Post by aurelia edith flint on Jul 5, 2021 20:07:51 GMT -7
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February 27th, 2026 - March 3rd, 2026
Getting back to the island illegally was harder to do than Rusti had imagined it would be. In the month and a half since she had turned up by the staging area as Isla MacKay, a lot had changed. The Ministry was still keeping their secrets, but she had gained some insight into how entrance to the island was being handled now. Apparently her own disappearance, meaning Aurelia Flint, and the rest of her research party had caused quite a stir. Civilians disappearing without explanation was worse than cursebreakers or aurors. They were in a line of work where danger was always present. Herbology, outside very few plants considered to be life-threatening, wasn’t inherently a career that one would think they would die doing. Having well-known figures within the field and a child of a socialite family up and disappear without a trace was not a good look at all. So that meant the Ministry now had the island locked down and prevented anyone from entering without explicit orders first.
Of course human nature meant that drew interest from the less desirable crowd. Following her discussion with Julia, the fortune-teller that had done her best to try and help out with the information she had been given, Rusti began to brainstorm what the best course of action to take would be. Her last chance, in her mind, was to go back to the island and enter the fog again. That was when everything changed. She obviously didn’t know what the dangers of doing it a second time and by herself would be, but she didn’t care at this point. Living as Isla wasn’t what she wanted for herself. It wasn’t fair for either of them. Dealing with her mentor’s friends (and thankfully no family that made themselves known in the short time as Isla) had been difficult. Playing up her amnesia had been incredibly important, even if there was someone that she recognized and knew a little about. Ruining Isla’s life, in the off chance that she was saved from all of this at the end, wasn’t on Rusti’s list of things to do. Everyone already thought the woman was lucky to be alive given the circumstances, making it worse by her own doing wouldn’t be cool on her part at all.
All it took to find someone that knew a little bit about potentially taking a boat out into the ocean to visit an island that definitely wasn’t off limits to the average citizen was a week. The only request? She pay in advance. That was easy enough to do, though wasn’t as easy on Isla’s wallet as Rusti had hoped it would be. A quick enough fix if she and her mentor came back alive. Her Flint inheritance was still plenty full despite being put towards the store and other ridiculous things she thought she required in her former life. Hopefully it was still there when she got back. She often forgot that she had been declared dead already. Dusti had probably been so inconsolable over the last month and a half that she most likely hadn’t made any changes to her finances or dealt with the will yet. She just had to wait a little longer, and maybe things would go back to normal again – if such a thing would ever be possible in her life.
The date to leave with her less than shady guide to the island was the last day of February. The night prior, she wrote up a letter addressed to Julia and sent it via owl to the fortune-teller, signed as Aurelia. The contents explained how she was going to attempt a trip back to the island and everything that had happened since the first trip there. It was to be given to her sister if she didn’t return before mid-March as well, a second letter folded up and written to Dusti behind it. Her handwriting, while visually Isla’s, still felt like it was coming from her. She was sure that her twin would be able to understand that this wasn’t all some sick joke being played on her during her time of grief. It certainly made more sense in Rusti’s head to do it this way instead of approaching her sister in person and trying to explain everything. That never would have gone over well. The entire process of writing out the two letters eerily felt like this would be the last time she would be reaching out to anyone ever again. They weren’t of the caliber of what she assumed a suicide letter would be, but she could tell that her desperation had finally worn out and if she didn’t come back it was because the island had finally consumed the last bit of her soul that resided within Isla’s body. She had come to terms with that already but knew that others wouldn’t see it nearly the same way that she did. No one ever would.
She met with the guide in the early hours of February 28th, having it explained to her that they would arrive at an area of the island that sat near enough to the beach that she would be able to maybe sneak on undetected. There were a lot of what-ifs in her half-baked plan to gain access to the island once again, but Rusti didn’t care at this point. This was her last ditch effort to get herself back to the way she was supposed to be: in her own body. She would climb the cliffs of the island to get on if she really had to. Stealthily getting by a couple of bored guards under the cover of darkness would be easier than trying to pry a bottle of wine out of her mother’s passed out, drunken grip before she drank herself to death in the middle of the night.
Those were the nights where she tried to be diligent and helpful, and always got caught and screamed at instead. Thoughtfulness was weakness in the Flint household. She would have done anything back then to escape her parents and the family name. Now she was doing whatever it took to get her body back from a magical fog on an unknown island because she hated what she had been turned into. Having her freedom and autonomy as Rusti Flint ripped away in the manner it had been was far from the fresh start she had always longed for. Her parents dying one after the other had already granted that.
