Guardian

Well, this rather a predicament you've found yourself in. You guess you should be grateful you're even alive, but you don't feel very lucky. Your name is Laran. You were a student in a school-exchange program, until the boat you were on got shipwrecked, and you washed up on this island, just now.



Up from the beach, the sand quickly gives way to multitudes of trees. Past their foliage, you can make out the peak of a mountain, it doesn't seem that far away. You think you can hear some animals through the trees, but you aren't sure.

What do you do?

Go along the beach... how big does this island seem?

Make sure to look for a sharp rock or piece of scrap metal along or around the beach. You'll likely need it eventually.

Seek shelter

You walk along the beach for a dozen minutes, trying to judge how far it curves. You aren't great at mental maps, but the thought is welcome distraction from more unpleasant thoughts about your situation. Eventually, you estimate you could probably walk around the shore in a single day, if it keeps curving at the same rate. Although, it seems a bit odd an island this small has a mountain. Maybe its one of those underwater mountains that peaks above the surface? You were never that great at geology.

While walking, you keep an eye out for anything sharp in the sand. You've read some books with these kinds of situations before, so you have a basic idea of what you might need to do, although you doubt you'll be making a waterproof shelter anytime soon.



Something shiny catches your eye, and you pick it up. You brush off the sand, and it turns out to be a piece of metal sharpened along one edge. You wonder what it was doing here, you can't see any sign of what it broke off from and it doesn't have the jagged edges you'd expect from a fragmented piece of scrap. But you're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. You take it with you.

You thoughts turn to shelter. There are still a few hours left in the day before it gets dark, but you know you really should try to find a somewhere or make something before then. You don't see anything along the sand, so you head into the trees.



Someway in, you pull yourself onto a fallen log to get a better view. You can barely see the shore from here, and further on, it seems like the trees get thinner near the mountain's base. The trees are several times your height and have numerous branches, you reckon you could probably climb them. A few of the them even have some kind of spiky fruit that you don't recognise hanging from their limbs. Closer to the ground, several bushes and flowers bloom, none of which you recognise. You don't see any animals yet, although youre still pretty sure they're around.

Cut fruit, smell carefully.
Do any of the trees have a lurch you might be able to lie up in, should night come too soon?

>Make a trap?

>gather dead branches

You manage to reach one of the lower fruits by jumping. It easily snaps off the branch, and you use the piece of metal as an impromtu knife to cut it open. The outer skin is quite hard, but it becomes much easier once you're past it.



What you find inside is rather odd. Instead of flesh like an apple or orange, the insides of the fruit seem to be a gloopy mass that sticks to itself like slime. You don't even see anything that looks like a seed. You're pretty sure fruits are supposed to have seeds. You snif it, and the smell isn't unpleasant, although it isn't sweet either. It kind of reminds you of soap for some reason.



After that, you spend a good while gathering sticks that are at least mildly dry into a pile. Maybe you can make a fire or a shelter or something, sticks can be pretty useful. You look for some natural cover, and most of the trees are pretty straight without much of an overhang, but that log you were standing on before could make for some decent shelter.



You decide to use a few sticks to make a trap, although you think calling it that is probably a bit of a stretch. You just leaned some sticks against eachother and put a bit of the fruit goop underneath. You don't really know how to make traps, maybe practising will help? You have no idea how long you're going to be here, alone. With no one else and no way of knowing what happened to everyone else on the ship.
.
.
.
Anyway, you go to leave the trap-



Oh. Well that was fast.

Observe bird

>cut some grasses or leaves or such and try to make an impromptu shelter along with the sticks

The bird pokes around the goo for a bit, but rather than eat it, it instead flutters over to the fruit's hard skin that you discarded earlier, and begins plunging its beak into the small rim of internal flesh. It either doesn't notice your presence or doesn't care, so you watch it for a while. You don't recognise its species, but you wouldn't expect yourself to, you're not really into ornithology. It doesn't look like a pidgeon, crow, hawk or eagle, you can say that much for certain.
Eventually, it has its fill of the fruit and flies off somewhere, probably its nest.

Speaking of, you should really get on making some shelter sooner rather than later.



You sit down and start sorting through your sticks to find the longest ones. You lean them against the fallen log and gather some loose leaves and grass from your surroundings, which you start lacing through the sticks or just plonking them on top. Once you reckon you've done enough, you stand back to admire your handiwork.



Its... better than you would've thought, to be honest. Of course, you didn't cover the other side. But you don't have to be directly under the log, you can favour this side a bit. It reminds you a bit of the times you built little pillow forts when you were younger, with blankets draped across beds and chairs. This shelter probably won't be as cosy as that though. You hope it isn't windy tonight.

