I woke with the rising sun, and drank some of my water. It was still hot, surprising me, until I touched the side of the pot and chuckled.

"Son of a bitch..." I mumbled.

The pot was insulated, for exactly this purpose, and seeing as I'd used it to its fullest, perfectly insulated, it had stayed warm. I hummed, and nodded, looking out of the Windows to scout the water.

It was clear, and I could see the fish easily. I hummed, sitting in the chair, and thought hard about how I was going to catch the fish.

I looked over, and grinned. He kept a Wooden Broom in his plane. That meant he basically lived in this thing... Which meant there was likely a freezer or fridge.

I started searching the plane, finding several tools that were scattered around. His toolbox had come open in the wreck, but I eventually gathered everything I could find, and then found the thing that made me smile.

He had a freezer, secondary power coming from another crank generator, but it ran on the plane battery, it seemed, and was still running. He only had a small collection of bruised vegetables, but that was what I didn't have access to at the moment, so I was definitely happy.

I used some of the water from my cauldron (that's the only way I can think about that giant pot. I could fit my entire body in that pot.) and used the smallest pot, boiling some of the vegemite he had left on the CookTop.

I ignored my taste buds, and just ate it, understanding its nutritional value. I was not a picky eater anyway, I'd been cooking for myself since I was 15.

Then I froze.

"I'm such a fucking idiot..." I snatched the broom, and then Sheila, and started sharpening it, grinning. It was 5 feet long, made of heavy oak, so it was perfect for my thin body, seeing as I was only 5'10" anyway, and built like the dancer I am.

I spun my new spear, and then jogged down to the water. I remembered a video I watched once, about how fish were impossible to catch with spears, if you actually aimed at the fish. As soon as the spear touches the water, the fish feels it, and swims away faster than you can blink. So, to catch one, you had to aim in front of it.

I sat on a rock, set at the end of a little peninsula, one of several hundred, and simply watched for a little while. When I saw a particularly fat fish swimming lazily past me.

I aimed a full 6 inches in front of him, and hauled my hand back, then let fly.

My mistake, I think, was that I didn't think about how clear the water was. He was actually around 3 feet below me, not just below the surface like I'd thought, and much bigger than I'd first thought.

The spear went through his tail, and I was pulled into the water when he flicked it, annoyed.

I shouted in surprise, and braced my feet on the ocean floor, hauling him towards me. I wrapped my arms around his body, and slammed it against the Rock I'd been on, dazing it, and rammed Sheila into its brain.

I relaxed, and started wading back to the shore. I pulled out Sheila, and cleaned her off, sheathing her, then my spear, and finally managed to get the giant fish up on the Flat Shale plateau that was around twenty feet from my Plane/Camp/House.

My beast was actually 3 feet long, and when he twitched, I shouted in surprise and shock, but it laid still. I sighed, shaking my head.

"Don't be a pussy, Jason, cut the damn fish up." I muttered, drawing Sheila and kneeling next to the fish. "Okay... I filet along the spine, and the rest is bait.... That's not that hard... Right?"

I steeled myself, and cut the fish's head off, then it's tail, and then gutted it, and finally filleted it. I set aside the eatable parts, the two giant slabs of meat. I searched them thoroughly for Pin Bones.

Once it was all clean, I put all the bait into a bucket that George used to hold his porn collection. (That was a welcome find, though I was too busy to celebrate.)

I mashed it all up, except the Liver and Lungs, and set the Chum out to rot in the hot sun, basically cooking on the slate and in a metal bucket. I read somewhere that fish liked to eat rotting fish... Which was weirdly Necrotic, as well as Cannibalistic, but whatever. It might catch me more fish.

I carried my fillets into the plane, and placed them into the freezer, and then walked back outside with my tackle and spear.

I laced a 5 foot length of fishing line with a small aluminum weight and a wicked four-pronged hook, then firmly hooked a piece of the fishes liver onto it, making sure the hook was perfectly hidden.

I poured a ladleful of the chum into the water in front of my rock, and set my hook in the water. Fish swarmed the cloud of blood and scraps, and I felt a jerk. I yanked my line up, and caught a small fish that swung from my line.

I pulled my hook out of its mouth, and grinned when my bait was still intact. I tossed the little fish into my bait bucket, and dropped my hook again.

---

I set my now-full bait bucket into my freezer, and removed a large cut of the fish to grill to a finish on the CookTop. I ate it quickly, and then went outside with my rope.

I hummed, realizing there was a flaw in my plan. I didn't have posts.

I sighed, and started canvassing the coast for about 30 yards in all directions. Once I had marked 250 trees that were all the exact same width and height, I started cutting them, making sure they weren't nests, or in any way necessary to the environment.

Each one was at least 8 inches in diameter, and at minimum 8 feet, gradually growing to a necessary 30 feet.

I set them out on the shale, and nodded. "Suns going down, but I'll be back, ladies..." I grinned tiredly and went into the plane, cracking my back.

--- Day Three ---

"Alright. Let's do this, bitches." I rubbed my hands together, and then picked up one of the light posts. I set it into the sand, a foot from the edge of the surf.

It was currently high tide, turning towards low, which meant I knew where to set the posts, and now I had an extra ten feet or so of wiggle room, as the Low tide was about 10-15 feet down the beach.

