The Wandering Island

Ria stubbornly avoided the enlarged hand in front of her face, which was persistently trying to grab her out of her small enclosure. She twisted her body out of reach of the pesky hand in defiance, making the owner of the hand grunt in annoyance and pull their hand out.

"What the hell does this thing eat? I thought tortoises were supposed to be slow!" The owner of the hand- a middle-aged man with black hair and eyes grumbled while dusting off his hands and stood up.

Currently, he was standing inside of Ria's mini enclosure- a simple setup with some sand bedding and a small pocket of water in the corner to bathe and drink from. It was fenced with some simple scrap-wood formed neatly in a box shape around her entire enclosure, just tall enough so she couldn't directly step over nor destroy it.

This has been Ria's life for a full sixty days already, and frankly, Ria was about to die from boredom. After turning into a literal rock with legs after living a long twenty-two years, there was nothing to do. Unlike most reincarnates, she had no grand mission to fulfill nor did she have any cool system to help her find out what the heck she was supposed to do.

Ria was a tortoise. A tortoise. Not even a serpent or a dragon, not even a snake.

A. Fricking. Tortoise.

What was she supposed to do, crawl her way into a battlefield? Ria would rather have reincarnated as a pigeon instead just so she would at least be able to fly. But no~, instead Ria is trapped inside a small enclosure with a one-foot-tall fence blocking her way out.

It wouldn't have mattered if the fence was at least three-feet-tall, but one foot? That just damaged her dignity.

Ria angrily looked up at the man who tried to grab her- or, at least she tried to, but her neck wasn't long enough to look straight up. In actuality, she was looking at his stomach, but she was too angry to care.

This guy- Galdon he's called, was an absolute piece of work. He complains constantly while he's in this trash dump called a pet shop. It makes her already hellish life feel one hundred times more hellish. Ria could almost call this place hell- the only thing missing was fire.

Just now, Galdon was trying to pick her up to show her to some customers, but Ria avoided his hands like he had just spread poop on them and tried to make her sniff his fingers.

Ria watched in absolute delight as Galdon had to explain to the customers why he couldn't show them a tortoise and the customers becoming discouraged, moving onto the next set of animals- or rather creatures, as she called them, soon after.

The trash dump called a pet shop was actually a secluded place, which after two months of living here, she found out it actually was a part of an illegal black market for rare and unique animals.

This place had everything- strange monkeys which ate meat, birds of prey which Ria had never seen before, fish with legs, the list goes on. Honestly, it was pretty clear after the first few days that this place was not Earth. It wasn't like Ria didn't expect it, but being in such close proximity with such dangerous and exotic animals gave Ria a new outlook on life.

Oh, by the way, Ria wasn't very normal either. It was to be expected since this place was a black market shop for the rare and special species.

Ria turned around and crawled her way to the edge of her small pond, which was more of a puddle if she was being honest.

She observed her body in the reflection of the pond and let out a weird sounding sigh. Her shell was white at the base, and gradually became black the higher up you looked. To be honest, even Ria herself with proud of her appearance.

But that wasn't what was special about her, or else she wouldn't have been qualified to be living in this hell-hole filled with animalistic screaming and growling at all times of the day. Ria slowly crawled into her makeshift pond and let herself slowly simmer.

It has only been two months since she was reincarnated, but it was also only two months ago that she hatched as well, and yet, she was already the size of four small plates. Ria didn't have to be an expert specializing in tortoises to know that her growth rate was astonishing.

Usually, a tortoise wouldn't even be the size of an adult's palm by the time they were two months old, yet here Ria is. She slowly inhaled, her lungs filling with air as gradually, the water around her began to drain.

But it wasn't because it was being taken somewhere else- the culprit was Ria. Her body was slowly sucking up the water around her, causing the puddle around her become a mere crater of mud.

Ria's throat visibly expanded as she tilted her head back, letting a jet of water shoot out of her mouth into the air. She pridefully observed as the jet of water hit right on the mark, Galdon's chest.

"Ah fuck!" He shouted in surprise as he looked down the black and white tortoise, covering his chest in shock. He could swear the tortoise was laughing at him.

"Just you wait, you damn turtle. I'll make sure you're adopted soon so I won't have to deal with you anymore!" Galdon loudly stated as he stomped off in a huff.

-

She was just a normal person placed in an abnormal situation with an abnormal body. Ria vividly remembered how she died like it was yesterday. She was just working a normal shift at a gas-station, which she was working at part-time when suddenly a man walked in with a gun and ski-mask.

There wasn't even any hesitation to pull the trigger right in her face. Ria scoffed in anger when she thought about it, why would anyone shoot a cashier working in a gas-station? He was already wearing a mask and Ria would've been more than willing to hand over any money he wanted anyways.

Well, joke's on him. There was barely over one-hundred dollars in total in the register anyways. Actually, she was angry that her life was taken over a mere hundred dollars. Even if she wasn't the most special person in the world, she still felt her life was worth at least two hundred dollars.

Ria took a deep breath to calm herself and dug a shallow hole in the sand to rest in. This place usually catered to guests who were usually fat cows- money bags- …rich people with no place to vent. The usual customer would be donned in black with something to hide their face.

It was, after all, a black market for a reason. People didn't want to be caught being in such a place, especially rich people.

By the way, this world had a completely different language from any language on Earth. Even though most of the people Ria met had black hair and black eyes- the stereotypical Asian, their language was definitely not an Asian language. Proof of this was their obvious price-tags, which Ria could see through the gaps in her mini fence.

The numbers and words were completely foreign to her, and although she could already understand a decent amount of their language, she had no way to read numbers yet since nobody would be dumb enough to teach a tortoise.

Ria sighed and retracted her neck into her shell until only her head was showing. Whatever happened in the future, she was completely helpless to resist it. Even the water jet she could spray out could merely be a mess to clean up.

But for now, Ria would temporarily forget her problems and drift off to sleep on the cool sand..