Ghostwriter

Something blinks. A faint shudder. The crackling of bones. A chain rattles in the distance. A knife is put to the grindstone.

In the moments prior to the beacons destruction, Yaffenhash's earpiece had heard an odd noise transmitted from the beacons bug. A noise itchy to the ears. Those at the local headquarters had only moments to ponder its meaning before the island was destroyed. Was that scratch from the landing?

Mysterious unwords were amusing, for a time. But the end goal for them would be... Unfitting, for the story. Back into the word box they go, for another time.

Well, don't be down on yourself, I/O. While I don't grasp their path just yet, I do find it interesting to have another layer of intrigue underneath. Ghosts enjoy feeling special.

Perhaps, by chance, they come upon something that rekindles hope in them, and could solve some problems in the (very) short term. Like rumors of others who have created a boat that'll get off the island soon. Or perhaps that something had survived against all odds. Hopeless moments are fine, but not in excess. Nothing spectacular, but something that is helpful.

Let's bring it beyond rumors. There are some problems with how I've defined the disaster so far, but I feel a good place to start would be providing a possible out-- like you mentioned, a boat.

As Dime, Belfry and Yaffenhash turn one last corner, beginning to hold onto each other for any form of support in the storm, they spot a sign that this island is likely doomed-- and that they might not be. Rocking violently in the freezing water by a sheer cliff is a vessel of scrap metal and wood, a sailboat, with tripodals swarming around, trying to get on, trying to get off, trying to push out from the island. One of the masts has been caught in a massive patch of vines and sea debris pelted against the hill by the cliff, and is trapping the whole of the thing to the island.

Yaffenhash takes a long breath, panting, and then shouts, "I'll tell the people at the factory there's a boat! You two get on!"

But Dime pokes at her meekly, bringing the both of them face to face, and says, "I'll do it. It's my fault. Please." His expression tells nothing if not sorrow. The reptilian stares at him a moment, and her own impulse to try and be good to these people falters-- there's no way she could bring herself to stop him.

"...Don't die," says Belfry, barely holding herself together.

The two old friends watch Dime begin to run back through the winding valley, pushing with his second and third wind and so on, as the flooding picks up and hope begins to drain. They then turn back to the ship and its orbiting chaos, and approach.

Right now, the pressure on them is immense, but also vague.

This, in a way, only strengthens it. It's much harder to solve a problem when you can't even define it. The disaster is real, but distant and uncertain. With so little information on what's actually happening, everyone is focused on their own personal fears.

What I'm getting at is, bring the problem closer, but also make it more specific. And, consequently, more solvable. We can move away from hopelessness by helping the group discover something meaningful they can do.

The air is a mess as they approach the seaboard, carrying pieces of other wreckage, discarded underwater foliage and even distended trees on the storm wind, pelting people as well as the boat, which barely holds together. Yaffenhash does her best to goad the remaining tripodals not yet onboard-- yelling things along the lines of 'the island is collapsing' and 'get on, or we're all dead'. For some, this is enough; for others, the sheer terror of boarding a vessel so unstable seems less preferable than weathering the storm, hoping it'll pass... somehow.

For others yet still, the reptilian's visage is enough to throw a punch at, and amidst the screeching downpour against stone and soil, insults are hurled. When Yaffenhash looks back, hoping for Belfry's modicum of support to get these people on board, she notices the blue-clothed girl has made her way on top of the deck, and is now ascending one of the masts, hands unsteady and body trembling.

There are no footholds, no notches in the wood; she climbs weakly, and the slippery scrap-wood mast isn't making it any easier. Yaffenhash boards at last, and starts calling to Belfry to stop... but nothing she can say will make Belfry cease. She needs to free that mast.

Not just for her, but for the life of everyone here. She is Refugian. She has to be. No matter how false the pretenses, she has grown up her whole life believing that she was the savior of something-- and it keeps her arms gripped tight around the wood another few meters.

But that could never be enough. For Belfry to succeed, she must further embrace her true role. No amount of belief can change reality; it can only push people to change their reality.

Just as she is about to fall, as her arms are about to fail, as she is about to plummet to a watery death, she morphs again; her reptilian roots are stronger than she could have imagined. In the span of a second, she has grown tendrils, spiked arms which latch around the mast comfortably, and allow her to continue ascending. As she reaches the ensnared section, being damaged by the rocks, her bodily morphing continues-- and her arms extend, six times their typical length, to undo the tangling.

Yaffenhash watches in awe. She doesn't much know what to say. How can the girl be in such denial of her true form while being so adept with using it?

