1 The Ocean and The Island

Beneath an azure, cloudless sky lay an ocean of sapphire blue. It seemed almost without end, stretching towards a distant horizon and beyond, perhaps continuing to layer the whole globe in its watery blanket. Or perhaps it would, at some point, fall off of an unseen edge into a star speckled void.

Yet at the moment it seemed that nothing could disrupt this vision of blue, a speck of gold and green captures the bird's eye from nowhere.

The seagull dived down, before opening its midnight tipped wings and gliding down safely upon the warm sands. The ocean beat the golden span with waves, foaming lightly as they broke upon the beach, as if angry that this island could mar its complete dominance over this world. The seagull hopped away from the moving waters, tilting its head from side to side during which it contemplated whatever birds might, before continuing to hope across the sand once more.

Its path brought it to a man. That man had long honey coloured locks upon his ivory skin, which was fast becoming tinted red as he slept beneath the rays of the sun. He wore plain linen trousers tied at the waist and a vest top of the same beige colour. Two arms stuck out exposed of that top revealing not curved muscles of a man with vast strength nor plush arms of a man well fed. They were a bit on the skinny side.

The seagull hopped onto the man's chest, beating its wings as it moved beneath it, in order to regain its balance. Then it opened its long beak, presumably to squawk.

"Your Majesty! It's time to wake up!"

Anyone else hearing these words would stop, wide eyed and slack jawed, likely pinching themselves a time or two before falling into the Egyptian River and saying to themselves; "Na, I must be hearing things!"

The man didn't do this, mainly because his eyes were still closed and so he couldn't see the bird open its beak to speak. However, there were the first signs of him rousing from his sleep. His eyes moved a little beneath their lids, which squeezed shut harder, trying to block out the reality of the world. His skinny arm moved sideways over the warm sands, bending at the elbow slightly as his hand lazily rose then fell a couple of times. Then, as if satisfied, he rolled over onto his side, curled into a foetal position and continued to nap. The seagull was naturally dislodged from its previous perch.

It stared at the man's back for a moment before hopping around the body and approaching close to the man's face, before speaking aloud once more.

"Your Majesty! It's time to wake up! Rise and shine now!"

The man grunted. "Five more minutes," he muttered, his voice a little hoarse and dry.

"No, no, no," refused the seagull. "That simply won't do! There is far too much to do and far too little time! Your Majesty must get up now!"

A grumbling spilled from the man's parched lips and he rolled once more onto his back, before curling into an upright position. His long, honey coloured hair fell messily over his shoulders and back, the bangs flopping onto his sun-reddened face. Beneath the shadow of his bangs, two verdant green eyes appeared.

The waves continued to break against the sandy beach before retreating, the only sight that lay ahead other than the endless ocean stretching onward until it reached the cloudless sky on the horizon. Though this was not the sight the man expected to see, he still stared at it for more than a minute. And then his hand moved upward to scratch his head.

Three words beginning with the letters 'W', 'T' and 'F' finally appeared in the otherwise silent space behind his eyes. The man's body twisted from where he sat, glancing over his shoulder and peering at what lay behind him. There were a small stretch of trees growing upwards within a thicket of grass and shrubs, but if one looked beyond them, one could see the endless stretch of blue, moving waters.

Slowly, he straightened his spine and his eyes once more stared ahead of him and he repeated those three words a few more times in his head, before a notion came over him. Transmigration. He'd read a few manga comics on this subject, he felt he could be considered somewhat of an expert, even though this was definitely the first time he'd experienced it himself. But the vast majority of those situations either were transmigration due to divine intervention or due to rebirth.

He pushed at the sand, pressing down until he could rise to his feet, before wandering over to the waters' edge. Unfortunately, still water could suffice as a substitute mirror, moving water not so much. Despite this, he could tell from tugging at a lock of hair, that the colour had not changed. Nor had the length, when had he last been to the barber's again? Never mind, not important.

As his visual perspective hadn't seemed to have changed, he figured that he must be about the same height as before, his fingers were still kind of skinny and he lamented that the size of his hands was just as small as they'd ever been. He glanced around himself once more, but seeing no one (other than that odd seagull which hadn't stopped looking at him), he tugged open the drawstring trousers and glanced downward…

"Your Majesty!"

Shocked, he quickly did up his pants and turned around. The small mole on his inner thigh was still there marking his skin, so he felt he could safely claim this was his own body. So he didn't think that he'd travelled the death and rebirth route, which left divine intervention. But wait… who had spoken and who had they spoken to?

"Your Majesty, please!" The seagull hopped before him, its black eyes filled with more than the need to steal a tourist's fish and chips. The man gawked at it openly as it continued. "We seriously need to discuss the situation at hand. Please stop messing about!"

As the ocean continued to deal with the blot of an island upon its otherwise perfectly blue landscape, a man ran across the warm and golden sands of that island yelling "What The Fuck!"