Chapter Six.

Heather and I gathered our gear quickly. I had emptied out my large backpack of all of the supplies and had then given the smaller day pack to Heather. With some essentials we made our way into the weird cross between the jungle forest and an orchard. Though an orchard might not be accurate as orchards are cultivated and though there was a wide variety and a lot of fruit trees they were not in any semblance of order.

Plucking two deliciously large red apples from a tree I tossed one to Heather, “so botany? How long has that been going on?”

Deftly catching the Apple and taking a bite and answering while she chewed Heather said, “I’m in my fourth year, just finishing up my bachelors and deciding on a Master’s program. I’m really interested in herbs and the natural effects they have on the body and how we can incorporate that into a more standardized practice.”

“Well, if this is some fucking crazy cultivation world, Xianxia thing going on I bet she’ll make a great alchemist.”

“OMG… Are you like talking about the web novels? I love that shit I can’t get enough of it. I started reading them when I was sixteen, half the reason I went into botany is because I love the idea of herbalism and alchemy.” Heather said a bit of her reserved personality bubbling away.

“You gotta be kidding me, you’re a fan. I can’t say that I am a complete fan, bed translations are hard for me to read. But I did extensively study the genre in my occult studies, and the idea of transmigration of the soul was one of my main theories on how to get off of earth for a long time. Came down to either suicide, saving someone or some kid, or just dying of old age. So, I decided to take a more active role in search for portals.”

“I still can’t believe that shit is happening, I have a hard time believing were somewhere not on earth.”

“Here it is.” I said as we finally walked up to the dull gray shining bamboo. “If you had any doubts before, I think coming from a botanist’s point of view this will definitely convince you.”

Heather immediately ran up to the plant. Her fingers began to expertly move over the bamboo. She examined the stocks, the bumpy Ridge joint things, the little offshoots with leaves and the leaves themselves. She even cut her finger slightly on purpose to test how sharp the long thin leaves were.

She turned me and said, “this is fucking incredible. There’s nothing like this on earth… Absolutely not a fucking thing that can be compared to this. Holy shit.”

“So, is there any way to break one of those off you think?”

“I have no idea. It feels just like metal, but the fact that it’s coming from a plant I can only imagine that it’s exponentially stronger. Things that are grown and incorporated in the plans usually become much stronger as the crystalline structure is changed.”

“Yeah, I was just thinking about hitting it really hard with my axe. But I’m pretty sure that might break it so… Maybe we’ll just skip the conveniently growing steel bamboo spears for right now?”

“I mean they would be really useful but I have no idea how we would even cut them.”

With that decided we went about with our second most important task, climbing up the small mountain that was located to what I was calling the Southwest. We made our way through more of the same jungle like trees with clearings for fruit trees of every variety. Flowers and vines marred our path, but the beauty and rich delicate sense made up for their inconvenience.

That was when I spotted it, we had just begun to hike uphill and some of the trees had thinned out. Marijuana plants. A lot of marijuana plants. Well really more like ten or fifteen, but if you’ve ever seen ten or fifteen monstrosities growing, they look more like trees than small bushes. Now just because we found marijuana, which is just hemp growing naturally didn’t mean we were going to be able to get anything to smoke from it. The real excellent find was that all of the plants were female, or at least the ones in this location and they had not been fertilized. Allowing for the beautifully grown crystalline cones that sprouted in a multitude of colors all over the plants.

Me and Heather each looked at each other and got a huge smile on her face. “Well while not the most essential to survival, it’s definitely one source for pain management, and island boredom management.” I said with a big smile on my face.

“Cannabis is a wonderful natural herbal remedy. It is been used by humans for almost all of our entire existence. It’s only right and natural we found it here.” Heather said as she began walking towards the plants.

It was only a matter of a few minutes’ worth of work to gather a large cloth grocery bag full of the crystalline buds. We would still have to trim off the excess leaves but honestly, since we were not trying to sell this, we could just trim it for our own use.

After we had found and collected the cannabis, we continued to climb the small hill, mountain? I wasn’t quite sure what to call it in my mind it looked more like a mountain but was about the size of a hill. The path up the mountain hill was well defined not by any artificial means but by the way that the rocks protruded and the small pieces of stone that had broken off guided the way.

It only took about fifteen minutes worth of walking to get halfway up the mountain hill. It was here that we found our second most useful herbal pain remedy. Big large poppy pods dotted the trail, and grew in clusters and clumps in their own clearing. All in all, we found about thirty-five of the bulbous flower seedpods.

Tapping out the seeds and scattering them close to the location they were at we collected them and put them in a secondary bag. With our source of opium painkiller now well in hand we continued to the top of the mountain hill.

“Well besides for the medicinal plants we found, there isn’t shit up here.” I said.

“Yeah, the fact that those two plants were here shows that their significant cross-contamination from earth. The strange thing is, is those plants were really healthy and really large. Almost like they were growing in the most ideal circumstances. I see now what you mean by the island being shaped like a weird crescent moon. And we are deafly going have to check out that much larger island it looks like it’s connected to this one by a small isthmus.”

