Chapter three.

I woke with the sun just having fully crested the horizon and the wash of warm light was pleasant. Today I had decided I was going to scout the island and see if I could get a handle on where I was.

I got up and took care of morning business. Squatting over a hole is one of the less glamorous things about being transported to a different world. Luckily amongst the variety of jungle leaves was one type that would more than adequately work as TP.

I walked down to the beach with soap and a scrub rag. I got naked and went about taking a wonderfully abrasive salt bath scrub. ‘I have never felt so exfoliated in my life.’ I thought as I turned to see Serena walking to the water from their make shift camp.

I did my best not to stare at her but my eyes drifted over her more than once. She was beautiful in the pale morning light. And from the smile she wore on her face when she caught me staring, I was sure she was alright with it.

Back at camp I got ready. Dressing in my heavy canvas shorts and light linen button up shirt. Belt, day pack, spear and bow. I was ready to see more of the island and go on an adventure.

I walked in the direction of the fruit trees. After only a few minutes of walking up a small rise I found a stream flowing to the other side of the island. I pulled out my water filter and filled the two stainless steel four-liter water bottles I had. I also filled the gallon camelback bladder that went in my day pack, drinking from it as I filled.

The water was odd, just like the air. It had an energy to it and as I drank, I felt better. The water hit my body sort of like an electric energy and I felt more pumped up and ready for the day. It was like coffee, B vitamins and an energy drink all rolled into one.

I set off following the small stream down to the other side of the island. When I walked out on to the beach on the other side, I was greeted by larger waves and the curve of the island.

The island from what I could tell was almost a cercal, with the bay or lagoon in the middle. Two small mountains where at either end of the island and the area in the middle was about a half mile wide.

From around the curve of the island I could see another much larger island. It was directly in line with the one I was currently on. The larger island was to what I was calling east, as that was the direction the sun rose.

There was nothing but open ocean on this side of the island. I thought I might be able to see other islands far out to sea, but I was unsure. The sand was the same fine white course stuff on this side as it was on the inner part.

It had taken me about an hour and a half to reach the other side, with the water filtering stop taking the majority of the time. Having seen everything I wanted to for the day, I decided to head back to my camp.

I made my way back threw the bamboo towards my camp. Some of the bamboo had the appearance of steel. I stopped and tapped my knife on the steel looking bamboo. The soft ting of metal on metal greeted my ears. The leaf’s where about a quarter of and inch thick and sharp along the edges. I picked one of the leaf’s up from the ground and placed the hand leagth piece in the leather bag on my belt.

As I walked threw the fruit trees to my camp, I heard voices. It was Graham’s voice and it was accompanied by the sound of him riffling through my stuff.

I sped my pace up and notched an arrow. When I stepped into my camp, I saw he had just started to go through my bags. The contents of which he had strewn about on the ground haphazardly.

He saw me and I loosed my arrow. It sped through the air and sank into the ground right between his legs.

“Ahhh!” He cried as he flung him self back and landed hard on his ass.

I pulled another arrow and notched it. “Ahhhhh…He’s going to kill Graham!” the auburn-haired girl screamed.

At the sound of her scream all the other girls started to run over. Some of there eyes going wide with shock.

“What the fuck was that for!” Graham snarled at me.

“I told you once already, don’t touch my shit.” I said in a cold loud voice.

“Oh my god, put the bow down. Don’t kill him.”

“Don’t kill him.” the girls all started to clamor.

“I’m not going to kill him.” I said flatly, “If I wanted that he would already be dead.”

“What the fuck, your crazy!” Graham said with more confidence now that all the ladies had arrived and taken his side.

“Why where you going through my things?” I said coldly back.

“We need this stuff, you got tons of gear here. And we took a vote and agreed to share everything.” Graham said hotly at me.

“Well, that’s all-fucking fine, but I told you this is my stuff. And why the fuck do you need it, you have the whole crashed airplane to work with. All the luggage and everything ells.” I said letting the annoyance fill my voice.

“But we all voted.” One of the girls said.

“Ever herd of taxation without representation? Well, it started the American revolutionary war and that’s what you just tried to do.” I said hotly.

“Oh, I guess…” the same girl said lamely trailing off.

“Fine, I told you man, fall in line. Well fuck you then, lets leave him. Don’t none of you so much as talk to him if you want to stay in my camp. I’ll keep you safe from this psycho.” Graham said hotly as he got up. The girls all looked to him then me and made some internal decision.

