User blog:Annacaza/The Private Island

I have discontinued this story because it got too big for me to handle. Still, feel free to read it, but I won't be adding anything more

Another story by me. This is based off of all the islands I build so I decided to make a story about it. Note that this does contain mild language, a small amount of romance, and a little bit of suggestive material that most of you probably won't find unless you are over 14. It is a little "worse" for material than Girl of War (there's your warning). This story has been modified so it is suitable for children under 13.

Chapter 1
I sat under a tree, sheltered from the baking sun. The wind refused to blow. The water had a warm feel to it. I longed to race off to one of the islands that held precious snow on their grounds. But until then, the only way I could keep myself from having heat stroke was to sit under the tree and wait for the clouds roll in from the West, bringing with them the promise of rain.

I shifted, my straight dark brown hair falling past my shoulder blades. I normally braided it, but I wasn't going to swim across the ocean to the island with flax plants, which was just called Flax island, and I did not want to get it wet. The heat was starting to convince me to jump inside of the sea and cool down, while swimming to Flax. However, I had no intentions of leaving my survival partner, Caroline, to fend for herself on this popular island.

The island had already been colonized, but their leader let us stay until the next day, as we had just arrived on the island called Bento. The natural inhabitants of the island, the deer, roamed in the grass, grazing. I had watched the hunters of the tribe go out an hour ago and kill some of them for their hide and meat. The tribe on Bento was sort of large, with seven members. They hadn't advanced very much yet, still on steel weapons, yet the leader had a crossbow, and a mithril knife. They would make Caroline and I steel tools for defense.

Caro and I had been friends for a long time. We had come to the islands together, with a plan. We were going to make ourselves our own island. Through the time we had before we came to the islands, we planned everything out, studied everything there was to know about the islands.

Caro was currently gathering resources for us to make it at our own island. We could do it because the sea was calm, always. There were no such things as waves, ripples, or even movement in the ocean. The fish that lived in the ocean had adapted, and now swam in plentiful schools that I would sometimes watch.

I pushed myself up, my amber eyes scanning around the island. I saw a glimpse of Caro's black hair as she walked inside of the forge, where our steel tools were being crafted. I walked in the heat of the day towards the stone building. I couldn't see how people could stand to be in their all day, in this heat and the heat of the refiner inside of the forge. But, it probably wasn't half as bad as cooking, although cooking in a bakery building would be fine since it was open and all the heat was let out into the open air.

"Caro," I called. "Do you have the tools yet?"

She poked her head out. "Yeah," she said. "Got the axes ready. We'll head off to the Mainland tomorrow."

"With swords and javelins, I hope," I said.

"Yeah, I'm working on those next," she said.

"Good, I'll be making bread and berry juice at the bakery if you need me," I said, then headed out towards the bakery.

I had memorized recipes for breads, pies, stews, and juices, though I was going to experiment with the other food in the islands, like cave lynx meat and the rare Teraphyx meat. I was also going to learn how to fish, as that would probably be our main source of meat once we had made our island.

I knew the basics of farming, and how it only took about a minute for crops to grow. The composts at this tribe were fully-fertilized, and I could grow a lot more wheat than I normally would have been able to. I gathered some wheat seeds and planted them in the compost. As I waited, I glanced around the island. The tribes large sail boat sat in the harbour, along with a huge trading ship, the illustrious Merchant Frigate. The tribe would be giving us a Catamaran, as the Merchant ship was their main way of transport now, and they had over ten Catamarans.

The crops sprung up from the compost, and I farmed them quickly, making wheat into bundles, making more wheat seeds, and replanting them. There was a wooden ladder that led up to the top of the mill on the bakery building. I dropped the wheat bundles inside, made flour, and worked it into dough. I could make bread very fast; a batch of 15 took me about two minutes to fully prepare and another two minutes to cook it all. Bread was very filling, so I made sure we had a lot of it.

I was cooking for about twenty minutes when the leader of the tribe came up to me. "Hey Andreanna," he called. I raised my head, pulling my loaves of bread away from the oven. "Yeah?" I answered.

"Since you're already in here, would you mind preparing some luxury food for our feast tonight?" he asked. "I'll be hunting deer for venison, and I have a lot of extra berries, apples, and prickly pears in in of the granaries." I nodded.

"I'd be happy to," I said. "After all, I feel like a really need to repay you guys for doing what you are." The leader smiled.

"Thanks," he said. "One of my good hunters was out hunting Teraphyx and cave lynx as well for meat, so you can experiment with those and see what works." I nodded, and he walked away.

That night, I made a ton of food for the feast. I made a pot of venison stew; some spiced Bento venison; fruit salad made of apples, berries, and prickly pears; bread and cornbread; as well as apple pie and berry pie. It took all of the tribe to set the huge table they had built. We ate until we were full, a good feeling, as many people were hardly ever full in the islands. Caro and I were given a bunch of food that I had also made for our journey. We stored it inside of our backpacks, and then walked over to our wooden longhouse where we would sleep.

