WHERE: the foresty area bordering East Beach
WHEN: early morning
@kiskasokolov
Emre yawned widely, as he tread his way from the farm, towards his little work-in-progress homestead near East Beach. It was early, the island was pleasantly drizzly and everything looked covered in a grey film. If it wasn’t for the humidity, it would’ve been London weather, which Emre welcomed. Not just for the wet keeping him hydrated but just…well, quiet times like this, he did miss London.
It was just him, alone, heading to another day of work. The farm had a few people working it right now, so Emre wasn’t worried about splitting his time between his own project and the farm work. He slowly consumed some roasted corn kernels as he walked, taking a detour. The tide was going out; chances of catching a couple crabs for lunch seemed a good idea.
But Emre paused, when he thought he saw something person-shaped. His hand went to his cutlass, and he squinted ahead through the rainy mist.
It was indeed a person. The back of her - she seemed settled in her spot, watching. New people had arrived from the jungle; new people kept randomly arriving, and Emre had intended to keep track of them all. But he’d fallen behind, caught up in his own…situations. He didn’t recognize this one - not the red hair of the leader woman, or the soft brown rabbitness of Emilia. Another one of them, maybe.
Was they all girls? Emre thought, and he couldn’t help smiling to himself at the thought. Survival of the fittest, when it came to the Labyrinth, and all women.
He was content to watch her for a moment, because clearly she was focused on something else. Something out on the rocky beach. Magnolia skinny dipping, maybe; that would be a sight to peep at.
Emre couldn’t quite tell, so he decided he’d just make himself known.
“Oi - “ he hissed towards her, voice soft and husky. “What you gawping at then?”
Mist lays over the island in the morning light and like a sycophant, silence mimics it; soft, fragile. Deceiving. Silence doesn’t exist in The Labyrinth. There’s quiet, the kind that Kiska would seek sometimes, although rarely compared to before. Six years alone is enough to spoil the simplest of pleasures, but solitude; it’s in her bones. In the thick, hot press of the jungle, there’s the snuffle of hogs, the chatter of monkeys. Even the trees have their own sounds, if you listen close. Or if you’re far enough from Briar’s mile-a-minute mouth and Libby’s snoring.
Kiska craves the silence, the supposed peace that tails along after like a hapless, hopeless lover, but it unsettles her too. And yet, not as much as the priest’s presence does. She’s observed each of these strangers; their flaws, their allegiances. Soon she’ll have the chance to speak to Emilia, who will scrawl it all down. She won’t tell her this. Emilia is too sharp, and Kiska knows that all it would take is one frayed edge; one unpicked stitch for the thread to unravel.
So she watches alone. The mist makes it harder, but mist is far from the worst conditions Kiska has ever faced. It’s been a while since she’s had more than dinner to track, but there are some skills that don’t decay. Riding a bike, killing a man. And although silence doesn’t exist in The Labyrinth, Kiska is the closest thing to it.
She crouches low, almost flat on her belly in the damp and the dirt as she peers at the holy man. Through laziness or soft stupidity, many of the islanders are still fast asleep, but not him—and Kiska wants to know why. She knows what men like him are capable of, the crimes they commit in the name of their invisible saviour. And yet so far, all he’s done is paddle in the shallows like a child.
Perhaps she’s looking too closely for a sign, a burning bush on a Godforsaken island. It leaves her blind. His voice is a warm hiss, but Kiska’s blade is cold where it presses to the stranger’s throat. She coils cobra-tight around him, all hard limbs that incapacitate and make up for her small stature. And her hair is a wild, dark halo around a face inches from his, her eyes ablaze. Rage is a fire that licks at the door of her composure, that demands to be granted in. It would be easy, she thinks, to take his life. To own it.
She doesn’t. Instead, Kiska unwinds herself from this man and slips soundlessly back beneath the shadows of the nearest tree. She could say many things. She could coerce him into another kind of silence. “You surprised me,” she says instead, and the admission stings. First the woman in the house in the trees, and now him. Are you losing your touch? Slowly, Kiska sheathes her knife and jerks her chin towards the water, and the rock that juts defiantly from it, just the shape of it visible through the fog. “Who lives out there?”