Camp Sunrise: Rainbow Bay
Posted on 29 Mar 2023 @ 10:04am by Chief Petty Officer Ibis Xeri & Olivia Winetrout
Edited on on 25 Apr 2024 @ 4:00pm
Mission:
M3 - Into the Deep
Location: Korix, The Bay
Timeline: MD 09 Evening on the island, following "Camp Sunrise: One More Night":
2239 words - 4.5 OF Standard Post Measure
Olivia’s feet flew over the stony road that cut through the heavily pitted and rocky landscape on this side of the peninsula. Her soles were rough and calloused and she never wore shoes at all like Ibis and Wallace. She learned how to land flatly over the whole foot, so as not to be much troubled by edges or gravel. The ocean wind blew against her face as she ran, lashing through her dreadlocks as she rushed ahead on her twiggy legs. The sun, low in the sky, was obscured by gray smog and clouds- the two were often indecipherable.
It was always the same. Always. “Olivia, be quiet, watch Ikemba.” “Olivia, You don’t understand. The adults are taking care of it.” Wallace didn’t think she could do anything! Ibis was a liar. A liar! One minute Ibis was telling her she was right, she was so wise, she would one day live with the Korinn. She was stupid to believe Ibis actually meant any of it!
Wallace and Ibis assumed she couldn’t hear anything but she had just gone through the back entrance of her mother’s house and crouching near the half propped open door, listened to everything she could catch on the wind. Ikemba had followed her, but he didn’t make a sound, just crouched in the dark with her like it was another game, until he tired of playing at spying and took himself to sleep on his mat. She couldn’t hear everything, but she could hear enough from the snatches of raised voices and the more excited shouting between the Irix traitors! Wallace was going to set fire and kill and end everything! Even pups! And Ibis was helping! They always hated the Korinn. All they could ever talk about was going home to their big happy federation in the sky. They never wanted to be here at all!
She hoped they actually did leave without her!
Even as she thought it, it scared her. Everything she had, they provided. She slept close to them for safety, she ate what they found and what they cooked. She took the medicines they gave her and drank the water from the filter tower that they had built.
Olivia ran faster.
Let them go! The island mine would be there tomorrow. Every other time the Irix had tried, they always went back to working again. The Z’ala made sure everyone did what they were supposed to do. Wallace and Ibis would take Ikemba and jump into the sky. And nothing here was going to change. It was just more talk.
Always talk. Let them take their empty talking with them too!
Besides, she was old enough to filter the water herself. She could build her own fire. She knew better than Ibis where to find the best forage. And she would sleep by the Irix and leave that stupid empty camp behind! With all of its tragic past. Camp Sunrise? Sunrise was supposed to be a start! It was nothing but endings and goodbyes. Nothing but death and funeral after funeral.
Ibis and Wallace were going to die too. They were going to die anyway! They would die because they were weak aliens. Eventually they all went up in smoke on Wallace’s hill! Before she had passed, her mother had told her she was strong. That she had an advantage because she was a toddler when she caught all the diseases and recovered. That she had the strongest immune system. She’d adapted to Korix better than any of them.
She had adapted to Korix, so she was Korinn. Maybe not by birth, but by right!
Olivia reached the sharp cliff edge, the stones she was kicking up clacking and trailing from the drop off towards the gaping bay. But she didn’t stop or slow. She ran right off the ledge.
The side of the cliff was built up with the hardened slag poured off over the years, forming strange dribbled pillars and pockets. Monkey-like, she ducked through the formations, alternately swinging her arms with momentum and shimmying from one precarious perch to another.
Echoing within the cusp of the sheer walls of the bay was the music of Irix youth at play, breaching to wail their refrains and hear their voices so strangely on the air, sounding back from the stone cliffs. Their leaping was free and full of showmanship, egging one another on to achieve the most twists or spins, to shower one another with spray. The water’s surface was slick with rainbows, sparkling in the twilight, the oilspot breaking with their play and forming repeating ripples of color everywhere. She’d never seen so many pups come to play all at once!
Olivia leaned out as far as she could and gave her own trilling peel, adding to the chorus of her friends.
A story up yet, She leapt in a perfect dive, finger tips to toe tips, barely unsettling the water’s surface; she angled along to trail the slope the slag pour had formed, and all around her quickly flanked her friends. They were sleek bodied and fast, so graceful in the sea, the oil slicked fur shone and the flex and fall of the fins through the billowing hair on their backs was mesmerizing, each one ending with a flick of a tail.
“ It is the end of the day! But we knew you would come! ”
“ Minnow! Minnow is here! ”
“ I never doubted she would swim with us. ”
Olivia trilled in her throat underwater. “ I said I would come! ”
She bobbed back to the surface and they played, Olivia delighted in swimming with the pups. She’d never seen so many of her friends all together at once in the bay. For a while the Korinn youth played along the surface with the oddity that was the air breather. The bay was so busy, it seemed like every pup was there at once! There were many who had never met her before and were enthralled and entertained by the discovery of the human as her other friends introduced her. She had no fin! And just a patch of hair on top! And her face was so strange and naked, like a blob fish, but tiny. Her hands like little pale anemones. And they kept checking, turning her around to see if she was hiding a tail. They played with her like a novel pet. They could surface for a while, but had to return back to the water to breathe freely again. She was the opposite, a curiosity among them, able to inhale freely beyond the surface, where their two worlds met.