There's no time for this question; just as the ship is flung back to a buoyant position, no longer trapped against the rocks, a massive piece of debris collides with Belfry's place on the mast, sending her plummeting to the deck beside Yaffenhash, unconscious.

...

Dime makes it back to the factory's entrance more worse for wear. His head is hung, his body is worn, and the ground is shaking like there's an earthquake-- but he knows it's worse than that. He pounds on the door desperately, and when he hears Puffy the Solemn yell out, "Fuck off! We're closed!", he just begs.

"Please," he huffs, "the island is collapsing, a-and there's a boat, and you need to g-get your people to it, and--"

"I said fuck off!"

He coughs up water. His body slumps on the metal door, and he pounds again. "I know it's happening because it's my fault, b-but if you let everyone in here die, that'll be your fault!"

The door slides open. People in the factory are huddled up; scared. The weather is making the lights flicker, and Puffy stands at the door, more frazzled than ever, rifle trained on Dime. "I ought to shoot you right here and now, you little cunt."

Dime has met so many people like this; products of their environment, focusing inward because looking at the broad world is too terrifying. He knows no amount of right-versus-wrong will work-- they will always assume he's wrong. His life has been spent at gunpoint. He just mutters, "You probably should. B-But you should also... s-save everyone else, too."

Behind him, a hillside collapses in on itself. There isn't much time.

The people inside look over the black-clothed man for a moment, glance at each other, and breathe in fright. Puffy says, "...Lead us to the boat. Now."

Journeying back through the flooded valley is more tough than ever before; the upward slopes are a slurry of water, flowing down and down and down, with the ground itself becoming watery like the seafloor. Dime leads the group of hundreds with no ounce of stability in his body, sobbing through the rain, as Puffy and Rocks poke him forth with the barrel of the rifle and a heap of 'encouraging' words. This is where Dime makes his decision: he is worth nothing. He is nothing. If he should die right after this, he'd be satisfied.

As they reach the cliff, stragglers from the group have been taken off by the storm, and the swaying boat attracts them like flies to a light: their only salvation. The mass approaches the vessel, with Dime slowing down as he approaches, desperate to be the last one aboard... and as tripodals rush by him to try and get to the deck before it drifts too far from the cliff, he feels a blow to his back; Puffy knocking him to the dirt with the butt of the rifle. No words are exchanged; the man is left face-first in mud, and doesn't make effort to get back up.

This is where it must end for him.

...

Yaffenhash clutches Belfry tightly. Her old friend is breathing-- barely. Limp and with eyes half-open, she fades slowly into her true form, her natural form... a reptilian. The few on deck who had seen Belfry's achievement to free the boat are astonished, confused, frantic, but none of that matters to Yaffenhash in this singular moment. She simply doesn't want to tear herself away. "Belfry?" she asks quietly. "Belfry, please..."

Refugees from the factory flood aboard, and a few slip into the sea three stories beneath to be crushed by the cliffside rocks. It's a free-for-all to get to safety, and as the island collapses in on itself, it becomes clear why. There are minutes to spare. And as the last tripodal from the mass comes aboard, Yaffenhash hasn't spotted Dime.

Terror wells up in her core.

The mountainous island rumbles and crumbles; the peaks fall inwards like they're made of plaster, and the sand descends into sea, drifting, drifting, gone. The cliff face becomes a landslide, and in sixty seconds, all that remains of the landmass is a pile of debris, sinking underwater.

The boat barely remains buoyant through this; held steady through lack of people working the sails, as everybody on board is still struggling for their own survival. Corpses drift amidst the rocks and floating soil, and all slowly, slowly falls further down. Dime is nowhere to be seen amidst the frantic bodies on the vessel, but Yaffenhash spots Puffy, still hoisting the firearm. Did he simply not make it...?

Still grasping Belfry tightly, the reptilian glances back at the disappearing island. Among the dozen bodies floating, distended in the cascading water, she spots one moving body-- it's Dime, squirming against the waves.

She calls out into the black, storming night, towards the tripodals which swarm the deck, for help. "There's somebody in the water-- h-he's still moving! There's still somebody in the water!"

There's an immediate response from people nearby, who heave their exhausted selves towards Yaffenhash, giving her an acidic look... but also spotting Dime, the small blip of black against sea. The one closest to the reptilian says, "There's no way. It's too crazy down there-- he's too far gone." He huffs slowly. "Sorry."

The world slows, for a moment. Amidst the downpour, Yaffenhash spends what feels like an eternity staring into Belfry's weak gaze. She's barely conscious, exhausted, laid flat on her back. For a brief moment, Yaffenhash considers staying here-- letting the man drown. But at the darkest moment of everything, when there wasn't hope, Belfry had saved her. The girl would have moved the world for one life who wasn't even on her side-- and Dime was somebody else deserving of that compassion.

