Second Chances

At first, I thought that that island was a punishment, then I thought that it was a much need break, after all was said and done I realized that it was a second chance.

The second I hadn't even realized I had been chasing.

Iv been on this island for a very long time.

After the first few months, it wasn't so bad, the fear had drained away to be replaced by a sense of peace in its place and I had established some routines. So all in all, it was honestly the vacation that I hadn't been able to even dream about.

First came finding food, and then finding the darker stones to spell out help me on the gorgeous white sand beach where I had washed up. Had to set them up quite a ways back to keep the ocean from eating them- it took a few frustrating tries, but I got it down.

Not that it mattered, no one came this way. It was unbelievably remote & completely deserted.

So I began improvising. Well, after a long bout of self-pity that is embarrassing to reflect upon.

In a few more months i was able to cobble together a shower of sorts and a flat made of bound logs up in a sturdy tree for sleeping.

It was always warm here,so fires were mostly for cooking or heating water from the freshwater lake by the waterfalls a small distance from the beach.

I even found some orange flowers to decorate with, they also looked nice in my long dark hair from time to time- having curly hair can b a blessing when you dont have a comb-, they bright colors eased some of the loneliness.

After a few more months I began to explore the island, since i didnt have anything else to do I thought i might as well , and it felt truely endless. I had never been anyplace that was this endless.

Day and night i explored, pushing further and further through the tropical foliage.

I slept when i was too tired to keep going, strangely , much of the time I would find myself back by the waterfalls.

I theorized that it was the rhythmic lull of the water that seemed to drain away any stressful thoughts that crept in on me that kept pulling me back.......I was wrong.

Sadly the reduction of stress and the new location had done nothing to quell my dreams, dreams that I had been having at least 3 times a week since i could remember.....they were more like nightmares if I am to be honest. At least three and a half decades of them.

the therapist that my parents had pressed me to start seeing when i was very young had thought my dreams were a result of stress and an overactive imagination.

My latest therapist had decided that I needed a change of scenery and to release my stress- she had prescribed some travel...a cruise, There was so much irony in that.

I had tried everything to drown out my dreams, every drug- tried exhaustion- meditation- creative writing- no television for a year- nothing worked, the dreams came unbidden and in vivid clarity.

Always in the dreams I was pregnant, then in labor, and then scarcely had i held my newborn son when the image changed and i was bending down to leave the basket that held him under a tree by a village that i instinctively knew i would never return to.

I would hear his small cries for me as I turned and walked away.

Then the dream images would scroll through a life beset by the emptiness in my chest that came from that moment, a life where i lived only half alive, until the last image was of my death.

There had been no peace in my heart, even the last images of those dreams, after leaving that small boy.

In stark contrast, the feeling of holding my baby and looking into his eyes was pure peace...almost blissful, only marred by the knowledge that I meant to leave him.

The dreams always felt real, every sight- sound- smell...every feeling was so real, I would wake from them sobbing uncontrollably feeling as though my heart were breaking.

It worried my Mom and Dad to no end, I felt terrible to worry them but I had no control over my dreams.

In my 30's I ended up meeting my crazy friend Mandy, she worked part-time at a metaphysical store in town and was a huge hippie, Mandy figured I was having flashbacks to a past life and suggested that I get a psychic reading..she also wanted me to have a hypnotic past life regression done, which wasn't going to happen-I had already tried hypnosis and it hadn't gone well.

After a few weeks of Mandy's particular brand of nagging, I finally consented to the reading.

While I was extremely skeptical, the reader was accurate.

Even telling me the baby's name- Caleb- which I had never mentioned to anyone before.

The psychic (after asking me if I really wanted to hear the reading as he sensed it would not be very pleasant) laid out a story of a vain young girl who had been reckless and selfish in the pursuit of her passing desires, her choices were consistently poor and the consequences for those choices were increasingly dire, the self-absorbed errant choices did not end with abandoning her infant son but would continue on through her life -albeit tempered by that moment.

At the end of the girl's life, she looked back at what she had made of it and saw that it amounted to very little save for the wreckage that her actions usually left in their wake.

