darkness that threatened to swallow you whole."

"While there is no knowing just what the rest of the text entails for now, a strange quirk draws your eyes from the pages you are reading. Perhaps it really is madness gnawing at you still, as your brief interlude of lucidity strikes you with the reality that all of these books, barring the one you hold open in your palm, are clearly damaged beyond legibility. Did you truly pick the only one that survived at all or had it been fated that way? The how and why is already gone from you, as ashes begin to land upon the page. Brushing them off, you snap your prize shut and secure the bleached leather..."

@Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock

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"With prize in tow, you for now relinquish the oddness of the scene and the crowding, concerning thoughts it has permeated your mind with. Batting them away like gulls after your prized catch, you heft the pale text under an arm protectively and begin down the beach, searching as far as your eyes may reveal to you in the hopes of further goods that had gone adrift. Not long after, much to your fortune, do you discover more debris lapping up upon the shore. Hurrying, the eagerness of perhaps more directly useful supplies at hand, you set down your book after ripping off your shirt and using it to cradle the text, and then dash off into the water."

"Wading up to the pits of your arms, feet narrowly floating by themselves, do you manage to grip the edge of the metal and begin guiding it with the aid of the sea. Like the ship it reasonably once belonged to, the large alloyed hunk of grayish metal comes to a rest at the shore with you beside it, walking in from the warm waters."

@Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock

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"Casting the hunk of metal upon the beach, you wipe your brow, brushing aside the sweat and salt that has clung to you on this humid island prison. Not allowing the brief tax of fatigue to sway you, you look over your catch and glean nothing of apparent value, but realize that this will make for the reasonable start of a shelter. However, what you realize to be more important is water, perhaps even food, in which the dawning of reality settles in more upon you. Your mysterious tome might be well protected and saved now, full of seemingly undecipherable cryptic text and myth, yet you were anything but so safe and secure."

"Exhaling sharply and cupping your hand over your brow, you peer into the darkness of the night. While the illumination behind you on the horizon set a glow to all the world in its realm, the forest was still as dark as pitch and just as ominous. What would lie in wait for you if you dared venture into the wilderness? Would it be a greater sentence than the threat of starvation or shriveling through being parched? Or would the unknown once more save you?"

@Pyromaniacwolf @DocRock

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"With great trouble in the depths of your heart, you decide not to, for the time being at least, delve into the dark undergrowth. A jungle as this could contain any manner of threat from the tearing, gnashing fangs of carnivores to the sickening and insidious venom of any manner of dreadful insect, particular in this place under the guise of darkness. If it were any consolation to this understanding, as the fire at sea died down, more of the stars above revealed themselves and through your bearings, you are of reasonable confidence dawn was not terribly far removed. Some more hours of suffering, wandering of the beachhead, and first light would surely be upon you. However, this turn of fates so too made it more difficult to read once more and thus your opportunity to leaf through the mysterious book you clung to, clutched fast to your chest, would need so too wait."

"For now you returned to combing the beach, fingers prying at the vanilla-tinged leather, tacky mouth thirsting for water. A lesser man might have surrendered to the urge to sip from the sea but the tales of lost sailors ages past forewarned this outcome only spelt doom. So you busied your thoughts with praying that more goods might find themselves ashore. Which in turn was answered with a compass-like pull..."

Hopeful for new goods to scavenge from the ocean, I will follow my sense along the beach and hope my intuition is correct.

@DocRock

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"Your intuition or your calling, whichever it might be, leads you back along the shore. Heeding this invisible, siren's call that tugged not just upon your mind but the strings of your heart, you pierce the darkening sky. Showered with the dust of the stars far above and the fading life of oceanic flames adrift beyond, your wandering, waterlogged soul drifts across the sand like a piper. The delirium of your endeavor harrying you, you near trip over a swathe of seaweed that laid tangled on the shore; thinking at first to curse it, you discover as though it might well have reached out to you, at least in concept. Ensnared within its green, slimy grasp along the bulbous ridges and leaf-like protrusions, do you find another prize that the ocean brought ashore. This time a little quarry as some rope, presumably rigging of the vessel."

"Gathering it in your hands, as you begin to reel it in from more of the waves lapping at land, you realize it is attached to some heft. But thanks to your build and being none unfamiliar to sand, you haul the rest of the catch ashore and find yourself in receipt of even greater a prize. Why, entangled within the cord and wrapped in more of the kelpy green, is the footing of wood. A sizable shape like that of railing, you have recovered either what could be firewood if left to dry or more material to build a primitive hovel."

I brush away some of the kelp, and examine the wood, to see if I can learn anything more from it. Regrdless of if there is anything or not, I pull it further up, away from the possible tides, and try to remove more of the kelp, to ensure it could dry faster.

@Pyromaniacwolf

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"Pulling aside the strangling bits of kelp, your eyes squint under the starry night and peer for further answers among the wood. For the time being there is no obvious indication of anything special about the wood and your memory still, even yet, has no recall of there being wood or none at all. The entire area seems nebulous and void, with you shuddering to think what would have become of you if you opted to give in to the darkness, to simply fade away in the depths below the conscious mind. This moment of pause ends, just as you hoped it would, and you return to the debris and freeing it from its bonds."

"With another cache hauled ashore, set beside the sand, you quickly acquire your tome one more and heft it under your arm, keeping its surface fast to your tattered clothes. What now to do, to comb more of the beach or venture elsewhere? To sit and ponder on the events or dare to sleep? So many choices that you quickly banish the thoughts, lest your own mind turn again into the maelstrom that had plagued you prior."