She leans down, whispers, "I'll be back in a sec, kid," and turns to leap off into the water.

and here, through the tears, our characters find a camaderie.

Yaffenhash wades through the water. She never was a particularly great swimmer, but she also never was blessed with much ability to shapeshift, and so she had to learn from scratch-- and she pushes every last ounce of herself forth in the icy surface.

The landmass pulls itself down and yanks foliage and debris with it. One wrong move, and her foot will get caught, and it'll all be brought down into the murky deep, never to be seen again. Still, she moves. Still, she moves. Still, she moves.

The wind beats down. Dime is an infinite distance away, and the stormclouds begin piling on the surface above her, driving her head underwater, forcing it down, down, down--

Still, she moves.

Arm over arm, arm over arm, head under, head over, head under; gasp for breath, get only water half the time, gasp, screech, beg, scream, move. Still, she moves. Still, she moves.

Dime's body is cold and shivering in its coldness. His mouth droops open and no noise comes out. She wraps one arm around him, and with the boat feeling miles away, begins to paddle back, sobbing in pain from the freezing cold, sobbing in terror that this is how it all ends-- this is how it all ends.

Still, she moves.

The towering wooden side of the boat goes up into infinity; she feels her lower half grow numb and Dime hold tightly against her for any modicum of safety, but she can't provide it. The waves crash up against them and put them in cyclical torrents underwater, and they surface for only moments to breathe, and scream, and breathe, and scream. They scream for help in unison, their limbs entangled and their bodies dying in front of their eyes.

A minute passes. The ship creaks as it begins to move. Yaffenhash's vision begins to dim, and Dime becomes completely limp.

Still, she screams. She puts out every atom of energy which has ever existed in her, breaks apart, and keeps screaming a while after that, too.

Finally, their terror is heard.

In those dying moments, Yaffenhash sees Belfry lean over the deck, her form so faint against the darkening everything; her arm extends down, down, down, pushing itself further and further, morphing into the form of a rope, then a rope ladder. The blue-clothed reptilian yelps in pain from the transformation, but in that one, singular, all-powerful moment, she maintains it.

Yaffenhash grips with one weak arm, and Dime wraps his weight around, and the two begin to ascend out of the deep.

...

They are all starved for breath, for anything solid to hang on to. As Yaffenhash leans back on the deck's railing, arms wrapped around Dime for shared warmth, Belfry joins in the embrace. They lack words to speak, and in spite of everything, they hold each other as the only support in an endless storm. The ship picks up, and begins to move from its spot in the remains of what was once land.

There is a temporary solution to their danger.
The lizard people never planned on staying here forever, they had ways to leave set aside for later.
There were vessels made, to take them back and forth from a relay station hidden among the clouds.
Or if a vessel was unavailable, they could fly to it. In a pinch, anyways.
They would even take non-lizard people with them, a sort of truce in this terrible time.
The difficulty was finding a ride there, or at least discovering where the station was at that moment.
If they were lucky, they might even see one such vessel heading off into the skies.

Morning comes.

The ship is a boarding vessel: cardboarding. Much of the surface is occupied with vast, low-level cardboard generators, which face up into the moonlight. Space has been cleared for the several hundred refugees, and the ship's crew roam around, retrieving everybody's information.

When the first mate comes across Yaffenhash, holding a sleeping Dime and exhausted Belfry in the corner of a room by the main tower, she's appalled with the appearance of two reptillians, and immediately draws a baton. Yaffenhash raises an arm slowly, pleading her to stop. "Th-this lady got your ship free from the island," she coughs, motioning towards Belfry. "We're just trying to get somewhere safe. We d-don't mean any harm."

And, for the moment, this suffices, with some uproar from other members of the crew.

An hour later, as the sun begins to enter its midpoint in the scarlet sky, there's some commotion outside, and a mass of people gathers around one end of the deck. Yaffenhash briefly leaves her two exhausted companions to see what it's all about, and as she's on her feet again, she remarks at just how much she exerted herself.

She's never put forth that much energy towards... anyone. And having the man, living and breathing in her arms, was a nice feeling that she never thought she'd deserved. It's not clear to her what this means in the grand scheme of things... but something feels like it's changed.

Yaffenhash limps towards the crowd, peeking over it, and spots something familiar, if a bit jarring: one of her people's Refuse Vessels, for taking reptilians from ground to sky, to bases hidden far in the clouds, in case of an event of this scale.

This is a sizable dilemma. As she walks back weakly to the room in the corner of the ship where Dime and Belfry rest, there's a burning question in her mind:

What next?