Chapter Text
“Ohhhhhh boy,” he burbled around misplaced seawater. “My head…”
He spat out the mouthwash and tried wiping his lips dry, only to smear a layer of fresh salt from his sleeve. Opening his eyes to inspect said sleeve made the nacleous overload feel like walking on clouds in comparison. He was wearing some gross, way-too-synthetic mess with an atrocious printed pattern. Worst of all, it was red. Red! Red wasn’t his colour, no sir! It was… It just wasn’t his.
The colour of his clothes was hardly the main issue. He was soaking wet in a patch of sticky sand on an otherwise beautiful beach. Not a memory of how he’d gotten here. Not a clue of who he was. Not even a single cooled drink lying around with a cute paper parasol in it.
“Mamma mia…” he mumbled.
“Are you alright?”
“Wah!”
He rocketed a good few feet in the air despite his waterlogged wears, sand and sea drops flung about from the launch. If only he’d thought about the landing. Now his left side really hurt.
The voice said something again, so he reopened his eyes to search for its source. Instead, he was first met with a row of white text in the ether.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.”
He sluggishly read the words. Looked up higher to see a figure dressed from top to toe in a business suit. His brain could not catch a break.
“Are you alright?” she asked again, which he only knew because of the inexplicable subtitles. He alternated a few glances between her face and the mysterious floating words, and hesitantly responded in his own tongue.
“I’m, uh…l-l-lost.”
The businesswoman blinked curiously at something invisible below his chin. If it weren’t for the magic captions, he wouldn’t have realised she had muttered something under her breath.
“How unusual…”
She straightened and returned her focus to him. “Are you injured? Does anything hurt?”
He gave himself a quick check - rolling joints, patting muscles, wriggling digits. He stood up on the first try without falling flat on his face, which was a big bonus.
“I’m okay, just a little foggy.” He felt a shaky smile start to skim along his skin. “My brain is all, uh, whoosh! Clouds and meatballs.”
She stared at the air between their knees with lips pursed in puzzlement. Rather than press any queries, she simply replied, “We’d best do another check-up once we’re indoors. My codename is…”
The woman’s clear tones faltered mid-cadence. She shook her head and changed course.
“My name is Anabel. Do you remember yours?”
That question nearly sent him back into a tizzy, but he felt the tiniest bit less scared about it than the rest of what was going on. Maybe because… Yeah. He had an answer.
“I’m Luigi,” the introduction rolled right off his tongue, unconsciously thickening his accent. “Number one.”
The two seconds of pause before Anabel spoke stretched out to feel like two years. Why did he say that?! What in the stars was he ‘number one’ for?
“Let’s get you cleaned up, Mr Luigi. I don’t believe there are towels anywhere, but we could always use the surplus of clothes t…”
Luigi had to look away from the overwhelming wall of text to plant his first few steps into the ground. Once Anabel had determined he could walk on his own, they fell into a gentle rhythm that allowed him to take in the sights all the better. He thought he could see a few colourful buildings in the distance, behind all the towering palm trees.
He used the silence they’d fallen into to ask, “Where are we?”
Anabel kept their pace moving, turning her head back just long enough to presumably read his unseen subtitles. “I’ve been told that this place is called Wayside Island.”
It didn’t sound familiar - not that he had much to reference at the moment. “Is it big? How many people live here?”
Anabel’s face was unreadable in the split seconds before she faced forward. It took another ten steps or so for her answer to manifest.
“None, as far as I’m aware. You’re the first person I’ve seen since I washed up on the shore.”
“Huh?” gawked Luigi. Was this lady crazy? Talking with ghosts? “Who told you where we are, then?”
This time, Anabel didn’t miss a beat. “The hands in the sky.”
“The wha.”
Luigi looked up, because it was unfortunately on him to assuage this poor stranded loner of her hallucinationsohstarsabove--
“Wawawawawawawah!”
Two enormous, flat images of humanesque hands floated freely among the clouds. One of them turned into a sky-projected slideshow, flipping back and forth between two angles of the same open-palmed image as if to impart a greeting. Quivery Luigi uncurled his wobbly fingers and nervously waved back.
