Cervia's Log - 13 Achiel, 1 AoC
An arduous slog
I
've been walking the beach now for three days. Heading almost exclusively south - although I have no idea if that's in any way a good-or-bad thing. The downside of walking on the beach is that you find precious few natural materials that might suffice for shoe making. The upside is that your bare feet can walk longer on sand than less-forgiving surfaces. But even that has its limits.
I never realized how abrasive sand can be. What felt "soft" several days ago now feels like an endless journey over a grinder. Bits of shell find their way into crevices that I never knew my feet had. Over a sufficient number of steps (thousands - followed by thousands more), sand does to skin what it does to everything else - it grinds it down. My footsteps grow more red with every passing hour. My feet don't hurt anymore. And I fear that's a very dire sign.
Three days and there is still no sign of civilization - of any kind. When I stop to rest, I spend long minutes scanning the ocean, hopefull that I might see anything - a steamer, a mast, a sail. Hell, even a row boat would be manna from the heavens at this point. Just to know that some intelligent species traverses these seas.
At night, before finding a resting point inside the treeline, I scan anxiously for the best harbinger of intelligent life - light. I strain over the ocean for sentry lights on passing freighters. I look anew up-and-down the coast for any sign of a lighthouse. I gaze back inland for the telltale glow of a city. And I see nothing. Absolutely nothing.
During the days, my pace is slowed considerably with a constant scanning for food. I'm accustomed to beaches being a rich hunting ground for carrion. At any given point a recently-died creature is washing up somewhere ashore. The problem in this hellscape is the crushing presence of the birds.
When I first came ashore, I was in awe of them. Their numbers. Their plumage. Their grace. Their exoticism. Avians the likes of which I have never seen on any planet that I've ever had the privilege to visit. But now... I hate them. I despise them with every ounce of my being. Every carcass I've seen on the beach has been little more than a savaged skeleton - picked clean by a thousand angry beaks. They swarm above the waves in great flocks and I'm starting to wonder if they are hunting for their next piece of fish. Or if they're simply waiting for the moment that I lay down on the sand and give in.
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