I set the posts, each one exactly a foot from the other, down about thirty feet. The water was pretty shallow, for about that far, and I stopped about five feet from the Dip in the water.

The dock would be 8 feet wide, just to make sure I could carry things down it. I laced the rope between the posts, tightly tying everything.

"Now to let this rest, and all the knots set..."

--- Day Four ---

I walked down my dock after its nightlong set, grinning, and then nodded, heading back. "Perfect. Now for the slats..."

I gathered pieces of flat palm sheddings, which was what I pulled off the trees to strip then down, and then I laid them down, along with the limbs I'd cut off of the trees to make them all even and flat. I layered another tight layer of vines, and bounced on the new dock.

It barely moved, but it did shift slightly with the water at the end, jut the way I'd designed it in my mind. At the very end of the dock, I had designed a fish catcher.

Most of the posts I had cut were for the dock, but about the last 50 were for a sort of bowl.

Over the past four days, I have observed that the water level of this particular beach drops 6 feet with the low tide. That means, if I create a bowl of seawater that's perfectly escapable and accessible during high tide, fish will swim into it.

During low tide, bigger fish will be trapped, while smaller bait fish will still be able to get in, meaning the bigger fish can still eat, which means they won't die. Much better for me, in the long run, and much more sustainable than spear fishing.

I covered my bait bucket with a Wire mesh lid, and attached the handle to a rope I could lower and raise accordingly, and then laced the bottom of my bowl with more vines in a very tight netting, four feet below the low tide waterline, which meant it was 10 feet deep at high tide.

The wood I'd used for posts, and also my vines, were floatable, buoyant, which meant there was no need or a connection to the bottom. That gave me a few extra 15 foot beams to work with to make my Slip Joist for my Planes cradle.

Ah, an explanation is needed. Basically, it's a rope swing, that hangs in the water, and the seaplane is able to slip into it, and be secured, therefore saving the plane from the disastrous affects of hot sand on metal.

--- Day Five ---

For the beams, I had to have much sturdier, steadier wood, so I used my normal beams for a small smokehouse frame on the beach, and then cut bigger, stronger trees, that I'd tagged in my first canvassing.

Each one was a full 18 inches in diameter, and 40 feet tall. They were much heavier, but by dragging them along on smaller, rolling logs, I managed to cart them to the beach.

--- Day Six ---

Sheila was a complete life saver, honestly. Normally, I'd've had to chop and hack these trees with whatever primitive hacking tool I fashioned together, not calmly cut them down with a mini chainsaw.

--- Day Seven ---

12 giant trees planted into the ocean floor all the way to the rock later, and I had a frame, just as the sun was setting on my seventh day on this island. I grinned and laid down in my plane.

"And then he rested..." I snickered quietly.

I picked up a small notebook I'd brought with me. It was my father's, but with new pages. Waterproof, fireproof, it was basically built to be tougher than Mother Nature.

I had been chronicling my days, as a way of compartmentalizing, and keeping my sanity. Georges frayed leather watch band provided me with a strap to keep it closed, and his actual watch face was used to tell time, obviously.

I drew all my blueprints and building materials and methods, and also my eating habits and just about everything else. If I did die out here, (God forbid), I wanted the next person to have a good chance, using my brain to keep them alive longer.

I also wrote down my life story in bits and pieces, almost like an autobiography, written in chapters.

I went to sleep, clutching my personal therapist.

--- Day Eight ---

I opened my eyes. June 8th... An inauspicious day for anyone else. For me? I was now 27. I would have my birthday, not with my friends or family, but totally alone, on a Tiny abandoned island in an Archipelago of other tiny, abandoned islands, all close enough to swim to, if I dared.

But I would be busy, today. I was making a slip joist to hold up my seaplane, and getting it onto it would be a chore, in and of itself.

So, I used my precious supply of super-reinforced steel wool cabling that George had kept for his climbing wire, (of which I only had 70 scarce meters of), and made the ribs of the sling for my plane. I used my regular vine/rope/netting for the rest of the sling, quadruple thickness.

It would hold the plane out of the water by about four feet during low tide, but it would be firmly settled, even during high tide, and secured by several ropes.

The tree/posts were settled in X patterns, cut like Lincoln logs to set into each other, and wrapped with several hundred meters of vines to ensure stability as best I could.

It was about 6 when I was finally ready to move the plane, but I decided to check my Fish Trap, instead, and move the plane tomorrow, when I had more energy.
The fish trap was flush with fish too big to get out, and I grinned. I speared four of them, and then took them to my new smokehouse.

I was cooking them in a slate oven, which got extremely hot, extremely fast, and the local wood was very useful, because it burned quickly and made extremely dense smoke. I used this to smoke the fish, preserving it in the smokehouse meat cellar.

The Cellar was basically a giant pit I dug and covered in giant plates of slate, then covered in a liquid concrete/Clay I'd made from gravel and Clay. Once it firmed up, it was impenetrable. I also made the hut from bricks made of this style of material in my off time over the past few days.

I sat down with a fish steak, and munched on it, watching the water. I liked the water, honestly I think I'd love to live here, if it was voluntary.

The sun went down, and I nodded. "Off to sleep I go..."