Perhaps it is best I am thorough before I retire for the night? I will go over the beach one more time before I rest.

@DocRock

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"Sifting the damp sands once more in preparation for your attempts at rest, you come across the last few bits you can make out at this hour. The glow of the flames now settling, either the fire itself dying out or the wreckage upon the waves further off into the distant horizon, the endeavor was indeed becoming more complex and complicated. However, your rewards still awaited you all the same and you haul in like a catch some frayed rope. Each stroke of your arms, hand over hand, you drag in the coil of fibers until it is in your possession and free of the seas's cool grasp. Despite how waterlogged as it is, it is not much worse for wear, and in acquiring it you make another discovery."

"Much like the chest, you find a rucksack crafted from muted, aged duck canvas. Hastily gathering the floating treasure, plunging into the sea once more, you rescue it from its place adrift and return it to dry land. Beside your ivory prize do you open the throat of the sack and begin to part through it. While somewhat resistant to water, its time spent floating at sea for at least hours has not kept its contents completely dry, and you are left with a drenched pair of boots, pants, and a sailor's coat, as well as a small steel lockbox and a notebook, the latter of which audibly shifts with contents when you put it to your ear. Among the other goods, it seems for certain they might be ruined, as the notebook ink have run off the pages; the journal ruined forever."

I examine the sack further, checking the pockets of the coat, the pants, and the inside of the boots, for a key to the box. After I finish up checking each item, I place them atop the wood, to let them hopefully dry in the sunlight, so I can use them as warmth later.

@Pyromaniacwolf

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"Riffling through the pockets like some petty thief desperate to squeeze out one more coin from a sapped victim, you find nothing of further use. The key, wherever it is, is most certainly not here. Running your hand through the hair, you exhale in disappointment, with the salt at your lips from your sweat and the sea spray irking you further. Brushing your mouth with the back of a wrist, you lay the clothes first over your shoulder and the sack over the other until you reach the drier sands. There, over wood and under the moonless night, you cast them out to dry. Surely they will in the hours to come."

"Again you are left standing on the warm beach, almost adrift again in thought but shaking yourself back to reality. There is no telling what will happen on your next venture into the unconscious although you are rightfully concerned. The last time in which you had ventured there some hours before was not so favorable. All now that was left was the question of what to do once more."

What more can I do? It is best I rest for a time and then begin to plan my next move.

@DocRock

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"Trawling together your bits and bobs from your scrounging, you tuck the pale leather exterior of the mysterious tome you have into your arm and rest under the shanty. With your arm serving to steady your head, you find yourself in the strange ambient evening air to drift off again to the unconscious. The fatigue of your endeavor sucks you under before you know it and soon there is an all too familiar fall that comes with you into the darkness. Yet this time, rather than dragged beneath where there is no breath to be had, you find yourself in the twilight of lucidity in the shallows. Perhaps here your will might manifest, for the storm that tore at you before is gone; the jaws of the abyss not ready to devour whole."

"Surely stirring some in the waking world, you realize this is your opportunity if any to find some recollection of the past. All that remains is for you to focus, to guide and steer your vessel of thought, hoping that it avoids the rake of the traumas survived and that it sails into the smooth harbors of answer..."

Upon waking, I try to focus, and try to recall what happened. What brought me to this beach, do I remember where I came from, why was I here? One at a time, I try to figure out these questions.

@Pyromaniacwolf

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"Having decided, for better or worse one cannot be so certain, not to plumb the dark depths you instead awaken with your mind lingering on questions. With your focus intent upon pertinent questions, you search for answers fruitlessly by grasping at phantom tangents in your mind. The first being what brought you to the shore was, certainly, the caress of the sea but what had become of your ship you do not recall, or do you? From over the railing you do recall your fall into the dark waters, christened by the night. But was it accident or intentional? All you can conjure within the mind's eye is the slow fall you began until the ocean sucked you under, how the sky turned bright and furious rather than its gem encrusted midnight tapestry."

"Stranger still, when you think of where you came from, you are haunted by the ghostly thought that something terribly, truly horrible brought your vessel to the waters that claimed it. Like some monster which you cannot look directly upon lest you give in and die of fright, a shroud conceals both it and you, one from the other. Although now, in your heart of hearts as you reach to touch the pale text by your side, you feel the overwhelming presence of terror quelled. This is indeed the real world and the haunting memory of what put you aboard that doomed vessel disappears, just as the concern for why you are here. If anything, it seems fate deemed it, oddly enough - as if some sort of master plan."

Whatever terror sunk my ship could still be near the coast, it is best I take what I can and head further inland.

@DocRock @Dusksong

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"With cold rationale, you decide to break your pitiful camp and gather up what few objects you can carry. First and foremost is your treasured text, which you cannot help but give a halfhearted smile to, knowing that you will not be without something to preoccupy your wandering thoughts from that which unnerves you. Slipped in to the sack, you include the now dried yet still so faintly damp clothes you found and the small lockbox. Seeing as there is nothing else you can carry on your back and averting your eyes briefly from the sea as you consider your flight, you notice something upon the sand where you had rested the goods."

"It seems in the night you had missed it in your rifling through the goods but you discover a silver necklace, upon which hangs an unadorned silver ring. In the dim hours of the morning sun, the fires of the night before lost forever, it glints softly up at you with its reflection and almost asks to be brought along. Perhaps the sentimental situation of realizing you might well be doomed on this island, if not at sea, brought this to mind or it might well be that it has greater importance than you can recall. It might well even be yours but there is absolutely no knowing in this moment as you kneel beside it."