Shipboard

Wriggling on our bellies over the crumbling edge, we dropped, one by one, quietly into the little alcove dug into the steep descend by imaginary centuries of salty winds. One, two, three, bodies lithely lowered themselved into our line of sight. A clatter of rocks followed as a fourth, build less agiley, tumbled and thumped into the natural cave. We froze. All winced. We all listened for any disturbance through the thin earth above our heads. The drugs tainting the guards wines were potent and were proved true. More bodies followed, but we had turned our attention to a small ledge leading a steep descent to our goal, a shipwreck.We could seen the central mast from here, a stark protrusion of dark wood against the pale lavender of evening sky leaning precariously around the corner. The few shredded remnants of grey fabric sail hung limp and soggy, twitching now and then to the fickle wind. The shattered hull, embossed into our minds with days of endless observation, was obscured by the curve of the cliff face. We edged on in single file, pressing our palms against the rough sandstone, our clothes plastered against our bodies by damp winds.

The stern of the ship emerged with the fading sun over the horizon. A hazy fog blanketed the surface of the water, lazily drifting towards the shore across the pink tainted grey of the still bay. The jagged rocks pinching the hull between its fingers stood in clear, azure water, framed by a rainbow of reef. Low rocking waves sounded the empty hull like a drum, its hollow echo deep and mellow. The same waves lapped idly at the boulders beneath our feet. A few hardy tuffs of silver green grass peeked out from rocky shelters and stretched towards the water here and there amongst the pale yellow streaked with rust. The onminous wreck loomed over us now.

Though the water looked inviting, the grimance on the faces of my comrades, now slipping one by one into the water and paddling towards the wreck, suggested otherwise. It was mind numbingly cold. Cold as the ice it resembled. The wavelets, licking, nibbling, freezing, prickling, were a thousand hands groping for the fire that slowly ebbed away within my body. The air felt warm. Of all my senses, only sound remained, the spalsh of water against rock, againt the ship, against me. And then, I was being pulled into the gaping hole on the side of the ship, stepping into a damp, semi flooded wooden cave. It was somewhat warmer there, the rotten boards buffeting the wind that whistled through from on deck. Slowly, feeling returned to my limbs, and we all lined up where the sea pulsed into its victim to help the next fellow across.

So far, we'd only lost one. He slipped beneath the wavelets in a gurgle of incomprehensible terror, leg firmly grasped by the local giant octopus that had finally decided to make itself known to us. A moment later, the numbers had jumped back one. 9 in our crew. Out of curiosity and sadistic boredom, I switched to the player count numbers, and watched the numbers. Tick, another one had disappeared. 482,937 left. Half of those who had started this those four months ago. Tick. Ah, there goes another one. How many would survive to make an impact on this world? Not many at this rate.