I completely agreed with Heather and we enjoyed the peace and quiet of the ocean breeze from the top of the small mountain hill. But we had found some much-needed pain medicine for Lily, and we still had to go and filter water.

We made our way back down the mountain hill. Passing the poppies and other variety of flowers and herbs along the way. There was a surprising amount of common cooking herbs that Heather noticed and she gathered them along with any that she thought might have medicinal effects. But there were only a few of those.

Water pumped and filtered into all of the spare bottles that we had fit into our backpacks I was surprised the weight didn’t bother me that much. I had to be carrying close to 80 pounds, but it didn’t really feel like much.

I set my heavy pack down just on the outside of the shelter. Heather did the same with the four a jug that she was carrying also. “I don’t suppose you got a pipe in that bag of yours?” Heather asked skeptically.

“Well as a matter-of-fact I do. You never know when you might be on a deserted island with a smoker who needs to slowly come down from nicotine withdrawals.” I said smiling as I moved to my duffel bag. I pulled out a small pipe that was rolled up with a small amount of tobacco.

“What’s that I hear about a pipe?” Anna asked.

“Yeah, did you find something for the pain?” Lily managed to groan out.

“We found some cannabis and opium.” Heather said. She collected the pipe from me and packed it with some of the weed we had found. She handed it to Lily along with one of my lighters. Lily quickly took a hit, and within a matter of moments the tension that was present with in her muscles and face dissipated.

Now it was time to do a little home remedying. I collected a large pot and stoke the fire and filled it with fresh water. I collected the poppies pods and dump them into the pot of water. It took quite a bit of time for the water to come to a full boil and during that time some of the other girls continued to bring over useful items from the plane wreckage. Once the water was boiling with the poppy plants, I took a branch from a tree and began to mash the pods. This took another two hours for them to fully soften and become a thick paste. After which I added a little bit more water and set the pot on a section of coals that would allow it to come to a strong summer.

It was another two hours until the liquid was thick enough to begin to strain. I grabbed a cheese cloth sack from my duffel bag that I had with my cooking supplies. I fitted the cheesecloth into another pot and then dumped the poppy slop into it. The next forty-five minutes were spent with me ringing out all of the liquid from the cheesecloth sack.

I wasn’t quite sure how much liquid we had but it was close to two or 3 gallons. With the filtered poppy tea and a pot, I said it back on the fire to simmer slowly.

Well, me and Heather worked diligently to concentrate the poppy extract to produce a week opium tea for Lily the rest of the girls had finished the majority of the tasks they had set for the day. The clothes had been washed and a general sense of freshness had settled over the camp. We decided to have a light dinner instead of cooking, but that light dinner consisted of almost every single type of fruit conceivable and copious amounts of it also.

It was when Lily finally got her first cup of water down opium extract tea that she finally passed out peacefully for the first time. The rest of us lounged around the fire eating fruit and generally allowing a sense of calm to settle over us for the first time.

“What are we going to do?” Madilen asked.

“What do you mean?” Naomi asked.

“I mean what are we going to do to get back?”

“Not much to do, I think. I’m think this was a one-way trip.” I said.

“What do you mean?” Madilen exclaimed.

“The portal or whatever brought us here, happened at like twenty thousand feet. If there is a way back, I won’t be going. We are going to have to search this whole world for information on that though. That’s if there are even people here.”

“What do you mean you won’t be going?” Anna asked askance.

“I mean I spent my whole life trying to get here, not about to go back. Look, I’m sure some of you might want to go back to earth and that’s cool. I’ll help if I can but, this world has got magic, or chi, or some other kind of mystical energy, though I don’t remember reading about a Jelly like one, anyways, yeah…why would I go back?”

“Your family? Friends, normal shit. What the hell are we going to do with magic. AC is all the magic I want.” Anna said.

“Well, we aren’t going to solve this problem now. We have to decide what to do about tomorrow and the day after that, so on and so forth. Until…well until I don’t know what…” I trailed off.

“Hey well tomorrow we should head over to the other mountain hill and see about crossing over to the other island.” Heather added smiling at me.

“Wait there’s another island? How big is it are there…” Mellissa started to say.

“We have no idea Melissa, that’s what we need to find out.” Heather interrupted.

“Well, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” I said. Night had fully fallen as we ate and talk around the fire. I got up and stoke the fire adding some more longs before I climbed the shack.

I stripped down my boxers and took the position in the center of the row of accumulated padding and blankets. Luckily well the days were what I would consider mildly hot the nights were just cool enough to be considered chilly. It was quite the perfect temperature for sleeping with just enough blankets and pillows.

It wasn’t long before I was drifting in and out of sleep and I felt Stella and Serena take up positions on either side of me again. Their bodies were warm and comforting and I quickly fell in the fast throes of sleep.