One of her friends tired of the surface play. “ Let’s play high fish, low fish! ”
The whole group simultaneously scattered. She stroked out further into the bay before turning on her back and appreciating the stretch of hazy evening sky above. The waves swelled slightly but not terribly. There were gray clouds gathering and very fine misty rain was falling, though it made little difference to her, being soaked already. The fading sunlight was just above the cliff’s edge, making an eerie glow in the smoggy sky. She watched it and thought that the form of the light resembled something like an eye, unblinking, and cruel.
Suddenly there was a snag on her foot, pulling her under. For a moment she was below until she bobbed back up, one of her friends emerging with her, clapping his big hands. “I have caught the high fish! Now she must catch the low fish!”
Olivia laughed, filled her lungs with air and dove down after him. Her friend did some showboating, swimming with his belly up, waving his tail languidly at a gentle propelling pace, and his face turned towards her, taunting, “ Try and keep up, Minnow! ”
They wove through the pillars and caverns beneath, the dance of soft stormy light playing over the irregular surfaces and lacing around the magical slag hardened forms determined by chance and temperature and timing. There was a dazzle of ghostly pale light in the haze, filtering through the breaking of the choppy water on the surface and glittering through the water in ephemeral webs.
He took a turn through a deeper cavern, the light here very low, and she refused to give up, his paw always just within reach, but still not quite tagged as he led through one chamber and another.
At long last, he allowed the human to touch his foot, tiring of her slow pursuit and in a flash, zoomed away. For a moment, Olivia was elated. She’d won a game! She started to try to surface to enjoy her victory. But as she turned through the endless chambers of the underwater castle made of mining dross, she felt confused, turned around. Her lungs began to burn and demand the air, her heart raced with panic. This, this was surely the way she had come in. When she spotted it, she realized she was farther than she had thought from the cavern entrance where the pale light of the evening glowed. She used her feet to kick off from one of the pillars and push herself ahead, but it wasn’t half the distance. She started to desperately paddle through the water, her limbs feeling slower and heavier.
Involuntarily she drew water in… and stopped struggling. Her arms went limp and she shook her head, no, no— the last of her breath escaped before her terrified eyes.
The fading light made it hard for Ibis to see anything in the Bay, except for the sparkle of water in the splashing below. Now there was a steady rainy mist, and Ibis was already soaked. She didn’t really notice, though. Searching the busy play of the pups below, Ibis couldn’t pick out Olivia from among them. She made her loudest whistle-screech to call Olivia by her Korinn name “Minnow! My Minnow! Minnow!” Ibis started to scrabble down the hardened slag-pour like a scaffolding, anxious about keeping her footing. “Minnow! Minnow!” At that volume, and trying to catch her breath from the run, her whistle sound was wearing out. She had never been a very good whistler in the first place.
Below her a Korinn head, one much larger than the pups, emerged. Is there trouble? She asked.
Have you seen my— Ibis struggled to find a word and in the interest of urgency settled for the one that required the least explanation, My daughter?
A new series of clicks and squeaks went across the bay, the adult Korinn communicating to look for the alien girl. Ibis watched their heads all go down at once.
Though it wasn’t a half a minute, to Ibis it felt like an hour or a day. The bay had never been so full of pups. They were all here before the plan which was about to go off. No matter how hard she searched among the bobbing and leaping, Olivia wasn’t above water. Ibis shimmied to a low ledge in the steep rock wall of the bay where she could search and wait. Would they all come back shaking their heads? They had better. It was too long to be underwater. Maybe… maybe she’d never been here at all. Maybe Olivia was off in the dunes and Ibis just hadn’t looked far enough at the Camp. Maybe she’d jumped to the wrong conclusion in even coming here. She tried to reason herself out of her panic, her eyes still searching the oil spot surface of the water. The surface was dark. She knew the Korinn could see in the low light, even if she couldn’t, but it felt closed to her, the world below.
Ibis startled as the water beside her broke, A Korinn surfacing like an otter on her back, the girl carried against her belly.
Reaching for her, with the Korinn’s aid, they both got her up on the ledge. Several other Korinn and pups gathered in the water around to see the strange spectacle, bobbing in and out and singing to each other about this odd event with Minnow. But Ibis couldn’t care or even notice them.
“Olivia!”
She got the girl flat on her back and pressed an ear on her chest. She was pale and limp and unresponsive. Ibis clambered over her and started chest compressions, breaths, and more compressions. Her arms were burning until she lost all feeling but kept the pace of the count going.
She wasn’t sure how long it had gone for, but on the umpteenth time, when she held Olivia’s chin and pinched her nose and forced a breath into the girl once again, seawater shot up into her face and Ibis just about collapsed with relief, pulling Olivia so she could turn and gag out the water. As she lurched, coughed, and choked, Ibis yanked her up in a hug, to beat on her back and help her finish expelling the ocean inside.
“It’s okay. Get it all out, get everything out. That’s my girl. That’s my girl.”