The trip on the boat was relatively uneventful. Easily the worst part was the guy manning the helm, who had an infinite number of questions about what she wanted to do there, all of which were meant from silence on Rusti’s end. He wasn’t privy to why she wanted to be there, just how she got there. At one point, there was the realization on his part that she had never discussed a return trip, and when he started inquiring about why that was, she pulled Isla’s wand on him. It still barely worked for her, knowing that she wasn’t really its master, but the guide didn’t know that. No names were involved and if he went around telling people he would get in trouble just for going to the island in the first place.
After a few hours of silence following the last question, the helmsman finally spoke up and notified her that they were getting close. He had come in from an angle that would avoid most of the watchful eyes that the Ministry had set guard, and once the boat was within range, she had to swim the rest of the way. Rusti recalled her first trip to the island, where even in daylight under clear skies, it had been extremely difficult for the boat to navigate the waters safely. The unnaturally dark water looked like an inkwell under the night sky, the glow of the moon sucked out of the reflection it should have cast. She felt that if she fell beneath the surface, she’d truly disappear forever. That was something to keep in mind as they approached the last stretch of water and she was told to prepare to slip in for her swim.
Mentally prepping herself for the dive was tough. Something primal in her head screamed at her to not go anywhere even close to it, and that the only safe place was on the boat now. The short ladder that went off the back of the boat, close to the rudder, disappeared into nothing. Her arms tensed up on the railings as she attempted to bring her legs over the edge of the boat and onto the first rung. Knuckles aching and white, Rusti swung herself in, her hands refusing to let go of the ladder as she splashed in and bounced back into the metal steps. Even though she felt where her feet were as they moved under the water, she couldn’t see anything lower than her shoulders. The frigid black of the island’s surrounding water was all that stopped her from her goal. Kicking off from the ladder after prying her fingers free, she started her swim.
There was no discernable distance to the island once she was in the water. From the deck of the boat she had sort of seen the outline, though that was quickly disconfirmed as she approached it. A large craggy rock jutted out of the water, smooth to the touch as she reached up to try and find purchase on it. The best she could do was use it as a guide, and keeping a hand on it, waded along the left edge of it. Behind her, the sound of the boat rudder sputtered to a start as the boat disappeared into the dark, a small wave from its wake pushing her gently into the side of the rock with a splash and leaving her all alone.
The familiar feeling of the island was what dragged her towards shore. Being able to put it into words wasn’t exactly possible, but Rusti immediately recognized the alluring pull that had led her group deep inland the last time she had been here. The curiosity in this instance wasn’t from her; instead it was from the island. It wanted to know why she was there, in the water, and why she had returned. That was what she got out of it as it felt like she was quickly led to a point where she could touch a sandy bottom, and eventually walk all the way out. Dragging her soaked self out as quietly as possible, she immediately cast a drying spell on her clothes and then a silencing charm over herself, hoping that would keep the splashing as she stepped even quieter. There wasn’t any sign of Ministry workers, though a twinkle of orange light what seemed like miles away on the beach could be seen.
Rusti knew she had to trust very little and stay vigilant once she was on solid ground. If she ran into anyone, she was going to have to stun them so that she could make her escape, and if the creatures she had encountered the first time showed up, she would have to run. Her life actually depended on it. Thinking of this as her drying spell wrapped up, the eerie silence that found its way to her brought back memories of the first trip, and how it quiet it had been the first few nights of their travel. All she had to do was retrace her steps back to where she had been taken by the fog, though that was easier to think about than actually do right now. Even with the moon out, the island seemingly refracted the light away, similar to how it didn’t reflect on the water. Casting lumos would give her position away to Ministry and creature alike (though the former wouldn’t be nearly as bad as the latter), so walking in the pitch dark was her only path forward.
The glimmer of the morning light creeping over the horizon gave her some idea of the way she needed to go. In the soft orange glow of dawn, she forgot for a moment where she was, the calm splashing of waves on the beach and gentle breeze seeming like everything was normal. The lured feeling that she had in the water briefly passed as she was lulled into a silent walk along the beach, at least until she saw the shadowy outlines of tents peeking at her from across the other side of the bay. If the looming trees peering at her from further inland and the blood-red sand on the beach weren’t foreboding enough, remembering that she wasn’t here for a vacation was a sudden jolt. Her immediate problem was circumventing the people in the tents if she intended to go that way, as the path her expedition had taken was on the other side of the clearing the Ministry had established themselves in.