After all that, you've still got a small amount of time left before it starts getting hard to see. What else should you do? You're starting to feel a bit hungry and thirsty.

You'll need to start a fire soon to keep yourself warm for the night and to keep bugs away from your shelter. If you don't have much daylight left water and food will have to wait for tomorrow.

Taste a tiny amount of the fruit's inner flesh. If there's time left after gathering fire supplies, start sharpening a stick for extra protection

You lick the inside of the fruit. It's smooth and tastes vaguely sour. You don't get sick within the next five minutes, so you conclude the flesh won't kill you if you eat it, at the very least.

You consider making a fire. This is something you actually kinda know about, because you think fire is pretty cool. You like watching it, all the embers twisting around, each moving independently, but also contributing to the fire as a whole. You had fun following them with your eyes and trying to see if you could push them around with your mind. And you definitely have never deliberately set anything on fire that shouldn't have been, no matter what your chemistry teacher says.

Anyway, starting a fire is actually pretty easy.



You prepare a pile of tinder by tearing sticks and leaves into thin strips, so that they catch easily. You take your piece of metal-



and strike it against a rock, sending a few sparks onto the kindling. You repeat this over and over until smoke starts rising from the pile.



Once it takes, you start blowing into it and feeding it more sticks. It grows slowly, and eventually you no longer need to sustain it.



You sit back, and warm yourself in front of the fire. The wetness and coldness of your clothes remaining from when you were washed up on the shore finally disappears. You finally feel like you can relax, like you no longer have to be doing something.



Its about time you went to sleep anyway, it took you like half an hour just to find a rock that would actually spark.





With a bit of a sigh, you drag yourself away from the fire and begin scooching underneath the log that composes your current home. You're fairly sure the fire won't spread, the wood here isn't dry or anything and the air is humid (you're right next to the sea after all). You can still feel some of the heat in your little nook, which is nice.

After all your running around today, you're tired, and while you know you should probably plan for tomorrow, you fall asleep quickly once your eyes are closed.



What do you dream about?

You dream about home

Man.
Dreams are weird.



Well, it's a new day. It was cold last night, but it didn't rain and wasn't too windy, so the fire kept you warm enough. It looks like it did actually spread beyond your pile of sticks a little to the surrounding grass, but all that's left now is ashes. There should also be some charcoal left in places where the wood didn't get enough oxygen to burn properly, which should be useful next time you start a fire. You'll look through it later.

For now, you'll decide what you're going to be doing today. You slept pretty well all things considered, but you still had to lie down in leaves and twigs, so you aren't as rested as you'd prefer. Despite your tiredness though, you know you need to make plans and do things. You'd rather not think about what will happen otherwise. You had food and water just before the ship got wrecked, so you aren't that bad, but your lips are parched and your throat is rather dry.
What do you do?

Climb one of the more climbable trees to get a lay of the land.

set up a solar still for later hydration. if you lack the material, go "hunting" (killing for food optional): stealthily follow wild animals to a source of water

(I really do want to tell this forum adventure, however, ASCII art is annoying and hard to get myself to do, so I'm going to try continuing it with mostly text, maybe art for special scenes that need it to show what's happening better.)



At the thought of water, multiple ideas come to your mind. There were ways to get water from the sea, or the ground, or even the air itself. A solar still would need a large piece of some non-absorbent material to work though, and you simply didn't have that kind of thing handy. Your safest bet would be a river, some kind of natural source of fresh water. Animals had to survive as well, maybe one of them could lead you to what you needed. First though, you needed to spot one.

You climb a tree to get a better look. There's something a bit strange about them, though; while the branches are strong and within easy reaching distance of each other, there are almost no leaves until the very top of the tree, which is so thick with foliage it's hard to make out the sky behind it.

After carefully lifting yourself up about halfway, you survey the rest of the forest. From your vantage point, nothing much looks different. You can see the glitter of the ocean from the direction you came, and the sharp grey peak of the mountain ahead. On either side, trees and more trees. But in the distance, something catches your eye. Something small, brown, and furry, moving furtively along the ground.

You quickly slide back down to the ground and run to where you spotted it, only to pause a little bit away. You couldn't make out its shape from a distance, but now that you're close... well, its like a squirrel, only larger, and with very broad shoulders. You could probably manage to kill it if you really feel you need to, but right now, you don't know what it's capable of. You follow it for a bit, but it doesnt seem to be leading you anywhere useful, just more trees and bushes, and youre not sure this is the best use of your time. What do you want to do?