They all turned on there heals and left. Serena, Stella and Madeline all looked distressed for a second before following the others. Serena offered me a halfhearted shrug.

I sighed as I walked over and picked up my arrow. ‘Nothing goods going to come from this.’ I thought.

I needed something to do. Something to keep me busy. I was still pissed off that I had found him going through all of my stuff. Now I had to put it all back into its proper place; that was annoying. I wasn’t a meticulously neat person naturally and had to work quite hard at it.

After I had all of my things stored back away, I decided that I was going to need to build a proper shelter. The tree that sat on the opposite side from where my hammock was currently set up was perfect. It had two large curving branches that came from the base of the tree. They rose just about 6 feet from the ground before curving to run parallel with the ground.

I figured the best way to blow off steam was going to be to build a shelter. I left my bow and spear underneath my hammock. I moved back into the trees and began chopping down different sized bamboo. I gathered up the pieces I had cut down with my hatchet and carried them back into my camp. When I had enough beginning materials to start, I laid out how my shelter was going to look.

I dug four holes, two and a half feet deep at the four corners of what would be my shelter. I then took four of the large timber bamboos and sunk them into the wholes I had dug. I then lashed them to the two large branches that ran parallel to the ground. I had cut the top of the bamboo so that they would stick 7 feet above the two parallel branches. I Was planning on building a raised shelter.

It was then easy to make a lashed and woven wall. Before the walls however, I split some of the timber bamboo into fourths and made a slatted platform on the second floor. Then l lashed bamboo horizontally to the four-coroner timber bamboos. That allowed me to weave bamboo vertically, in and out of the horizontal pieces.

The roof of the shelter got the same woven treatment. I also cut large palm fawns and wove them into the roof and walls as well.

Standing on the inside my head poked just above the platform to the second floor. The second-floor room was actually quite large and was about twelve feet wide and nine feet long. I closed off the wall on the second floor and made a frame for the entrance door on the first floor.

There was a branch that ran over the entire thing and I use that is the eve of the roof. When it was all completed looked like a small two-story shack made out of bamboo with a pitched roof greater than 45°.

By this point I was hungry and the sun was about halfway from mid-day to the horizon. I ate some of the fruit I had collected not wanting to venture out of my camp and go fishing; for fear that Graham might come back and steal something. Honestly if he just asked for what he needed I would’ve given it to him but it was the fact he didn’t even have the common courtesy to ask; that was the biggest problem. And his eyes I didn’t like his eyes, they were cold and blue and had a cruel calculating glint to them.

It had just turned dark by the time I had finished, my hands hurt and were raw from working with all the natural material. The large shelter was impressive for six or so hours of work. One of the reasons why I love bamboo so much, it was quite easy to build with. The shelter by no means would last very long; maybe a year or two if properly cared for but that was all I needed for now.

I really didn’t have a plan to even sleep in the shelter as I sat on my hammock tent. I would just store my gear in it. The sun had set and I was eating the rest of the fruit that I had collected before I planned to turn in for the night. Laying down I drifted off into the light sleep that I was becoming accustomed to.

I woke sometime in the middle of the night to the sound of the rain falling. I was glad that I was dry and warm in my hammock tent. I was also especially glad I’d constructed the shelter and had decided to place my bags on the second floor preventing them from being out in the rain.

The sounds from the other camp had greatly diminished. I could tell Graham was still drunk and a few of the girls. The noise however was much diminished from previous nights.

I drifted in and out of sleep as the rain fell and was surprised every time that I woke to feel the soreness in my muscles had diminished greatly.

I woke when the sun had fully come over the horizon. I didn’t really have any extravagant plans for today. I had decided to just stay around my camp. I still didn’t feel comfortable enough leaving it. Knowing that Graham would take the opportunity to go through my stuff again.

So, I decided to fall back on an old routine of meditating. The energy in the air and the way that my lower stomach was feeling had me questioning what was going on with my body. I needed time to asses my body

Threw my studies of the occult and varuses religions of the world I had picked up many such practices. I was sure that one of the potential portals candidates from earth led to a world where the Taoist concept of cultivation and Qi existed. Was that what I was feeling, Qi.

Taking care of my morning business and collecting some more fruit. I sat down in front of the fire that had been completely extinguished from the rain the night before and began my mediation.

I was completely shocked as I began. My internal focus was immediately drawn down to the area below my navel; where in Chinese medicine the Dantian was located. In my mind’s eye I could clearly see a spherical shaped object about the size of a marble, swirling with clear energy. What appeared to be thin hair like veins were connected to it. Those had to be my meridians.