She made a huge arc, one that let her get as far from the tents as possible but still kept her out of the trees. She trusted them the least after what happened last time. Entering where she wasn’t vaguely familiar would only get her lost. Falling to the forest a second time without being where she wanted to be wasn’t her intent today. Trudging through the open field, she kept her eyes trained on the tents for movement, while her ears listened to the trees off to her left. There were definitely things moving in there, and whether it was the trees themselves or the nasty bird-like creatures that had hunted her group through the wastelands, it was impossible to tell. The watchful gaze was definitely something she could feel though, and her hand tightened around Isla’s wand as she briskly walked across the clearing and towards the trees that seemed to be more familiar to her.
Whether the Ministry employees were used to seeing unknown things creeping near the trees or if she had actually snuck around without being noticed, Rusti made it along the forest edge that she previously went through her first time here. From there, she had to pass the foul smelling lake and then the woods past that was her destination. Just thinking about the putrid, bubbling water again made her stomach lurch like it had the last time, and her sense of smell remembered every bit of it as if it were right in front of her. Taking one last glance at the bay of Bkrys, she took a deep breath and shot up a string of red sparks into the air, the crackle echoing down the hill towards the shore. Rusti quickly turned on her heels and ran into the Wyrdwood once again.
Hours had passed. There had been sounds of people looking along the tree line as she sprinted for as long as she could, but that had been taken over by the noise of small beasts moving all around her. Everything had come rushing back to her as she went deeper through the trees, and every step was a heavy one. She was completely unprepared for a journey that lasted longer than a day, her small pack only holding enough food to get her through the next morning and a sleeping bag that had been shrunk so that she could bring it with her. The intent wasn’t to sleep though, as the fog would come before then if she was lucky. Walking through the endless trees, each one looking the same as the next, was monotonous business. She had no one to talk to, only kept busy by her thoughts about what her next leg of the journey was, which meant the woods just past the lake.
She smelled it before she saw it this time, having been reminded of it a few hours prior. The surface was still bubbling and emitting its gaseous stench, slimy things of unknown nature coming to break through but swimming deeper at the last moment. Whatever she imagined them to be, they were probably much, much worse than that. Eyeless and wriggly, their only purpose in their everlasting damnation being to drag unsuspecting victims under the filth to their own demise. Rusti gagged as she imagined herself being dragged into the lake, and quickly gasped for air. She was filled with the fetid smog, and doubled-over while fleeing back towards the trees to vomit. That was the second time that had happened to her, and it seemed like even Isla’s body wasn’t able to handle the foulness of the lake.
Keeping her distance to the lake as large as possible, she wandered along the edge of the trees and towards an area that seemed similar to where the group had entered the second half of the forest. It became immediately apparent that this section was different than the last, even if they were all part of the same forest. There was no visual difference between them, but her senses all felt assaulted by the memory of what happened the last time she was here. Running for her life with each of her companions disappearing until it was just she and Isla. She was overcome by long, scratchy sobs as she dragged herself further into the trees once again, knowing that there would probably be only one outcome to all of this. The sun had already started to set when she left the lake, and it would only be a matter of time before the creep of the fog came back.
Her choked hiccups petered off as she saw the first of the misty tendrils licking at her shoelaces. The fog had found her before she even realized it, moving in with a speed and silence that left her with very few options. Resigning herself to the fact that this was it, she headed to the closest tree and sat herself in front of it, back to the trunk. Knees to her chest, she buried her head into her arms. She didn’t want to watch it happen again; she just wanted to slip away quietly on her own.
The feeling of water pulling at her body was what woke her up. It wasn’t instant, but after a couple of times, the cold of it shocking her fingertips as they were brushed by it as it retreated from her was too much. The sticky haze flicked away from her eyes as they opened, immediately met by a blinding white light from far above her. The warmth wasn’t enough to give it away, though the incoming crash of another wave certainly was. The wave quickly overwhelmed her, and frothy saltwater passed over her face, causing her to sputter as she inhaled it instantly. Coughing into a sitting position, her eyes began to focus on her surroundings. The red sand beach, the tooth-like rock formations jutting out of the water, the same breeze she had been met with both times she arrived on the island.
Rusti looked around herself, confused at first, as she had been curled up on the floor of the forest as the fog engulfed her only moments earlier. But the sun was high above her now, brightly blasting down on her as she sat soaked and sandy on the beach. Her bag was gone, and she patted at her pockets, finding a familiar outline in her pocket. As she pulled the wand out, it wasn’t the one she had been using for the last month and a half. It was hers. Staring at it, a shout came from somewhere down the beach, far enough away from her that she couldn’t see the person without squinting. A little more than halfway between her and the running person looked to be another body lying on the beach. Though unmoving, she recognized the clothing as waves wrapped around the body. That was Isla MacKay.
aurelia edith flint ● 3,333 ● Lots of Songs by Lots of Artists
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