Scrawny Boy Sky

Nothing from the System. Maybe it was just my inner voice speaking. Well, if I'm Sky, then I guess that settles it. I got everything I wanted out of this statue; I should head out now.

I turned again and went up to the door. A slight push is all it took for the door to open wide. "Ah! He's back!" I could hear from the bottom.

"Sure, he's back but… how is he going to get down?" I looked down and understood where that question came from. That was a twenty-foot drop! How would I get down? I turned to Domin, waiting for his critical thinking to come in handy.

"Just use the axe blade to slide down the cliff slowly, that should work… probably." I didn't like how he second-guessed himself, but I had to take the chance.

I lifted the axe and hung off the edge of the door frame. I took a wide swing and slammed into the dirt right in front of me. But at this point, I was just hanging there, not even sliding. I turned to Dani and smiled smugly.

"What if I jump in the pond?" I asked. I could see her get irritated.

"You're not jumping in that pond!" She yelled out. I decided to take my chances with the fall, as scary as it was, and pulled the axe from the cliff.

The sudden increase in speed scared me and I screamed out, before landing on the ground below me with no injuries at all.

"Hey, that works!" I celebrated my arrival back to the sweet ground, but everybody seemed to want answers about the statue. I thought hard about what they told me in the letter, to not tell them for their own sake.

"Well… it was empty. Somebody must've gotten to it before us. Maybe that's where this axe came from." I suggested. Domin nodded his head, so if he agreed, then maybe I was smart after all.

"Well then, let's return to the beach. We should think about shelter, and maybe food." Carl suggested afterward.

"There's a lot more to explore, but you're right, I'm kind of hungry right now." I walked to the front of the group, and everybody turned, following my body with their gaze.

"The way I see it, we have two options for food. The berries in nearby bushes, or wild animals we might be able to find. To get the animals, we need to establish borders around the beach we can all watch. Has anyone ever seen animals?" Nobody in our tiny group had seen animals, which means that there could be absolutely none in our area. This made things complicated, as we'd be left on a strict berry diet.

"I hate to say this but, we'll have to work together with Ullr. He looks to be the most physically apt person here, maybe he's had a run-in with animals or knows the landscape." Everybody seemed very reluctant, but that just meant that I had to go talk to him instead of anybody else.

I walked out of the forest finally, digging the boots I woke up with through the sand until I managed to reach Ullr. His back was turned, but the two men always following him around had caught sight of me, which caused Ullr to turn around. He scoffed, throwing his hand up in a pretentious attitude.

"Well, it looks like the scrawny boy finally came to beg me to be the leader. Fear not, I'll do it." I scoffed, waving my hand up to dismiss that irritating behavior.

"No. I'm asking you to help me secure a perimeter across the beach, and to see if you've seen any wildlife." Ullr didn't answer me for about ten seconds, only looking at my entire body with squinted eyes, then turned his head back to the fruit he had been eating before I arrived.

"Get lost. I don't like you, scrawny boy." I bit my tongue. This guy was seriously irritating. I decided he wasn't worth the time and started to look to the other people for help, but none of them seemed to have a strong build as Ullr. Everybody was sitting in circles in their groups along the beach just eating berries. Upon searching the beach and bushes, there were almost no more unique colors in the bushes; meaning the berries had all been gone.

Why could nobody see this problem? This was the beginning of an urgent issue. No food would mean conflict in other places. If Ullr wouldn't help me, I needed to make my form of action. I walked back to Carl and the others, ready to give out orders when Carl began doing it to me instead.

"Why don't you hit the left side of the beach from our position and see if it's safe? Take a buddy with you just in case there's danger." I sat speechlessly, then turned to the people behind him.

Who would be the most advantageous one? Domin was really smart, but was he active enough to run if we needed it? Better question, was I? I turned to Dani, I didn't want to be with somebody who was hallucinating as she did with the pond, so I skipped over her. Next was Red. Red was a simple person who could see things in a simple light, I might need that, but then again, Domin's critical thinking was something I couldn't pass up. I ignored Drake and Isaac's presence and settled for Domin.

"I'll take Domin. I might need his good thinking skills if things get bad." I could see Dani whispering something under her breath before turning around towards the pond.

"Good thinking. Red, Dani, and I will head in the opposite direction, and I think Drake and Isaac should stick in this middle section. Don't go deep into the forest, but you can go to the places that we've already explored." Carl stated.

There's no way I could've come up with a plan like that… maybe I should leave this leader thing to him. I have to be good at something, I just needed to find it. Soon after Carl gave us the plan, Domin and I set out.

"I don't think I'm fit like Ullr enough to run from danger, so I hope we can just stay away from it for the time being," Domin commented, putting his hands against the back of his neck.

"I don't feel like I'm good at anything either. I wanted to suggest some things about exploration, but it just felt like Carl's plans were better as is." Domin and I finally walked out of sight from everybody else after passing a tiny dune. The beach dipped in elevation from this point on, and the water followed the shoreline's height. The awkward atmosphere I created was interrupted by the chirping of birds hiding in the trees to our left.

"I think there's nothing wrong with being good at nothing. I don't have any memory from before, I just woke up on this beach, and it's far too soon to assume I'm smart in any way. I just think about things a lot more than you guys apparently, which causes you to idolize me as some smart man. I'm not. I wanted to climb that cliff as much as you did, but I'm much more concerned with safety than anybody else. It's important to me that we all get to wake up tomorrow alive." Domin began to cut into the forest, slightly peering in to see what awaited us.

This portion of the forest was small, only about three trees in length, I could see the beach through the spaces in between the tree trunks.

"I do have a question for you… I don't know your name yet; do you mind telling me?" Domin asked me.

"Oh, yeah. I guess nobody knows my name. I'm Sky" I told him, moving a branch out of our way so we could cross onto the next beach.