This apparently appeased the absurd aberration. Its jpegs dissolved into the stratosphere.
“It seems to be the sole provider of the island,” continued Anabel most nonchalantly. Her travelling voice spurred Luigi to wrench his gaze back to earth and hastily catch up to her. “It’s created these buildings, and it restocks them each night. I wager we won’t be wanting for food and water for as long as we’re here.”
“You’re staying?” asked Luigi dubiously. “Sorry, lady, but Luigi’s got places to be.”
Anabel slunk an appraising glance back. “Such as?”
He opened his mouth with a deep inhale…and his reply was a pathetic squeak of aborted syllable. Stubborn as he was to come up with something, the seconds drew out and he was forced to awkwardly breathe through his hanging maw. After the second exhale, he reluctantly reconnected his teeth.
Anabel’s eyelids creased in disappointment, then sympathy. She stopped their walk to face him fully.
“I know it’s far from ideal, but believe me when I say I’ve exhausted our options. I’ve tried signalling for help, but I haven’t seen a single vehicle at sea or in the air. I’ve tried gathering materials for a raft, but I can’t even leave a scratch on the trees or floorboards. I’ve tried getting answers from the hands, but they’ve ignored ninety-five percent of my questions.
“There’s another house, now.” She gestured vaguely towards a studio-sized box painted in gaudy red. “It wasn’t there a few moments ago. I can only guess that it’s meant for you.”
Luigi stared despairingly at that tiny, isolated building. What minuscule confidence he’d gained had dropped to join the water sloshing in his shoes.
“Of course, now that you’re here, we can try those things again,” Anabel’s musings took on a not-so-stern tone. “We can find out more about the island, and the extent of the hands’ powers. We might even remember where we’ve come from, in time. But until we learn more, it’s best to work with what we have now.”
With that, she turned and made a sweeping motion towards the horizon. “Which is all of this.”
Luigi’s gaze gradually followed the trajectory her hand had laid out, absorbing the specifics of Wayside Island more clearly. What had felt like a promise of civilisation had turned out to be a mere two flashy buildings. They each resembled a grocery and clothing store, and the temptation of free food and cleaner clothes was not lost on him. Beyond that was a whole stretch of tropical nature to explore. And beyond that lay an endless swathe of crystalline waves, glimmering with each gentle roll.
Luigi sighed and tilted his head, seeing glimpses of what could be.
“Okie dokie,” he relented. “Let’s try your idea.”
For the first time since they’d met - at least - Anabel smiled. “Thank you.”
Without any further fanfare, she continued leading him towards the clothes store. Luigi noticed something to their left, tucked away near the stretched shadows of the grocery store. He sped up to walk in line with Anabel and waved a hand for her attention.
“Can I take that one?” he asked meekly.
Anabel tracked the target of his pointed finger: Another humble house, painted in a lovely coat of green. She returned to assessing Luigi’s hopeful face with a slow, impassive blink.
“No.”
As time went by, more strangers appeared on the shores of Wayside. The more people on the island, the more the sky showed its hands - in more ways than one - by granting the ragtag group more resources and entertainment. In fortunate favour with Anabel’s proposition, they were finding more answers about their predicament each day.
Unfortunately, for every answer locked down, five more questions sprang up.
“Good evening, Mr Luigi!” called a resident by the name of Ingo. He had been the third of several to appear in this bizarre haven, and had quickly made it his duty to scour the sands for other amnesiacs.
“This fellow to my right is called Emmet. He arrived at this station very recently!”
“Verrrrrry,” agreed Emmet.
“O…kay…” Luigi’s tethered hands twiddled together as he looked left to right, right to left. “Do you two know each other?”
“Well, as we have spent the day touring the premises, I would certainly say we’re acquainted,” pointed out Ingo.
“Did you two know each other?” rephrased Luigi. “Before washing up on the island?”
The pair exchanged a glance. Emmet’s hairless brows furrowed, while Ingo’s hum slid in uncertainty.