The night had cooled down, a welcome relief, as the day had been scorching. I wasn't used to the extreme heat 7 days a week, as I had grown up in Canada, where summer was 6 months and winter was 6 months. And the 6 month winter was cold. But, I still loved the heat more than the cold, and I knew I would adapt.

We walked inside the wooden longhouse, and I set down my backpack. Caro had the steel tools in a storage hut behind the forge. I lay down on the rough bed, which was mainly just fabric and lynx fur, but it was better than sleeping on the grass. "So, we got everything for tomorrow?" I asked Caro, who was also settling into her bed.

"Yep," she said. "Hopefully we can build up this island before night falls on us tomorrow."

"Yeah, I hope," I said. "Anyway, let's rest up. It will be a long hard working day."

Chapter 2
Caro and I were up before the dawn broke. A couple of people were awake in the tribe already and helped us load up the Catamaran that we were going to take to the Mainland. As we secured everything to the boat, the leader of the tribe came out of his hand-made two-story stone house. I smiled at him as he approached us. "Thanks for all you've done for us," I said. He shrugged.

"It was my pleasure," he said. "You two have been wonderful guests to have around here."

"Everyone in the tribe is welcome to visit our island anytime they want," Caro said, moving up next to me. "As a thank you for letting us stay here and giving us the tools we need."

He nodded. "And both of you are welcome to come back here," he responded. "And I'm sure we will have a very active trade route between us. Just look for the Frigate."

I nodded, and went to shake his hand, but it turned into a hug within a matter of a second. Caro gave him a hug too, and then we boarded the Catamaran. I sat down and looked back at the leader, who waved as we pulled away. I waved back, and watched until Bento island became but a speck in the pink-purple dawn sky.

It took an hour to get the the Mainland. I had been working on a trap for people who tried to steal the Catamaran. It was a release latch that would drive a steel spike through the persons hand. I would be attaching it to every rope we used for docking, and we had ten of them. I knew that my trapping skills would come in handy at one point.

We docked close to a chicken area, where a few hens moved around, a rooster close by, and a couple of nests with eggs inside of them. Ahead of us was a miniature forest with a huge tree in the middle towering above all. The trunk would be enough wood for a good-sized island. It was also an area where herbs grew, which I knew I should stockpile as who knew when they could come in handy. Caro and I were generally careful with what we did, and we weren't very sociable. We liked to keep to ourselves a lot which helped us because people hardly even knew we existed.

We gathered our axes and headed off to the big tree. It would take a lot of hard work and power to get everything we needed. Once we reached the huge tree, I set to work on collecting supplies for a lumbermill. Once I had all that I needed, I moved over to Caro and started on the trunk.

Caro and I worked in silence, as we usually did. Any talking attracted attention; at least, more than we would like, as we were already cutting down the biggest tree in the islands. Though it was back-breaking work, the steel tools helped a lot. There was a huge feeling of acomplishment that washed over both of us once that tree fell. We started chopping the trunk into logs that could fit into the lumbermill, which would be constructed into planks and then into dock platforms.

We had just finished with the tree trunk and we were getting ready to haul the logs back to the boat when someone in a horse-drawn cart came galloping up to us. My fingers curled around the hilt of my steel sword as he halted the horse and looked over at us. "Need a hand getting those logs to your boat?" he asked with a slight Irish accent. Caro turned to him. "How do we know you're not going to kill us?" she asked. He turned and pulled out a mithril javelin.

"If I wanted to, I would have already," he said. "I mainly have these for defense, as I am a bread merchant around this land." I loosened my grip on my sword.

"I guess we could get some help," I said. He jumped off the cart to help carry the logs into the cart, but I stepped infront of him, my face just inches from his. "But let me warn you; I don't care who you are and what your intentions are, but I do know my way around weapons here and I'm not afraid to exercise my abilities." I pulled away and he nodded. "Understood," he said. "I know looks can be decieving." He looked me up and down and I quickly moved into an assertive position, leaning slightly forward and hardening my gaze, telling him to back off with his comments about me. I had heard it all about my looks, and I knew I was an eye-turner. Caro was the same way. I didn't look like someone who would be a survivalist and skilled with weapons. I loooked the exact opposite.

The merchant helped us load the logs into his cart, and I looked at his horse who had stood paitiently the whole time. "You sure that the horse can handle pulling this weight?" I asked. The merchant nodded.

