There's something like dew on the moss
outside of my cave when I wake. I look out into the fog and wonder,
for the umpteenth time, where I am. It's never dark, it's never
light. Good enough to see by, the mist swallows up whatever there
might be more than fifty feet away. I can easily throw a stone so
far I can't see it land.
How long I've been here, I'm not sure.
Lost count of how many times I've slept after the first few hundred.
Not that it's a meaningful count. I have no way of knowing how long
I sleep, how long I wake, even how long it takes me to get someplace.
Only soreness in my feet and legs tells me anything, and I can't
trust that anymore, since I know every square meter of this island.
There's me, and the cave, and the
inedible damp fern-things that I use for bedding. Behind the cave is
a spring, and the trees that bear the fruit that I eat.
And one-hundred fifty-nine paces from
the front of my cave is the Edge. It drops off into nothingness,
just more fog. I can travel around the circumference of this island
before I need to sleep, two or three times over. At no point is
there anything but moss, fern-things, the cave, the spring, and I'm
repeating myself.
That's a hazard, here. There is
literally nothing to do. The fern-things won't burn, neither will
the moss. The fruit trees might, but they never drop a branch, and I
haven't got any way of cutting one down. None of the stone will take
an edge, I can't find any dirt, even, to draw or write in. There's
me and what I say to myself (is it out loud? I don't know anymore).
Out there, sometimes, are lights. Or
there might be. Could be I'm dreaming, or imagining them. I keep
thinking they might prove to be vessels, since they seem to move.
Maybe one will come here and tell me where I am, and why. The fog
washes out everything that might identify them. They could be a
hundred feet or a hundred miles away.
There is no weather, here. Slight
breezes on occasion, or I think they are. No rain, no snow, no hot
days, no cold ones. Total neutrality of environment.
There's air, here, but no birds. No
insects that I've seen. I haven't had a cold or the flu since I got
here. But the moss is real, and the fruit. The water tasted pure,
and satisfies my thirst.
So where am I, and why?
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