Chapter 74: Intersection

No matter how long they found themselves stuck on this island, they would at least not starve to death. They did not have to forage far from their camp to discover several kinds of fruits and vegetables growing wild, ready to be harvested.

Other discoveries were more mysterious in nature. This lone, charred electric stove stood by the wreckage of  a sailboat and an old ruined wall.

"Do you think you could fix it?" Jillyan asks.

"I could," Julian laughs, "But we'd need a source of electricity to use it. What I'm wondering is where it came from, and why it's just sitting here."

Jilly shrugs, "We had better move on; nothing here will help us get off this island. Unless you think we can repair that old boat?"

Julian shakes his head, and the couple moves on.

All along the island's shore, they find more wreckage. Broken boats and the ruined remains of the cargo they carried.

Heading further inland reveals a walled garden, but no signs of the people who built the wall.

"How old do you think it is?" Jillyan wonders.

"It's hard to say, but if it's ancient, it's held up really well."

"And if it's recent, where the hell are the people who built it?"

Exploring deeper into the jungles, they discover new mysteries.

"That looks Olmec," Julian muses.

"Olmec? Way out here?" Jillyan asks. They may not exactly where they are, but their flight had only been a few hours out of Shang Simla when the plane crashed, still thousands of miles from anywhere you'd be likely to find a giant Olmec head.

As the sun began to set, they headed back to their camp. All their searching produced no means of escape, just unsolved puzzles, ancient ruins from a distant culture, construction with no clue about the identity or whereabouts of the builders, and the wrecks of ships everywhere.

"Hey, but look on the bright side," Jillyan laughs after they've finished their meal of wild vegetables and fresh caught fish, "MorcuCorp could not possibly find us here. We're free."

"What if MorcuCorp was our only hope of escape?" Julian muses. Though it is more than likely Fergus will believe they are dead, along with the others who were in the crashed plane. But if he didn't believe that, if Fergus wanted to search for his lost cousin, he had all the resources of MorcuCorp to do it, and his own powers as well. And that could truly be their only hope of getting off this island.

"This wouldn't be so bad though, being stuck here forever," Jilly answers, drawing him close for a kiss, "It is a paradise here. And we'd have each other."

The next morning, the couple explores the other side of the island, and Jilly finds some boulders to smash with her powerful axe, which she luckily had in her pocket at the the time of the crash. Beneath the crumbled stones, they find a hidden entrance to an underground bunker.

It is, like everything else on this island, deserted, with no traces of the people who built it. But they find working showers, fresh clothes and food stored inside, as well as first aid kits. 

"Stay still," Jillyan reprimands as Julian winces from the sting of salve she applies to his cuts, "Let me take care of you."

"You'll be a great mother someday," Julian muses.

"We have to get off this island first," Jillyan answers, dispelling any fantasy of living here forever, alone together in paradise.

"These people seem to have set themselves up nicely. I wonder what happened to them?" Jilly muses as they eat salads made from the produce they found in the refrigerators.

"Maybe they are still here, on the island," Julian wonders, "They are all just out hunting or something."

"Oooh, like the Three Bears. And we're Goldilocks, and they'll come home to find us sleeping in their beds?"

"We'd probably better not sleep here," Julian responds, though this would be better shelter if it starts to rain again, "Buy...why would they cover the entrance with boulders before a simple hunting or foraging expedition?" he wonders aloud, "It just doesn't make sense."

"Nothing here has made any sense," Jilly answers, "Why should this be any different? I saw some scuba gear in their storage. I think I'll see what I can find underwater."

Julian nods, distracted by his thoughts, "I'll meet you back at camp in a few hours."

Jillyan didn't really expect to find anything useful underwater, she just wanted a few hours of not thinking about their problem, a temporary escape from having to hide her fear from Julian.

"Hey, why don't you have a fish tail?" is the question Jilly would have asked, if she could speak actual words. Instead, she merely points at the merman's scaly legs in a questioning manner.

He gestures for her to follow, and they head up to the surface where they can speak of things they cannot express with hand gestures.

"I am called Meri," the merman introduces himself, "I am, like you, dragonkin. What brings you to the wandering isle"

"Our plane crashed," Jilly answers.

"You did not come here intentionally?" Meri asks, "You are like the others, then?"