"Oh yeah, she's been my horse for months and has been doing a lot of heavy-lifting for me," he said. "She used to be used as a mine horse in the huge cave at Magma, as she pulled cart loads of ores. She was abused." I looked at the mare. She was leopard-patterned mare, with neat round spots all along her body. I saw some of the old scars where the hair had not grown back. Some of them looked bad. She looked like she had been whipped nearly every minute, as her back was marked up with scars. Her face also had a bad scar that ran from the base of her ear to her eye. That's when I realized it was partially glazed over. "Is she blind in this eye?" I asked. The merchant wvaed his hand as if to say "so-so". "She can she a little out of it, but when she was working in the mines pulling the cart, a falling rock caught her in the eye and damaged it. Her owners did not want to get her medical treatment, so they were going to put her down. I saw her when I was on a bread run as they had brought her to Mainland. I took her instantly." I looked at the mares face.

"Does she have a name?" I asked

"Talina," he said.

I smiled, and then looked over at Caro. She pushed her hair out of her face. "Are you going to help or what?" she asked. I smiled and helped them load up the rest of the logs. The merchant got on the cart, took the reins in his hands, and looked behind him. We were sitting on the logs, and I gave him a thumbs-up symbolizing we were ready. He gave the reins a little slap down on Talina's haunches, and she started forward. The heavy cart seemed to be a breeze for her to pull. Then again, the carts she would of had to pull very heavier than this when they were fully loaded. Iron, coal, and sulphur were in Magmas cave, and ores were not very light.

Once we reached the shore where our Catamarn was docked, the merchant halted the cart and Caro and I unloaded the logs one by one. I looked up at the merchant. "Thank you," I said.

"Your welcome," he replied, and then pushed the last log off his cart. I waved, and he started up his cart again, trotting off. Caro watched him. "Where do you think these horses run wild?" she asked. I looked over at her.

"Hm?"

"Where do you think they live? I mean, they have to come from somewhere."

"Probably Plateau."

"Why them?"

"Isn't it obvious? Plateau is one of the most sucessful islands here, surely they found the horses there."

"Maybe."

"Are you going to help me tie these logs on?"

"Yeah."

We tied the logs together, tied them to the back of the Catamaran, and pushed them into the water, where they would ride behind us. One of us would sit on them as we went across the ocean. The place we planned to build our isand was far away, and would take the rest of the day to get there. "I'll sit in the back first," Caro said. "You know how to drive the boat best so we can get there faster." I smiled, and pulled the ropes that docked the boat to the shore out, being careful of the traps I had there. None of them had been activated, which was good. I pushed the boat off from the shore, and Caro sat on the huge pile of logs trailing behind us. "Ready?" I called out as I jumped on the boat. She nodded, and then we started to sail. There was a wind, which helped us greatly. Within a few minutes we passed the last corner of the Mainland and then we were off.

We sailed part way into the night. However, it wasn't even pitch black by the time we had arrived at the spot where we would build. But it was too dark to start building, so I moved into the back with Caro, and that night, we slept for the first time on the ocean with no land beneath us.

Chapter 3
The night we slept on the ocean wasn't that bad. It was like being on land, with no currents or anything. However, sleeping on logs hurt my back, and I knew that it would be a long day of work.

We sailed over to a little island with two Lynx's on it, some flax plants, gold deposits, and water. I built up the Lumbermill, and we made made the platforms for our island. I carved the sides of the planks we made with a knife in a way so that they would stick together. It didn't take very long to make the platform. The sun was still high in the sky when we were finished,

I sat on the platform as Caro drove the Catamaran away from the small island. The platform was easily bigger than that island, but I knew that we would be going there for resources quite often. by the time we were far out in the ocean, I cut the ropes which attached the platform to the boat and then looked at the base of our island.

The rest of the day was filled with collecting water from the island called Lynx, and we stored the water containers in a hut we made. We had two storage huts, and one longhouse, much like the one we had slept in at Bento. I thought suddently of the tribe on our starting island. How were they doing? It had only been two days, yet it seemed like a long time ago, when this project was all talk. I thought of the leader, when suddenly Caro snapped me out of my thoughts. "Hey, Andrie, I'm not building this door by myself," she said. I shook my head.

"Sorry," I said. "Just..distracted."

"I can see that," she said.

I turned back to the nearly-finished door. It was nearly time to eat. I had made some Teraphyx meat that was spiced with some natural spices I had found, and some berry juice for a drink. It wasn't at all like our feast at Bento, but we would have to get used to megear meals until we could get a steady farm going. "Caro, should we go get some Mithril later?" I asked.

"Once we get everything settled here," she said. "Then we'll go to Desert, or maybe go to Bento and see if the leader has and mithril he could give us."

We settled down to eat, and then we watched as the sun set, turning the sky a blood-red colour. "Is it wierd how I like the sunset?" I asked. Caro shrugged.

"I like it too," she said. "You've got to enjoy the little things in life now that we're out here."

"Like bombing random buildings?"

"Yes."

I smiled and leaned back on my elbows. "You going to bed?" I asked as Caro stood up.

"Yeah," she said. "You coming soon?"

