Day 21/ Marie

Today was eventful. Not at first, though. Most of us were unsure of what to do with the rest of the day, so we just lingered about watching the owls who were watching us back. They sat just out of reach of Blain's slingshot, as if they had heard us last night.

I asked Blain more about the Wendigo, but he just shushed me and said, "Speaking about it brings them." I pushed him, though. Told him it was here already. He said, "Don't trust voices in the woods."

Then, a very human whistle sang out over the trees. Blain went pale, shushed me again, and fast walked back to the coast. For a member of an elite army team known for survival skills, he does not inspire reassurance. I swear superstitious people can't see what's right in front of them. A mythical spirit must be the least threatening thing we've seen.

Although, the chimera was quite odd. I was guessing at the language in the temple looking slightly Greek, but I wonder if there's a correlation? We would be very off-track if we had wreacked near Greece. We should have been closer to the Bermuda Triangle, given that the trip was from Southern Venezuelan to Florida.

There's an actual kid amongst the survivors. His name is Draco. His mom liked Harry Potter, and his dad liked dragons. Muarice was skipping rocks with him, while a good half of the group was fishing further up the cove.

A few of us went about sorting through some of the rubbage that had washed up from the plane, including myself.

Blain sat at the edge of the water, filling several bottles with purification tablets and giving them one of his patented puzzled looks, "the water here... it's clean. From the ocean, no complicated filtering, just these tablets, and I dont even know if it needs them."

"Really? From here? From the ocean? Clean?"

He chuckled, no doubt glad he wasn't alone in his confusion, "think it has anything to do with your friend's notes?"

"Even if I did study rocks, I doubt I would have an answer. Djibrine died before he could prove anything."

I slipped on a snorkel and goggles I had found and decided to check out the sea life. Gathering an understanding of the biome might help us survive, plus it's the one thing I might actually be good at.

Before I jumped in, though, I took a look at everyone around camp. There's quite a few, and I've learned a bit about most of them, so I'll try to work them into my journal.

Kalvin, of course, who couldn't do much on one leg. Jennifer, who was taking care of Kalvin when he needed.

There are two more people that I feel like I should mention. They are complete opposites. Mute, as we've been calling him since he hadn't talked since the crash. Ron, a guy who hadn't shut up since the crash, was the same guy that had suggested cannibalism last night.

Ron has been wearing a three-piece business suit complete with a tie, which is what he was wearing when we crashed, but it speaks volumes about how useless he is in our current situation. I guess he didn't ask to be here, but still, he could try to help. Instead, he just keeps asking 'God why him' and going on about being stranded with a bunch of hicks when he should be at a five-star resort getting his feet licked by expensive sluts. Although the feet thing was kind of funny, the rest of his tirade was draining me really fast. So I swung my own feet over the edge of the rock, away from Ron, and into the ocean.

I love that moment when you first dive in and break the surface. You go from above water to below with only a hint of resistance. Mother Nature knows you are trespassing, but even she can't conceal the wonders of the sea from longing eyes. So, the water parts for you.

It's only an inch away but it's another world entirely. This water had a strange white fog rippling within the surface, but under that first layer it was crystal clear. Better than any freshwater lake despite being in the ocean. I could see everything, and I've never seen a biome so magnificent, so colorful, so unique! It was a biologist's dream.

A vast network of colorful coral swarming with electric eels. A glowing field of iridescent jellyfish shifting colors and translucent sharks. Sharks that were entirely clear except for the bones! It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. It was perfectly sublime, and I felt completely insignificant.

It was like someone had made a snow globe from a Tesla coil and I was drifting inside with all of God's most precious rejects. The electricity streaking from the eels didn't seem to bother the jellyfish or the clear sharks. But schools of thousands of Angel-blobs avoided them more easily than they seemed like they should. They dodged literal streaks of lightning; they swam so fast and gracefully that I could only make out their angelic qualities. Gone were the slumpy faces, lost in the dance of rainbow fins.

But something else was in the sea. Something much bigger than any shark.

It was a shadow in the distance. The silhouette of a legendary leviathan or some predatory dinosaur. A few of the sharks noticed and fled. One of them brushed past me on its way to survival. It was like being touched by a ghost, one that didn't mean to haunt you, but was just passing by.

The jellyfish shot upward at the commotion, and the eels lit up stronger than before, but most of the fish just lingered in confusion. I started swimming as soon as its reptilian maw came into view. It dashed forward and swallowed a plethora of the dangerous creatures in one bite. When its jaw snapped closed, its large eyes met mine with a predatory intelligence.

Its jaws snapping shut again, inches from my feet propelled me out of the water and sent me scrambling across the sandy beach beside our stone overhang. Its shadow painted the ground around me. The shouts and screams rang out and echoed through my water clogged ears.