"Others? You mean all the shipwrecks here? The skeletons? The people who built the bunker?" Julian asks, "And what do you mean by 'wandering isle'?"

"This island has no true home, it wanders between worlds. Or maybe it would be more correct to call it an intersection, a place where many worlds meet," Meri answers, "Some say it is broken, unstable. Auberon created it, long, long ago, and even he does not remember what purpose he intended it for, so perhaps it is exactly the way it was always meant to be." Meri shrugs, "The island comes and goes again. Where it appears, it pulls on the world it lands in. And that is how your boats and planes are drawn in to it. It does not stay in one place for very long."

"What happens to the people who land here?" Julian asks, "We've found traces of them...buildings, skeletons..."

Meri shrugs again, "I've seen the wreckage they leave behind, but you are the first people I've met here. I do not know what the island does to the people on it when it moves. Perhaps it takes them with it. Perhaps it leaves them behind."

Julian shudders, "What, just drops them in the middle of the ocean?"

"As I said, I do not know, I only speculate. The seaborn can find the isle easily enough, and we can traverse the oceans of many worlds, but we have little reason to visit it. I have been here only five times in my life, and I am centuries old."

"Can you get us home?" Jillyan asks.

"Which world are you from?" Meri asks.

Julian and Jillyan both sit silent as they ponder that question; they only knew one world, and it had never needed a name to identify it.

"Wouldn't we still be in the same world we came from?" Julian reasons, "I mean, the island landed in our world, right? And hasn't moved again yet."

Meri shakes his head, "The island does not truly exist in the place where it lands. Where you are now, is no place. It is between places. The intersection." He shakes his head again, "There is no land beyond the ocean here. Just the island."

"I don't understand," Julian says, and Jillyan nods in agreement with him.

"It makes no sense," she adds.

Meri opens his hands in a gesture of concurrence, "Magic rarely does. Especially where Auberon is involved. There is a portal here, in a cave beneath the waters. The seaborn use it to travel the oceans of many worlds. But we know where our home is, and can always find it again no matter how far we've wandered. You are lost and do not know your home. You can use the portal, but I cannot say where you will land."

"We live in a place called Isla Paradiso," Jillyan says, "Does that help?"

Meri laughs. "Every world has such an island."

"Well, then, wherever we land, it can't be that bad, right?" she says to Julian, "Maybe if we get lucky, we'll find a place where there is no MorcuCorp. If we don't find home, we can at least be free."

"What about your family?" Julian reminds her.

Jillyan frowns, "I wanted my parents to meet you. And my Dad would have loved having grandkids to play with. But what choice do we have? We can't stay here. So I vote we take our chances on the portal. At least we can find a place where we can live, with people and stuff."

They go back to the bunker to get scuba gear for Julian, and then make the dive to the spot Meri showed them. Outside the cave portal's entrance, Julian stops and turns to Jillyan, gesturing doubt one last time.

Jillyan nods vigorously, meaning to go through with their plan

Julian watches as she enters the cave.

And he has no choice now but to follow her, and hope for the best.

___________________________________________________

I didn't show half of the tombs or other things on the island because I didn't need them for the story. But Treasure Island is very inspired by the TV show Lost. And so, yeah, a bit of Lost like elements creeped into this story.

I wish I could remember who made this world or where I got it to provide a credit and link. Though I would also have to warn potential downloaders that I found a lot of broken triggers and inaccessible objects and ladders and I had to frequently go into build mode to fix things. But, as a fan of Lost, I had a great time with it, nonetheless.

Now, important news for this legacy. I have a big decision to make here, whether or not to continue. Well, I am going to continue with Jillyan and Julian, but here's the thing. I just got so bogged down with the whole MorcuCorp plot, and with all the alternate saves and scripted scenes, I really lost touch with the actual challenge part of the gameplay. What I want is a fresh start, I want to play Jillyan and Julian totally new, like 1st generation, with no money and no skills, and no history. Having this portal spit them out in some completely different world would allow me to do that. But I'm kind of leaning towards starting a new blog and really doing this as a Gen 1 start over. And in that I'm also torn between doing it on blogspot or just doing it on my Simblr.

I have some time to mull this over, since I need to set up a world for them to land in. Probably IP again, but not in the fabulous house I built for them since they will be CAS poor. I will let you all know what I decide either way.