I just sat in meditation watching it for a while. As with every breath I saw a little bit of clear energy flow from around the marble and be absorbed by it. The energy would then flow out of the pearl and into the thin vein network. It would flow to every part of my body. I didn’t know if what I was looking at was chi or manna but it was definitely not like anything I had ever felt before or seen before.

I had never had my minds eye be so clearly drawn to envision something. It was a clear as looking at something in the real world, not just in my head.

I discover that the energy responded quite quickly to any application of my will. I then tried a few basic exercises that I had read about in my occult studies throughout the world. I pushed some of the energy to my eyes. It was easy as there was already a meridian pathway for the energy to take. I was astounded to be able to see more clearly but not only just more clearly. There were swirls of color or the chromatic overlay of different color energies being emitted by different things.

Next, I applied my will to the energy and forced a small amount of it to gather on the inside of my right-hand palm. The energy oozed out of my palm sort of like honey. When it came in contact with the outside world, I felt the strangest urge to give it a direction of focus, to tell it what to do, what to be.

Following along with the feeling I thought about creating a small tiny candle flame in the center of my palm. Using just the smallest amount of energy it needed to sustain itself. As soon as I had the thought formulated a small yellow and orange flame the size of a candle sprang up above my palm. It flickered merrily and as it burned the energy, I could feel the small reserve in my palm depleting.

Telling the energy to stop and return back to the center of my being; the flame went out and I felt the energy return.

When I opened my eyes again after re-assimilating the energy that I had had in my palm I was surprised to see that the sun was already past noon. I had been sitting in my meditative pose all morning. I ate some more fruit and stretched. Contemplated the consequences of what I had just discovered.

I had been searching for this all my life, a portal to a different world that hopefully had magic of some kind. After sitting quietly for a long time, I came to the conclusion that no matter what I had to experiment more with this energy and figure out how to gather and collect more of it.

For the rest of the day, I sat around camp surprised at how drained I felt from the little meditative exercise I had done. It was good that I decided to stay as well because every so often I would hear Graham’s voice issue a barking command at one of the ladies. There were no longer any festive sounds coming from the others camp. The angry tone of Graham’s voice carrying.

In the morning and later on in the day I did see a few of the girls out trying to collect fruit and down by the ocean. Early in the morning I saw that most of them had a wet bedraggled look to them. I realized that they did not have any shelter from the rain last night. When any of them saw me, I could see that they were not happy, not so much at me but at the situation. They would also nervously glance around as if they were afraid someone would see them looking at me.

Graham’s angry barking voice would drift through the trees and the general sense of unhappiness settled over the entire area. It was when I had finished meditating and a few hours had passed that I heard what sounded like playful laughing and splashing again coming from the ocean.

I got up and moved to the edge of my camp and looked over at the group that was playing in the ocean. It was the auburn-haired girl and Graham who is throwing her around in the water. The rest of the girls were sitting on the beach their arms crossed over their legs watching.

I could tell by the way that they were playing that more was going on. It was like when you roughhouse with your brothers and sisters and things went just a little bit too far and you could tell that one of you had decided to try and hurt the other just a little bit. The way Graham pushed and picked up and slammed the auburn-haired girl into the water just didn’t have that fun playful look to it. Even though she was laughing and putting on a show of having a good time.

Some of the girls on the beach looked at me and then look back to Graham. I could tell by the looks on their faces that they were worried about what was going on as well. The water fight went on for maybe fifteen minutes. Then Graham grabbed the back of the neck of the auburn-haired girl and dragged her out of the water she was still laughing and playing along but it sounded forced.

A few minutes later after Graham had guided the girl back to their camp by the back of her neck; I could hear the loud smacks and painful sounding moans coming from their area. I could only imagine what was going on and truthfully, I didn’t really know if there was anything I could do about it. The sounds were definitely disturbing and from the way Graham had been acting I was wondering if this was completely consensual or not. But no matter how many short screams or sounds of pain and pleasure came from the camp the auburn-haired girl never cried out for it to stop.

The girls that were on the beach looked completely disturbed by what was going on and they were definitely not cheering on what was happening. They kept glancing over at me and then back to their camp as if they were trying to work up the courage to come over and talk to me. But they had chosen Graham over me and if they came to me, it might all end in violence. With Grahams unhinged behavior I figured violence was inevitable. After a while of listening to the disturbing sounds and none of the girls coming up to me, I went back to my camp and laid down.