Chaos and panic took everyone. Dale slipped from his fishing spot and slid into the water. Ron took off down the beach away from everyone with his briefcase firmly in hand. Kalvin stood, grabbed Jen, and pulled her under a stick shelter. Which he promptly knocked over onto the both of them with his peg leg.

Everything seemed silly in the face of certain death.

The dragon grabbed the skinny Jeremy with the tips of his talons. Four digging into his back and the thumbs cracking his ribs and piercing his lungs. Once the hooks were firmly planted, it ripped him in half down the middle. For a moment, his insides refused to separate fully. A piece of his spine hung loose inside a webbing of guts and viscera. The dragon glared at me with one eye looking through Jeremy like a yellow tinted kalidascope, before finishing the separation and tossing each half over my head. I could feel the blood like it was rain, and I could hear the others screaming as his pieces landed in the camp at their feet.

The sun's glare rippled over its sandstone scales from its tree trunk legs all of the way up its long neck. As it took a second to glare down at the campsite, the reptile seemed to smile. There's nothing more disturbing than a reptile smiling, except what it did next.

It scooped a mouthful of sand and leaned back to let it slide into its throat. There, it gargled the sand like water and the scales of its neck split vertically to reveal a membrane sac filling up with flame from the bottom and sand from the top in a bizarre chemical reaction that can't have been natural. The neck snapped shut, and a cone of molten glass spewed out of the beast's jaws.

Maybe I was too close or too inconsequential, because the dragon bent its neck down and sprayed over my shoulder. I don't know what fantasy or adrenaline compelled me to grab its neck and throw myself up onto the creature, but I did. I think maybe I thought it wouldn't attack itself, so there's no safer place, right?

Anyway, once I was on top of the creature, I could see the aftermath of its breath. Three people had been ripped to shreds. The first man was melted into place from the waist down, but from the waist up, his skin was shredded clean to the bone. His heart still beat inside his rib cage, and his lungs could be seen contracting with his final scream. Forgive my surfer slang, but it was the gnarliest thing I've ever seen.

The other two were covered from head to toe in small scratches, but the shrapnel had cut deep. The worst part was how the glass had cooled around them, trapping them in their shocked expressions for eternity.

Even though I was very unsure of my own plans and slipping to find a handhold between scales, the dragon was taking me as a threat now. I could tell from the sudden gust of wind pinning me to its back as it leapt into the air.

For a lifetime or maybe for a second, the beating of its wings matched the beating of my heart as we hovered over the island. I could see the woods for miles. The wide fields atop the cliff we made camp under, all around I could see the edge of the island and the never-ending horizon, and for only a brief lifetime I could see the center of the island. The volcano coated in lava that never touched the ground and the creatures around it that must have been massive, but were mere ants to me and the dragon.

The wildest thing I saw caught my eyes last. Around the coast was crystal clear, and from my height, I could see the silhouettes of hundreds of fish, whales, sharks, and the like.

I've been paragliding, though, and while that view can be entrancing, what caught my attention the most was an entirely different coastline underneath the water. The edge of the island stopped, but a blue and white outline stretched out to encompass the island in a larger circle. It was a glacier. A gargantuan glacier holding up the insignificant rock we had been sleeping on. I'm still in awe.

Then, our bond was broken. The dragon had shared with me a world that it had seen a thousand times, but it wasn't my friend. We fell in a sharp dive, and the dragon spiraled like a tornado so that the wind would rip me free of its back. I held on for dear life to the scales, cutting at my fingers, until its wings unfolded, and it came to a stop so abruptly that I was sent sliding off its head and into the dirt.

I cracked three ribs and broke my thumb, of all things.

Spears flew over my head and pelted the beast, but they all shattered or glanced off of its armor. One even cracked into splinters against its eye. Against its fucking eye!

I wasn't on the ground long enough to feel my bones or the skidmarks, when Karla rushed up and slammed down the back of a leanto between me and the dragon. It was holding together quite poorly even without a dragon's flames to destroy it.

The line of spear throwers who were now weaponless broke and ran. All but two. Blain drew his sling, but I could see in his face that he knew it was over. It would have been if not for the last spearthrower who stood still and ready, waiting for something to give.

The dragon took in a breath and fire rose from inside. The tornado of our infernal damnation became visible in the oversized membrane as its neck scales separated.

Mute's spear flew over our heads with purpose and sunk halfway into the membrane. It coughed the flames out in spurts as the scales opened and closed. One blast washed against our shield and the rest painted the forest as the dragon flew off. Karla tossed the burning wood to the ground, where it smoldered and broke. All was still for a long time.