Fortunately/Unfortunately 3

Sated for the moment, he allowed himself to do nothing for a spell. He regarded the oncoming waves with some disdain, having not yet forgiven them for taking his plane and nearly his life. He directed his gaze upward, searched idly for any contrails in the sky, and, finding none, wondered if he should try to set up a signal of some kind. It occurred to him that his situation was a dire one, and he should have been busy feeling bad about it rather than wasting time staring into space.

He scratched his head, freeing globs of sand from his scalp and hair. He wondered if the plane's ELT could still function when submerged and, if so, for how long. He wasn't sure if radio signals could get through all that water, anyhow. His hand scratched lower on his face.

Hey, his face itched. A lot, actually. And had his lips always been this big? They felt kind of engorged.

Oh, no.

He lept to his feet, frantic. He looked around for a mirror, remembered that he was on a desert island, then put his hands to his face. His lips and mouth were hot and sensitive, and now that he held them in front of him, he could see that his hands had sprouted bright red bumps. His throat and stomach began to burn.

He ran back into the waves and vomited. A slurry of berry juices mixed with this morning's coffee dyed the water a swirl of red, brown, and green. He knelt down and held his stomach as his body pumped it clean. His mouth and throat stung with stomach acid as the last of the offending substances left him. The waves accepted his donation as they receded, then tossed it back to him as they returned. When he was sure he had finished, he waded away from the mess and wrung his shirt out in cleaner water.

When he returned to his spot on the beach, he lay back and breathed deep. His inflamed palate made this difficult at first, but, as he willed himself to calm down, he realized how lucky he was to be breathing at all. He wondered if there was an EpiPen somewhere in the plane's wreckage, but decided he'd rather lie here than gather the energy to fetch it. He closed his eyes and waited for his day to improve.

( Turn information )

Fortunately/Unfortunately 4

After what felt like an hour of baking in the sun, his desire for shade won out against his self-pity. He put on his shoes and socks, wet and gritty though they were, and trudged inland.

The island's interior was unlike any other forest he had seen. He had walked through forests in parks and countryside backyards but all of those forests had been tamed in some fashion, whether by landscapers or sheer volume of foot traffic. This forest, however, isolated from humanity, was truly wild. It offered neither footpaths nor clearings. The undergrowth resented his intrusion, blocking his passage with dense shrubs and curtains of vines and stalks. The trees looked down at their guest with indifference and stretched sunward as this foreign primate clambered over their roots and around their mighty trunks. He tripped over rotting logs and spiny bushes and swatted away insects and spiderwebs. Glancing backward, he saw the scant sum of his labored steps was only a dozen feet at best.

A high pitched, descending noise rang out from in front of him. It was close by, and in short order it repeated itself. More of the voices joined the first, and soon a shrill chorus erupted somewhere ahead. He pulled up his legs in high strides and thrust them toward the source of the cacophony. As he rounded a particularly wide bramble, he spotted them.

There were several dozen birds pacing about the forest floor. Each was a foot or so in height, strutting around on two skinny, leathery legs ending in three long toes splayed out in front an a short one facing back. Their bodies stood at an angle to their legs, brown-feathered footballs angling upward and forward to their short necks. The feathers on their stunted wings were a mahogany brown, surrounded by a tan color that ended at their dusty, greyish-white faces. Their large, brown eyes bulged slightly from the sides of their tiny heads, and their long, finger-sized bills led the way as they meandered from one place to the next, intermittently pecking at the ground.

None of them paid him any attention, even as he walked into the throng of yapping birds. The most distraction they would allow themselves from the businesses of calling, preening, pecking, and wandering in circles was to peck at his shoestrings and pant cuffs, as if checking them for anything edible.

His stomach rumbled, empty and unappeased.

He tiptoed back to the edge of the crowd and scanned his surroundings for something heavy. He pried a fist-sized rock up from the dirt and hefted it between his hands. Gingerly, he knelt down and raised the stone high. One of the oblivious bundles of feathers stopped in front of him to probe its beak into a nearby shrub.

An instant later, he smashed the rock into its head, and it went limp.

( Turn information )