“While I understand we are all missing cabs of our memories,” the latter began slowly, “I have noticed that these cabs link back into place when we encounter something recognisable. And so, it may be safe to say that I have never seen Mr Emmet before today.”
“Don’t know him,” summarised Emmet.
“Really?” Luigi was gobsmacked. “You look exactly the same!”
He’d been running a checklist in his head, the more he had looked at them side by side. Light-grey hair, shorn close to the skin. Same colour and shape of the eyes. And bend in the noses. And wide ears and little beards and--
“For a second, I thought Ingo had met some…some kind of jaded doppelgänger. Is none of this ringing any bells?”
Now Emmet was looking at him, face pinched with an expressiveness Luigi wasn’t used to seeing.
“You think we look alike?” he retorted. “I am Emmet. I think you should get your eyes checked.”
“Wha?!”
“I’m afraid you might be confused, Mr Luigi,” added Ingo. From what the green bean knew so far of Mr Shoutsallthetime, he sounded shockingly sincere. “But I’m flattered to hear my smile could look even half as friendly as Emmet’s!”
Everyone stared at Ingo for several beats of silence.
Emmet was the one to break it. “You haven’t smiled all day.”
A gasp. “I beg your pardon? Why, I’m smiling right this instant!”
Ingo patted at his face as if to spotlight the site of a dimple. He continued to pat, the hand lowering more and more down his cheek, as he kept failing to find the edge of his mouth. When he finally tapped at his face’s permanent convex - the only shape Luigi had seen on him in weeks - his brain visibly malfunctioned.
“Which way is smiling, again?” he mumbled half-deliriously.
“I was talking about all of it!” exclaimed Luigi. “Well, errrm, maybe not the smile--”
(“Aw.”)
“--but everything else! Ingo, don’t you think you’re looking into a mirror right now?”
Politely entertaining the notion, Ingo turned back to said mirror. He stared at his reflection with a straining, scrutinising squint. Which Emmet happened to employ around the same time. This continued on long enough for it to dawn on Luigi that they really weren’t joking.
“You bought the same top!” he cried.
Ingo startled and studied Emmet’s outfit as if for the first time. Sure enough, both of their shirts were inked with white, blue and black triangles stacked above one another.
“Oh, bravo! You must have excellent taste, good sir.”
Emmet’s blossoming smile abruptly seized and wilted. “Don’t-- um. I am Emmet. Just Emmet.”
“Just Emmet,” echoed Ingo, down to the last millisecond of sound wave. “I will be sure to remember that.”
Luigi groaned dramatically and held his head in his hands.
“Am I going coo-coo? Don’t tell me I’m going coo-coo. Are you seeing what I’m seeing, Mario?”
Another of the newer island arrivals, who had been here the entire time, sighed and nodded.
“This is ridiculous! Whatever spooky curse they have, I don’t want any of it!”
“Mm-hmm,” supplied Mario.
Luigi gestured frantically at the shorter figure. “See? He gets it!”
But alas, since he was met with two identically blank stares in response, he slouched and gave up.
“Okay. I’m going to bed.” He waved tiredly whilst walking away from them all. “Nice to meet you, Emmet. Nice to meet you, Mario.”
“You too!” called Emmet alongside Mario’s cheery thumbs-up.
“Thank you for your report, Mr Ingo. I’ll come visit our new guests shortly.”
“It’s no trouble at all, Ms Anabel. Take care, now!”
Shortly after the loud figure had strolled off, Anabel glanced at the silent other who had been patiently waiting for her to finish.
“Chief!” he started with a squaring of his shoulders, before wincing. “Er, or should I say--” He unconsciously flitted a roaming glance at their lonesome surroundings, “Anabel.”
“Either is fine, Mr Looker,” she inclined her head in greeting. “How can I help?”
“Well, you see,” began Looker. “You see, well. There is a consensus from many that there should be more places to sit around the island. We have made a list of described places, in lieu of a map. But the store for furniture does not, in fact, store furniture. Or tools to make furniture, as some have offered. So I was told you might know where either of these could be.”
“I see,” said Anabel with a nod. “Anything that isn’t stored on the island seems to be made by the sky hands--”
Yes, those. Looker wondered if they would ever come up with a better name for them.
