Hello again. It's weird being alone all of the sudden.

I miss my friends. Julius' warm presence and calm facade. Lenas infectious giggling and constant questions I don't know the answer to. Onicas comforting aura of competence and reactions to my antics. The contrast betwen Fens adult vocabulary and childish pranks.

But, at the same time. I feel more like Me then I have for a long time. I guess, when you get so used to being around others, they can kind of shape you.

I was the leader. I had to care for them. Make sure they were happy, healthy, and fed. Keep them from fighting with one another. I always had to think of 'we' before 'me'.

Now that they are gone missing. Well, I only have to think of myself.

This morning I took a piss off of a cliff. Liberating.

I still want to find them. Make no mistake about that. But I just never noticed how much time and energy I spent on my friends.

With all the extra time and energy I had today I got a lot done.

Besides, y'know, urinating from on high.

I have decided. I am not suited for sitting and waiting. So I am going to go find them. To find my most precious people.

That being said. I am not just running off wildly in a randomly selected direction.

I am preparing before I run off wildly in a randomly selected direction.

I am stockpiling food and fresh water. I am using some empty rum casks to hold the water, so it kind of has a rummy aftertaste. Which isn't a bad thing.

I tried a few different ways of moving around. I could fly sure, and probably will mostly. But it is always nice to have a plan B. So I took that splinter of tinglewood and tried making it into a very tiny boat. It's more of a plank really. I first made it into a very tiny boat, with the special shape that lets them float. Then I formed a triangle shaped notch into the back third on the bottom of the boat. Water flows into the gap, then I super heat it. It expands towards the broad base of the triangle. Which ends at the rear of the tiny craft. Causing steam to come blasting out the back and propelling it forward at speed.

I fell into the ocean a few times while testing it. Which is where I learned something bad.

I am really weak when I am underwater.

Unnaturally so. When I am completely submerged it feels like I am trapped in lead. I can barely move my arms and legs. To make matters worse, I cannot use my tingles. The first time I fell in I nearly drowned. Thankfully I was really close to shore. A wave picked me up and dropped me back on the beach.

I vomited up the other half of the ocean I missed last time.

After that I made sure I was holding a buoyant piece of wood when I was testing out my steam-jet-plank.

I think that must have been what happened to me when we went into the whirlpool. I was submerged. And as odd as it sounds, my tingles shackled me. There has been a qualitative change to my tingles since I made that core and nexus.

My flames burn hotter, and faster. Moving so fluidly to my desires and with such nimbleness that I barely have to think before things that would have taken all my concentration before are easily done. The speed and sensitivity threw me for a while, but soon enough I adapted.

Healing changed too. Before I felt my tingles scouring and cleaning the wound before feeding into my flesh and making my body regenerate and heal insanely quickly. But when I went to heal the massive chunk that had been bitten out of my thigh yesterday it was completely different. My wound filled with fire. Then the fire became my flesh.

I seem to be more fire than man nowadays. I suppose it was to much to hope that I would get the strengths of fire and none of its weaknesses.

Like being completely suppressed by water. As long as some of me is above water it is fine. But when I go underwater. My tingles freeze, and since they are wound tightly around every single bone and muscle in my body I basically become a statue.

Which sucks.

Moving on, I scouted out the area a bit as well.

I flew as high as I could, and soared around a bit looking for nearby islands I might try going to. A few caught my eye. But most around here seem to be a bit smaller than the one I landed on. And just as uninhabited. No signs of smoke from fires to signify people. From that height that was about all I could hope to see besides the islands themselves.

Another part of my brilliant scheme was to leave a note for my friends should they stumble across this island while I was looking for them.

I picked a nice flat cliff face. Facing out towards the ocean and easily visible from multiple angles. Then I carved a message into it. Using my flames to write is kinda hard, but I think it turned out legible. The message goes like this.

'Hey guys! I was here but then I got bored so I went that way! ===> If you are reading this and you are Julius, Lena, Onica, or Fen then just set up camp on this island and wait. I'll be coming back every couple of days. If you aren't my friends then bugger off. This is MY island now!'

And so my brilliant plan was concieved. I would both wait here and go looking for them.

Brilliant!

With the way ocean currents work we probably should have all been carried in the same basic direction.

I think.

So if I am lucky they washed up on one of the nearby islands.

I'll send up a beacon every night. And search an island every day. Then once every three days I will swing back around here to see if they arrived while I was gone.

I have to take my time searching the islands. If I somehow miss one of my friends I am going to be pissed. I don't think it'll be much of a problem though. It's not like my friends will be hiding from me.

Tonights beacon is a huge fire sculpture of the five of us. Me, Lena, and Onica holding hands. With Julius in Lenas unoccupied arm and Fen on my head.

Dinner was a cheeky bird that stole the fish that was supposed to be dinner.

I'll be heading out tomorrow.

Goodnight.