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We met when she shoved the barrel of her gun in my face.
“Who are you and why are you on my island?” she demanded, tucking the tip neatly under my chin.
Every instinct I had ever learned as a child had prepared me to pull out my sword and slice her hands off before she could blink, and then run her through before she could scream. It would be easily, killing her. It would be self defense. I wouldn’t feel bad.
But I didn’t.
There was something about the way she looked at me. She was so young and so strong, and when my arms ached to get my shitty sword from my strife deck a little voice in my head told me, She doesn’t deserve to die so pathetically. I put my hands to the sky.
The bottom of my jaw bumped the cool metal of her gun when I spoke. “The storm,” I said, carefully, slowly, “It wrecked my boat. That’s why I’m here.”
She looked me down. Her eyes took note of my clothing, ripped where the splinters of wood had gotten me, and the bruises that littered my arms and legs, from when the waves sent me crashing to the bottom of the ocean.
“How do I know I can trust you,” She demanded.
I licked my lips. My throat felt dry. “You don’t.”
There was hesitation on her movements. She lowered her gun only slightly, and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Dave.”
“Dave.” She repeated. The way she said my name made me think of freezing cold snow and it made me shiver. Finally the gun left the vicinity of my face and she smile brightly, showing off large front teeth and a pair of dimples. “I’m Jade.”
“Well Jade,” I drawled, feeling much more relaxed now that I had dodged death twice in one day, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
xx—
That night she cried, and didn’t know why.
xx—
The next morning she asked me why I was out on the ocean on a boat.
I paused. The answer drifted up from my subconscious and forced its way out of my mouth, “I was looking for my bro.” But none of those words felt right and I looked down at the water.
“There’s no one else here.” She dipped her feet into the cool water of the lagoon.
There were ruins in the middle of the water, old and green with a light mossy coating. They were surrounded by lilypads of impossible size and aquatic flowers in every color imaginable. I said stupidly, “It’s shaped like a frog.”
“I think there’s a reason for that.”
“Yeah?” I tipped my head back. “A reason other than a weirdass frog-worshiping society of generations past?”
“Would you believe me if I said yes?”
“You know, I would.”
xx—
That night we built a fire and sat much closer to each other than strangers normally would. We made up stories about gods made of tentacles and darkness, of electric green dogs, of birds pierced with swords. We looked at the stars and picked out constellations, making up terrible stories that barely made sense. We laughed with heads thrown back, howling at the moon.
The next day I kissed her over breakfast. She laughed like she used to and said, “Daaave, John’s going to kick your ass.”
“John?” I said.
Her lips parted slightly and her eyes widened and she stared off into the distance. I tucked my arm around her, pulled her close, and whispered in her hair, “It’s okay.”
xx—
The days I spent with her began to run together. Sometimes we went swimming and we slept by the sea if we were tired. Sometimes we went exploring in the forest on the opposite side of the island and made a game of climbing trees. Sometimes we spent the night inside the old, old building on top of a hill, but we never went further than the first floor.
Sometimes I’d kiss her, sometimes she’d kiss me. Sometimes she would drop a beat for me as I spun my verbal magic, and I counted the seconds it would take until she was in hysterics. I learned that I liked her laugh. She learned that I was ticklish. I learned that she had a grandfather but couldn’t remember when he died, she learned that I didn’t remember my bro’s face.
When remembering became too difficult, we would curl in on each other and stay perfectly still though the night, as if we were afraid that a sudden movement would crack the sky and shards of the moon would pierce us in our sleep.
At least, I would say to myself, we were together.
xx—
One morning I woke up alone.
It took me longer than normal to raise to consciousness, as if I were shaking off a nightmare. Even the dim light from under the cover of the trees hurt my eyes and every breath I took caused searing, unspeakable pain in the form of pin pricks all over my chest. With each second that passed I expected soft brown hands to reach down and touch my face and make the pain go away, but they never did and I had to wait it out by myself.
Eventually I was able to sit up and, panting, I called into the trees, “Jade?”
Neither the birds nor the wind answered. I wiped my brow, put on my shades, sucked it up and left our meager campsite and didn’t look back.
As soon as I exited the forest my feet hit sand and surf and for a moment I was befuddled, as if the walk to the sea had been much longer than that before. But it wasn’t, the island was always this small, I had mapped it all out earlier and Jade hadn’t looked at it like I had shown her something utterly wrong. None of that mattered at the moment, however, because I did not see a mess of dark hair and eyes as bright as the sun anywhere.
Jade could handle herself. I knew this. It had always been her island. Still, I was overcome with the need to find her.
The distorted sound of a dog barking careened across the scenery from the direction of the ruins. I looked, the hairs on my arms stood on end, and the unfamiliar sensation of fear gripped me. I didn’t want to go there. I turned and marched the opposite direction down the beach until the static tinged cry of a demonic dog no longer filled my ears.
The beach ended in a hill and the shadow of a tower. There was nothing left to do but climb it. The front door was long gone so I stepped in the entryway without knocking. It was a mess; various knick-knacks laid in disarray, strange blue dolls my size were sitting on upturned couches, and I saw what looked like a preserved corpse of a man three times my age. I kicked everything out of my way and headed upstairs.
I entered the greenhouse area. The windows were all blown out, with glass still littering some corners of the room. Old clay pots were covered in dust and caked in old dirt. Tables were overturned, and the room smelled distinctly of rotting vegetables. Jade was sitting in the middle of it all, staring at her hands.
I sat next to her. “Hey.”
“Dave.” She looked at her hands like she expected them to start bleeding any time soon. “What happened to us?”
I put my hand to my forehead and closed my eyes against the pain of a sudden headache. I said, without thinking about the words falling from between my teeth, “We played a game.”
She answered without missing a beat, “We died.”
“We became gods.”
She gazed out at the sky and I followed her stare. I was so sure I had entered this room when it was early morning, normal except for the missing birds and missing wind and strange dog haunting me. Now it was starting to swirl in a vortex of purple lightning and never ending space and I was only barely able to convince myself that the dragging sensation I felt from it was all in my head. My mind buzzed and crackled and split and it hurt.
“Dave,” she said softly. She placed a hand on my cheek and turned my head to her. She took off my shades and set them on the floor between us. Her hands were warm when she stroked my face with her thumbs. “You’re crying.”
I was.
“I’m sorry Jade,” I touched her shoulders lightly, as if I held her with any sort of force disappear into my imagination and I would be forced to die alone, “I’m so, so sorry.”
Her bright, beautiful eyes filled with tears. “It’s a time loop, isn’t it.”
She choked out a sob and clung to me, and I to her, and we started crying, weeping out of the foreign sensation of helplessness and failure. It just wasn’t fair, not to me, not to her.
The sky split down the middle.
“Jade,” I said, my face buried in her long, tangled hair. “Jade, I have to tell you something.”
“Me too, Dave,” She pulled back and kissed me, light and soft. “Me too.”
xx—
We met when she shoved the barrel of her gun in my face.
“Who are you and why are you on my island?” she demanded, tucking the tip neatly under my chin.
I looked at her. She was standing tall, her eyes were trained in a steady glare, and I opened my mouth to tell her about the storm and said, “I love you, Jade.”
She pulled the trigger.
xx—
We met when she shoved the barrel of her gun in my face.