"Yep. Just going to stay out for a little while longer." She nodded and walked over to the longhouse. I looked out at the shadow of the other islands, and then I saw something in the distance. Something moving, coming toward our island. It had lights on it, and there looked to be people on it. A ship. I quickly stood up and ran to the longhouse. "CARO!" I called. She nearly ran into me as I turned to go into the longhouse, as she had not yet had the chance to lie down. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"There are people coming for our island," I said.

Chapter 4
The expression on Caro's face was one of shock and disbelief. She pushed past me, and saw that my report was true. The ship was coming for us. "It's not the tribe on Bento," I said. "They wouldn't go trading at night." Caro nodded. I rubbed my shoulders. "What should we do?" I asked, looking over at my survival partner, my voice shaking. "We need to hide," she said. "Make it look like we aren't here. We have no time to fight. If they have armour, we're screwed. We can't flee either." she dropped her voice. "I wouldn't be surprised if they've already seen us." I nodded. "Do what they say if they find you," she said, then gave me a hug, for I must have looked like I had been having a mental breakdown. "You go in the back," she said. She gave me a little push toward the longhouse, and I went in. Along with the standard three rooms in a longhouse, we had divided up one of the end rooms in half horizontally. I crawled in the back, and put a wooden plank against the door frame, so they couldn't see me. I heard Caro follow me in, and it sounded like she was barricading the door. I did the same with mine.

We must have waited for about ten minutes before there were the sounds of footsteps on our platform. "Well, looks like someone was busy," a male voice said. "Surely they must still be here." I couldn't tell how many of them there were, all I knew is that I hardly dared to breathe. I heard more shuffling on the platform, and I clapped my hands over my mouth to keep from crying out in fright. "Check in every hut," another voice said. This one was rougher, and sounded a little older as well. I heard a two sets of footsteps coming towards the longhouse. I fought my hardest to keep quiet as I heard the door breaking down. I heard Caro cry out, and then her voice became muffled. The sound of a dragging body was all I heard. I saw the wood that served as my only potection start to move, slowly at first. It was like a scene direct out of a horror movie.

I saw the wood splinter, and I hid my face, hoping that if they decided to kill me, that they would do it fast. But instead of a blade piercing through my body, there was a few seconds of silence. Then, I felt the tip of a sword touch my shoulder. "There isn't any reason to hide, girl," a male voice said, and I recognized it from when they had been outside the longhouse. I turned my head towards him, and the blade of his sword touched my chin. The light coming from outside refracted a purple hue to the sword, and I knew instantly it was mithril. "Stand up, and do as I say," he said. "It would make this so much smoother than how we had to deal with your friend." I felt my muscles tense. Had they killed Caro? He saw my expression and smiled, obviously amused by my discomfort. I eyed him, and he let his sword drop. He motioned for me to walk in front of him, and as we left, I felt the sword's tip on my back.

As I came out of the longhouse, I saw Caro lying on her stomach, surrounded by three guards each with their mithril weapons drawn. Her hands were bound behind her back as well as her feet. She looked as if she were gagged with fabric or something. I felt the tip of the sword move away from my back, and I looked down at Caro. She looked like she too was terrified, something that I rarely saw from her. I just stood there, and then, a huge painful blow hit the back of my skull, and I fought to keep from slipping away into blackness. My eyes slammed on me a couple times, and then I hit the wooden platform. I hardly even felt it as I was tied the same way as Caro. It took me a few seconds to blink away the constant threat of my vision going black, and even then there was a huge pain in the back of my head. I felt my body being picked up off of the wood. They hadn't gagged me, probably because I wasn't a worry. I hadn't said a single word, and I had hardly made any noise.

We were brought onto the Frigate, and then pushed into the bottom storage area. I hard hardly bene able to sit myself up before consciousness slipped away from me, and blackness took over.

Chapter 5
I woke up from being lift up roughly from my place on the ground. It was still dark out, and I knew that Caro and I must have only been in the boat for an hour or so.

I was thrown up on the deck, Caro followed. My head began to throb again, and I wanted nothing more than to place my hand against the back of it. But I couldn't feel my hands, or my feet. I had been tied to tightly that they had gone numb.

I was picked up again and thrown over a shoulder. I turned my head, and saw that it was Desert island that we had been brought to. What would these people do to us? Force us into slavery? Kill us? Thoughts raced through my mind, and I tried to black them out, but it was no use.

We jumped down from the ship, and walked over to the large settlement on the sandy island. There was hardly anyone out at this time of night, and all the lanterns inside houses had burned out. There looked as if there had to be 75 people in the tribe, just by looking at all the houses.

We were dropped down on the sand in front of a large house made of sandstone. It didn't look like anything that aro and I had seen before, as the biggest sandstone building we had seen were sandstone halls. I knew instantly it was the leaders living quaters.

__Discontinued__