She passed away, alone and as a consequence of yet another reckless choice. No one mourned her.

According to the psychic, the girl- Lily had been her name- had realized how wrong she had been and how stupid...she then had made a vow to do better.

It was a hard thing to listen to, but at least I began to get a better picture of what had happened. The reader also claimed that Lily had never been able to fully reconcile with herself over leaving her baby, and that her remorse over her choice only grew as time passed. Eventually becoming manifest in the dreams that now haunted me in this life.

His reading had been painfully accurate, but we both surmised that it would take much more than a reading to allow me to reconcile my past life actions.... he felt that it would take some sort of epiphany for me to forgive myself-which only I would be able to find.

I tend to agree with him.

In my current life, I had always shied away from children and while I wanted a child of my own I had always felt as though I didn't deserve one...at least the psychic had answered that question for me.

I was pulled out of my thoughts by rustling near the pond which I had woken up by again. It was distinct enough to be heard over the noise from the waterfalls. I heard the sound of what I would swear was wings flapping...very large wings!

I looked up, but something beyond the waterfalls caught my eye.......there was a person standing there just beyond the waters reach!!

------

"Be back after the setting of the sun Kal. Well met til then" Storg levitated effortlessly up and out through one of the multitudes of openings in the caverns that I called my home, and then with a flap of his large leathery wings was gone.

The spiraling cave dust was the only sign that he had been here.

I smiled, it was good to have a friend like Storg.

Meanwhile, a familiar disturbance by the falls caught my attention. This human woman had been on the island for 8 months and had proceeded to tramp all over the island "exploring"....I wasn't sure what she was looking for, and then upon listening to her natter away to herself I realized she was doing this out of boredom.

At first, I had thought that she was one of the beings that would come occasionally to try to find my hiding place.......but either she was exceptionally cunning or the more likely explanation, completely unaware of the island that she was on.

I scowled at the dark-haired woman who was back just beyond the entrance of the waterfall again. According to her mumblings and incessant habit of talking to herself, her name was Sheila.

It had been ages since I had seen a human, and I felt an immediate distrust of this one.

Storg seemed to be at ease with her presence on his island, of course, he was quite congenial, considering that he was a dragon.

I have never been accused of being congenial, and I much preferred it when it was only Storg and I here. We got on fairly well and there was plenty of space so that we wouldn't bump into each other....which suited us well.

Now, counting Storg's new Baking extraordinaire friend Annaliese(He had just flown off to go get fish for her to cook up, he had promised to bring me back some. which I appreciated)...Thaddeus the Angel & his Witch....The gorgon, the Lamia, the naga and their human person...and Sheil and Storg and I, This island was becoming too densely populated for my tastes.

Sadly I was stuck here.

This was where my "Master" Kehdavian-a dark wizard- had placed me for safe keeping, due to my habit of getting stolen from him.

I had been on the island for 1,251 years, I had been Kehdavian's property for 3000 years. I had been sent off to him under the guise of being his apprentice, Kehdavian would never have an apprentice...but my parents would never have consented to me traveling with him even though we had needed the gold back then if they had known his true purpose for me.

I sighed, what was making me mentally traverse this dark path through my past...... I couldn't say.

Hmmm .....it looked as though Sheila had spotted me through the waterfall, interesting she shouldn't be able to see past the glamour that was cast over this cave. It made for a cozy hiding spot for a genie who had no interest in being found.

The woman was an annoying menace!

Lovely, Annnnd now she had swum through the pond and the falls and was climbing the rocks to get inside my cave!

------

As I climbed up the rocks and through the waterfall, I kept calling to the figure on the other side of it.

"Hello! Hello!! Can you hear me?"

The figure made no move, and as I got closer I saw that it looked like a tallish person in all black with their arms crossed.

I hoped that I wasn't hallucinating or mistaking a rock outcropping for a person.........too much time alone can do strange things to the mind after all.

