Run Maria! Run, they’re going to take your wings away!
Juan ran the scenes over and over again in his head, pounding head, something trying to escape like a tiger in a cage. Head close to exploding. He clawed overgrown nails like talons to his temples, ripping out feathers and the skin beneath and chipping off nails with it. He didn’t know where he was, not in this exile. Not in this hell. Fortunately, where his little boat had crashed seemed deserted, and his mechanical wings weren’t even very rusted, but the tarp between the metal bones was torn and would need repairing. He flexed the wings where they attached to his stubs, and stood up from where he’d lain, breathless, for the last six hours.
Juan fell. He’d forgotten that ever since pissing off some of the islanders on one of the other hunks of rock around here, he’d had to deal with a bum leg. That’s why he was here. Memory was a tricky thing these days. It escaped, like a leaky bucket trying to hold water. That’s the worst part of living too long. Forgetting. Well, Juan should still look for food. Yes, that’s what he should do. He eventually managed to balance his weight and dizziness and bad leg and in order to walk a little ways towards the shore.
Crabs had gathered in masses along the shoreline, and Juan knew seafood was the best food on an island. Not like a seed-eating dove like him should really be putting more strain on his digestive system than usual with meat, but he’d have less emptiness and ache in there anyways. His wings dragged in the sand. Juan sat down in one big humph of movement. He grabbed the nearest crab by the claws and smashed it into the other nearest crab, breaking open both of their shells.
Not a single other crustacean or creature seemed to notice. Food was food even when you were some sort facultative herbivore-not-carnivore, so Juan ate. Raw crab, gross. Food is food, Juan repeated to himself, food is good is food. Maria would have said something like that. Juan, in an instant, hated her guts just as much as he wanted to rip them out and use them as a necklace. She left him. Maybe she was right to leave him. Anyone would be. Self loathing and pity were not typically a good style but he was hungry and this crab was absolutely not filling any aching chasms. Juan was the first person to acknowledge he wasn’t quite stable, but this seemed too far.
Night fell as quickly as daylight rose, and Juan eventually realized he’d been sitting too long. Night was when cats hunted birds hunted mice, and shelter was a must. A quick look around confirmed that nothing was left of his little dinghy. He didn’t remember why he’d had one of those in the first place, but then again he did and then the islanders came at him and tried to set him on fire goodness me, that was exhausting.
If he didn’t find shelter soon, or something to light a fire with even, he’d die. Possibly finding a water source to cool off. Crabs didn’t help anything, they’d left hours more ago. How long had he been here? Dehydration also did funny things to memory. Usually hunger and thirst sent Juan from spiraling to becoming The Spiral. So that was something he needed to take care of.
As suddenly as he’d had that thought he noticed he was in front of a fire in a ramshackle hut that must have taken days to construct even if it could barely be counted as shelter at all. What had happened between those times was only something Juan could guess.
But the fire was nice, and there was a nice supply of edible berries and greens and seeds. It was nice. Juan was sure he could figure out how he’d gotten to this point, but the seagrass mat he’d been sitting on looked so nice to sleep on and in an instant he was transported to where he was creating a raft, with blueprints etched into a rock.
Damn. No time to waste then, keep building the raft. Was there something he was missing? Why did he keep going from sunrise to set with no idea how? From beach to house to raft, standing on a leg that seemed to be healing up well. Oh, right. Medicine. He’d no idea where any of that was. The only thing keeping the thin line holding his brain cells together was gone, stolen from him last he checked, and with nothing to replace it here. Some sort of chemical found in citrus fruits, made his brain right. Something he’d codified into a tablet, one a day and he was his own doctor so no need to keep the doctor away.
If this kept up, he’d be on practically autopilot. Juan didn’t want to live life that way, in a dissociative state where if he was ever caught he’d end up getting himself killed or worse. Worse being killing someone else without even knowing the cause or if there was a cause. Yes, once again, mentally unstable.
The raft had sunk. Something in him had taken it out in the middle of a storm, hammering in the need to get back to normal and fast. Juan hoped he’d get out of here soon, or find something to replace his precious tablets no matter how advanced or crude that something would be. Managing insanity was an interesting task.
(Managed to run a simple one paragraph response into an incoherent mess. I hope you’re hungry for nothing or whatever the meme is these days?)
