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This is my second to last fill for 2023's AUgust challenge. The official prompt for Day 30 was "Afterlife," but I chose to replace it with one of the alternate prompts, "Shipwrecked."
In order to find the mysterious light in the fog offshore, Riku and Sora build a raft. They're going to find what's out there.
Riku dragged another enormous chunk of driftwood into place, leaving a deep furrow in the sand. He laid it alongside the others he’d assembled and looked at the arrangement speculatively, then headed back down the beach.
Sora glanced between Riku and the collection of wood before running after him.
“Do you really think we need more?”
Riku glanced back. “Of course. You want the raft to be big enough, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah.”
“It’d go faster if you helped me carry the wood instead of letting me drag it all the way!” He laughed when he said it, so it was clear he wasn’t really mad about it.
Sora still kicked his feet in the sand a bit as they kept walking. “Sorry…”
They’d already scavenged most of the useful driftwood that had washed up in the more convenient spots along the shore of the play island. There hadn’t been all that much, but they—yes, mostly Riku—gathered up a few bigger branches and the trunks of smaller palm trees that had washed up at high tide. They’d had frequent thunderstorms so far that summer, and it meant the waves brought a good amount of stuff up, even on the “quiet” side of the little island.
Heading around toward the other side led to a section that had been left a little wilder than the rest, and more driftwood had almost certainly gotten tangled up in the trees and vines there.
There was plenty for them to choose from in the overgrown section. It did go more quickly with Riku and Sora each carrying one end of the bigger logs, and Sora felt more than a little sheepish about it.
After only a few more trips, Riku declared they probably had enough to make a decent platform for the raft, and he started lashing the longer logs together, using rope he’d brought with him from the main island. Sora helped hold them in place, doing whatever Riku directed him to. He wished he had a better idea of how to build a raft, but as long as Riku knew, that was enough.
Eventually the sun started to sink down, changing the quality of the light.
“I think we’ll be able to get the raft finished by tomorrow,” Riku said, stepping back and wiping sweat from his forehead. “Which means we can probably plan on setting off the night after that.”
They both admired their handiwork for a few minutes.
Sora looked out over the waves, out where the distant fog bank would appear. Where the light would come on shortly after. “And then we’ll find whatever’s out there?”
Riku nodded. “We’re going to find it for sure.”
They rowed their smaller boats back to the main island, after having dragged the mostly-assembled raft up far enough above the tideline to keep it safe.
It would have been easier if they could have taken the little rowboats rather than building the raft, but the little boats weren’t designed for any sort of long trip. Once of the first things drilled into every island kid when they were first trusted with a rowboat of their own to get from island to island was that they were never ever to take them out toward the open ocean.
Back on the main island, Riku and Sora waited on the docks for night to fall, and for the light to appear.
Right on time, the fog bank was visible, and the light winked on. It stayed steady, giving only the occasional flicker.
Riku sighed. “We’re going to find it,” he repeated.
One more day did prove to be enough for the two of them to finish the raft. Riku brought notes with him on how to mount the mast, and with Sora’s help managed to get it into place. A length of borrowed canvas made a decent sail, even if Riku did lament that it wasn’t true sailcloth.
After it was completed, the two of them dragged it down to the water, making sure it was seaworthy. It floated just the way they’d hoped it would, the sail already catching the light breeze.
It was hard to want to pull it back onto the beach.
“We could just go now,” Sora ventured hesitantly. “Now that we know it works.”
Riku chewed at his lip, speculative, but then shook his head. “No, we need to make sure we’re prepared. We need food, water, a map…”
“A map?” Sora asked. “Whatever is out there isn’t on a map, isn’t that what you said?”
He remembered Riku, incredulous, the first time Sora showed him the light.
“Which means we get to put it on a map,” Riku answered. “Besides, we couldn’t leave now. We have to do it after dark, so we have the light to follow.”
That made sense at least. “How far away could it be?” he asked.
Riku shrugged. “The light makes it through the fog, but we can’t see anything when we look that way during the day. So who knows? A few miles? Across the horizon?”
Sora tried to picture it, traveling through the night on the raft. What would happen if they didn’t reach the source of the light before it turned off for the day? Would they just have to drift all day, waiting for it to come back? No, it couldn’t take that long, could it? It couldn’t be that far away and still reach them here.
“Tomorrow night. We get all our supplies together, and then we go.”
The promised night came with the faint rumble of thunder over the islands.
“As long as that stays behind us, it should be fine, right?” Sora asked.
The pair had made it out to the play island just after sunset, backpacks loaded with their planned supplies. Sora looked back over his shoulder toward the bigger island. A flicker of lightning followed by another rumble of thunder answered his nerves.
“It should be,” Riku answered. “It’ll give us some extra wind for the sail. Moving the right direction, even.”
As the sun sank down, the fog far offshore became more obvious. Then, right on cue, the light appeared.