I slipped a bit here and there on the wet rocks and was completely soaked by the time I made it to the figure behind the falls. No matter the trouble that I had getting over the rocks he stayed put, arms crossed and now that I saw him up close-it was definitely not a rock outcropping and it was definitely he, a very unhappy he-, his eyes tracked my movements with his scowl firmly painted across his angular features as though his face was frozen.

As I came up to stand a few feet from him I saw in detail that this man was completely out of place for this island...I also wondered if he was deaf and mute due to his decided lack of communicativeness.... he wore a spotless black silk shirt and pants with gold trim and soft gold slippers, all of which had a subtle middle-eastern style to them. His hair wasn't black, but a dark brown and was immaculately kept, it was also short which I found odd...he seemed perfectly confident and comfortable in his surroundings and I didn't see any tailors or barbers anywhere around here.

Maybe I was hallucinating, and just my luck....even my hallucination didn't seem to like me. Boy, I just couldn't win for losin'!

I took another step toward Mr. Scowly and felt a strange cold tingle wash over my, I stood and blinked a bit to clear my vision as tiny multi-colored spots appeared before my eyes, and I shivered...at which Mr.Scowly's eyes looked as though they would pop out of his neatly coiffed head and his clean-shaven jaw dropped.

Well at least I knew he could change his expression " Hello, can you hear me? Can you understand me?" I spoke slowly with my hands up in a non-threatening gesture and made eye contact in case he could read my lips.

His mouth curled in disgust at my posture, wow this guy was sour about something, and then he spoke " It would be impossible not to hear you and I speak all of the languages on this planet. How did you get here?" His voice was rich and deep with a touch of a British accent but there were others mixed in as well. His tone however was curt and disdainful.

Perhaps I didn't want to get to know him, but still...he might know a way off of this island.

"You watched me climb up the rocks to get here, if you're asking how I came to this island, I fell overboard while i was on a cruise and when I woke up I was on the beach over there" I pointed to the beach where i had landed for emphasis.

His mouth twisted a little more as if he was weighing options and he sighed " No, I mean how did you get through the barrier to this cave? It is concealed by magic, very powerful magic. And how on earth did you see me at all?"

I sighed, great... the first soul that Iv seen in months and he was a whack job!

"I'm not sure what you're talking about. But that's ok. My name is .."

"Sheila. yes, I know. I heard you chattering on to yourself for the past 8 months." He looked exasperated and annoyed

"Wait...you have seen me the whole time that I have been on this island and you haven't said anything?!!!?" I was getting rather annoyed myself

Mr. Scowly looked at me as though I was very slow " No, the cave is concealed by magic & I don't like being bothered. Why would I incite company?"

I shook my head and bite down on the rude things that I wanted to say to him, instead I asked "Well tell me if you know a way off of this island- a safe one- and I won't bother you anymore. How's that ?" I was done, I didn't need this..it was a shame but I really didn't need this kind of crap.

Mr. Scowly looked heavenward, reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose and the dropped his gaze to stare at me....he then ran a hand over his mouth and let out a huge tired sigh " I see, you want something...its only natural. Well , lets get this over with then. You WISH to know a safe way off of this island, correct?" his emphasis on the word wish gave me pause....so I deliberately didnt rise to the bait.

"I WANT to know if there is a safe way off of this island for myself."

He raised his eyebrows" Want. Most would have said wish. why didn't you?" This was the first genuine emotion i had seen from him, he was really curious about my word choice.

"It seemed important to choose my words carefully so I did"

"Hmmmm, come on in." He inclined his head over his shoulder to indicate the cave in the back of him. " Here , have a cup of tea..it will help with the chill from the water you just waded through." at which he uncrossed his arms from in front of himself and waived his right hand in a circular motion- a fine silver and white patterned teacup and saucer appearing in his hand which he offered to me.

I was too stunned to do anything but take the cup from him and mumble a thank you.

"You really don't know anything about where you have stumbled on to do you?" I looked incredulous "Come on, its this way. lets see if we can get you home."

And with that, we headed further into the cave.

I had no idea all of the things in my life that were going to change that day, Destiny it seemed had set an appointment for me that it forgot to mention to me