Island in the fog - 1/18/2014

Random Fiction Fragment (a RaFF instead of a riff)

There's something like dew on the moss outside of my cave when I wake. I look out into the fog and wonder, for the umpteenth time, where I am. It's never dark, it's never light. Good enough to see by, the mist swallows up whatever there might be more than fifty feet away. I can easily throw a stone so far I can't see it land.

How long I've been here, I'm not sure. Lost count of how many times I've slept after the first few hundred. Not that it's a meaningful count. I have no way of knowing how long I sleep, how long I wake, even how long it takes me to get someplace. Only soreness in my feet and legs tells me anything, and I can't trust that anymore, since I know every square meter of this island.

There's me, and the cave, and the inedible damp fern-things that I use for bedding. Behind the cave is a spring, and the trees that bear the fruit that I eat.

And one-hundred fifty-nine paces from the front of my cave is the Edge. It drops off into nothingness, just more fog. I can travel around the circumference of this island before I need to sleep, two or three times over. At no point is there anything but moss, fern-things, the cave, the spring, and I'm repeating myself.

That's a hazard, here. There is literally nothing to do. The fern-things won't burn, neither will the moss. The fruit trees might, but they never drop a branch, and I haven't got any way of cutting one down. None of the stone will take an edge, I can't find any dirt, even, to draw or write in. There's me and what I say to myself (is it out loud? I don't know anymore).

Out there, sometimes, are lights. Or there might be. Could be I'm dreaming, or imagining them. I keep thinking they might prove to be vessels, since they seem to move. Maybe one will come here and tell me where I am, and why. The fog washes out everything that might identify them. They could be a hundred feet or a hundred miles away.

There is no weather, here. Slight breezes on occasion, or I think they are. No rain, no snow, no hot days, no cold ones. Total neutrality of environment.

There's air, here, but no birds. No insects that I've seen. I haven't had a cold or the flu since I got here. But the moss is real, and the fruit. The water tasted pure, and satisfies my thirst.

So where am I, and why?