The two of them heaved the raft back down the beach, pushing it out onto the water and quickly jumping aboard. The platform wobbled for a few distressing seconds, but then leveled out as they both found a way to balance. Riku unfurled the sail, which immediately filled with the wind from the storm behind them, pushing them out farther onto the gentle waves.
Riku made some small adjustments to the sail, tweaking their direction so that they were aimed toward the light.
Everything was fine for a while, until an enormous gust blew from behind them, hitting the sail so hard one of the corners came free.
Riku scrambled to grab and retie it, and Sora flung himself the opposite way on the raft, just trying to keep it balanced against the sudden motion. Before they’d even settled from that first gust, another whipped through, and then another. The waves rapidly grew choppier, and the raft nosedived, the front end dipping below the water for a frightening moment.
The raft didn’t capsize as threatened, cutting back up through the water just in time. Sora and Riku both leaned back so hard they were nearly lying flat, trying to keep the front from tipping down again.
Riku scrambled for the sail again, this time trying to untie it the rest of the way, so they’d be less at the mercy of the wind tossing them.
Sora grabbed onto the mast with one arm, and Riku with the other, not willing to let him fall.
Then they were into the fog.
It closed around them between one second and the next, but the waves didn’t stop. It was hard to tell if it was raining in addition to the spray and the cloying moisture of the fog itself, because everything was obscured by water. Sora groped for Riku’s arm, and Riku clung onto Sora’s shirt.
The light they’d been following was still there, cutting through the fog above them.
They were helpless to actually steer their raft, but Sora kept looking up at that beacon of light. He hoped it would guide them somewhere.
Sora had no idea how long they’d been in the fog; it felt like it had been absolutely forever, but could very well have been only minutes. Most likely it was something in between. The sail was long gone, having whipped away in another gust as soon as Riku untied it. The hand clutching Riku’s arm was completely numb, as was everything else. The raft continued to tilt wildly with every wave that hit it, and they struggled to balance in a way that would just keep it upright.
Another gust, and an even heavier wave tossed them, and Sora felt his grip on the edge of the raft slip. There was a moment of bizarre almost-levitation as the raft tipped downward and he did not. Then he hit the water, hard.
Riku didn’t release the grip on his shirt, and Sora realized that meant both of them must have tumbled down into the water.
They stayed together, despite everything else. If they got separated, Sora was afraid they’d never manage to find each other again.
Periodically, they’d manage to break the surface to get a gulp of air before the water closed over their heads again. When he looked up, Sora could still see the light streaked above.
Eventually one of the waves that pushed them down pushed them into something. Sora bit back an involuntary yelp that would have lost him all the air he’d managed to hold in. Whatever his shoulder had slammed into hurt.
As quickly as the fog had originally enveloped them, it vanished, taking the choppy water and angry wind with it.
Suddenly, the water around them was calm, and Sora and Riku were able to tread water, coughing the last of the sea water from their lungs and catch their breath. Bits of their raft, torn apart by the waves, bobbled placidly around them.
Sora looked up. The fog was behind them, but the sky above was clear. In the absence of the fog, the light no longer cut a beam above them, but looking the opposite direction of the fog, he saw the brighter glint of what had to be the light source ahead of them.
“Look,” he said.
“Let’s go,” Riku answered. He sounded as exhausted as Sora felt.
The two of them swam toward the light. Before very long, they could see the light was in fact coming from the top of a lighthouse, though not a kind he’d ever seen before. It looked… old. The lighthouse itself was connected to something else that he guessed was a larger building, and that rested on what he really hoped was an island. It was hard to make out any details beyond the light itself, everything else just looking like variously dark-colored smudges in the distance.
The swim felt excruciatingly long, though Sora knew it had hardly been the distance from the main island to the play island. Long enough, but a distance they swam by choice at least a few times a summer. Though they weren’t usually exhausted to start.
The feeling of his feet hitting sand below him was a relief, and both of them waded the rest of the way up to the shore.
Above them, the light still burned steadily. From closer up it was easy to see that yes, the bigger shadow below the lighthouse had been a building.
Sora collapsed onto the sand, ready to practically fall asleep right there, despite the miserable cling of his soaked clothes and the chill lingering from the fog. Riku didn’t quite collapse, but he did lean down, hands on his knees. He was shaky.
The sound of footsteps on the sand between them and the building was enough to force Sora to open his eyes.
A young woman stood there. She was probably about their age, judging by her height, though it was difficult to make out any specific features in the dim light.
She made an inarticulate noise toward them. Then she cleared her throat and seemed to try again. “Who are you?” The way she said the words was a little strange, like she had to force each one out individually.
Riku raised one hand. “My name is Riku.”
“I’m Sora,” Sora said, struggling to his knees and then to his feet.
“Kairi is my name,” the woman said, the words still strangely staggered. “How could you be here?”
