With their approach to the island, a small voice within Sarah cried an alarm, "No, Sarah, not this island, get away from here!" Sarah did what she always did, and she ignored her small inner voice while she dutifully saved the coordinates into her GPS device.
The skies continued to darken as the boat made its halting approach into the relative calm of a small bay. The motor sputtered and hissed the entire way as the boat slowly crept toward the shoreline. After much struggle with the waves, the two guides managed to ground the boat onto the beach.
Supar helped Sarah off the boat, and she jumped onto the beach. The wind had picked up considerably, and Sarah decided to make her way up the dark, sloping sands of the narrow beach in order to find some sort of shelter. An intense lightning storm lit the skies above the island, but Sarah barely noticed the theatrics as she sat down. Instead, she sat on the beach holding her chin to her knees as she fought the waves of nausea that swept over her. She huddled on the beach for almost a half-hour, still feeling the seas riding up and down within her body, doing anything she could to make the ill feeling go away. While she sat, she watched the guides struggling to keep control of the boat while they simultaneously worked on the motor. Feeling guilty that she could not help, Sarah turned her attention to the gathering storm clouds that were swirling about the beach in a maelstrom of angry green-grey colors. In the distance, she saw dark rainbands advancing over the ocean as the heavier rains appeared to be retreating away from the island.
A half-hour later, the storm finally exhausted its fury as the skies surrounding the island began to slowly brighten. Feeling a bit better, Sarah decided to help the guides with the boat. On unsteady legs, Sarah approached the boat; however, Supar could see that she was still green, so he waved her away.
"Okay, I'm going to explore the island a little bit," she said.
"Don't go too far," Supar replied back to her. She nodded in agreement and continued her shaky walk to the tree line that demarcated the end of the beach. The tree line was populated by a number of tall, slender palms; the ground was covered with dense, impenetrable underbrush. The storm winds subsided, and a feeling of normalcy returned to the beach as the sounds of nature began to fill the air. Sarah recognized the calls of some of the native birds and started to make her way into the dark underbrush to investigate. Being a trained naturalist, she was very comfortable exploring a strange forest; it was something she had done hundreds of times before without the slightest hesitation. She ignored the numerous branches that scratched her bare legs as she purposely made her way to a suitable sitting location. The restless birds sensed her approach, and they quickly stopped their calling while taking the time to spy on the intruder of their island world.
Sarah found a good spot for observation and calmly settled down to watch nature. Once her movements stopped, a few quiet moments passed and the birds resumed their melancholy songs. Among the choruses she was surprised to hear the call of the Flores Green Pigeon. Sarah sat and listened to them for a few minutes, straining to hear if they were singing a different song dialect from the birds she had heard on Flores Island.
And then there was silence.
That's strange, the birds stopped their singing. Why? Sarah was baffled, since she had been careful to remain motionless in her current sitting position.
At that moment, she sensed it, the very presence the birds had sensed. Something else had joined her, and that something was in very close proximity to her. Gusts blew in from the beach, causing the palm trees to sway in rhythm with the strengthening wind.
More silence ensued when Sarah had a sudden moment of realization that it was a someone and not a something that was close to her. Sarah's experience made it so she knew when she was being watched; moreover, she could tell if an animal was checking to see if she was a predator or perhaps potential prey. She could even distinguish the inquisitive glance of an intelligent creature such as a great ape versus the piercing stare of a large, voracious cat. The forest just sounded different when the great apes stopped to observe her, but there were no great apes on these islands, and for all she knew, no people either, great or otherwise.
Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot Part 1
Start from the beginning