“--so it’s worth asking them in person. Have you summoned them before?”
“I’ve most certainly not.”
“Just wave them down, like this.”
True enough, she raised her head skyward and waved to the ozone. After a befuddled few seconds of staring, Looker curiously copied the motions. He exchanged a glance with Anabel, wordlessly checking his accuracy to the task. She simply smiled back, the lopsided slant an acknowledgement of how silly they both looked.
A collection of pixels zoomed down from on high and enlarged in its approach. Its speed, size, and uncanny cellular details made the hairs on Looker’s arms stand on end. The wanderers of Wayside had little choice but to quickly accept their reality of depending upon this allegedly omnipotent being. Indeed, there was a strange power over the island (or was it an enchantment on their strength?) that forced such dependence. These reminders from his furniture errand made Looker all the more wary of this alien and its world.
It certainly didn’t help that Luigi had a growing list of cautionary conspiracies about the hands. Apparently, they were all to run for their lives if it put on a pair of gloves and started shooting lasers.
In the meantime, this solitary hand greeted them by pointing a finger gun at Anabel, which she nodded at. Upon addressing Looker, the hand’s movements grew more animated, down to the number of transitional images between poses. Looker mildly copied the wave in his direction, but struggled to stifle his grimace as an index finger stretched out and reached for his hair.
“Excuse me,” Anabel’s bladed voice sliced its trajectory. “I don’t recall you asking.”
The frozen hand remained terribly close to Looker’s hair for a few squeamish seconds. Then, to his astonishment, they pulled back. Their flat physique erupted into a series of one-handed signs he did not recognise. Emboldened by the boldness of the chief beside him, he politely declined the captioned offer and waited tensely for its next move.
They paused in the air, as if to think. Then, their palm turned to face their home as they snapped their fingers with a commercially crisp click. At the tip of its up-side-down pointer rested a tray holding two takeaway coffee cups.
Looker randomly remembered the term ‘blue screen.’
“I think they’ve been trying to learn everyone’s drink preferences,” considered Anabel, “which is difficult when we’re relearning them, ourselves.”
She took the left cup, and Looker followed with the right. The hand loomed to block out the sun’s rays as they drank, unperturbed when its conjured cups dispersed to nothingness once they were emptied. Judging by Anabel’s next comment, it was awaiting feedback.
“It’s a nice latte,” she said. “Thank you for being considerate.”
“Yes! And thank you for the caffeine as well, Your… Your Highness?”
The hand still hadn’t moved in the slightest. Looker couldn’t tell if that was a reaction or non-reaction.
“I surely should have asked before,” he mumbled quietly to Anabel, “but is there a certain etiquette to uphold with them?”
The very, very edge of Anabel’s lip quirked. She refrained from lowering her voice. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve lapsed out of ‘etiquette’ around them many times. They don’t seem to mind… If anything, they’ve become more receptive.”
“How do you mean?”
He’d asked in regards to the final statement, but Anabel answered as if to clarify the first. By glancing up at the fingerly figure and flipping two Pidgeys at them.
“Oh-- Chief!!!” (What was ‘Pidgeys?’)
“It’s fine,” she said in frightening calmness. “See?”
He lookered at the sky’s hand. It was flipping a Pidgey right back at her.
“What if it has a different power for them? For all we know, they could be summoning a storm!”
“Doubt it,” dismissed Anabel. “I’ve tried a few different gestures with similar meanings. They’ve copied all of them so far.”
Looker’s jaw was to the floor. “How are you still alive?”
“After all this time together, I think they and I have reached something of an agreement.”
Anabel retracted and folded her weapons into their armpit holsters. The third bird was caged as well.
“Now, you can ask them directly,” guided the chief.
Looker was unsure how to follow such a performance, but he did his best. He and Anabel spent a great deal of time walking around the island to highlight the places in which seats were being requested. Though the hand declined some of the suggestions, it added more of its own, and the Wayside began to feel a bit more welcoming.
Still, Looker found himself pondering the hand’s behaviours long into the night.