Island, Round Six: By a fallen stake...

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Monty would have blushed with embarrassment if he could at Cristopher's comment. "Oh. Oh oh oh, I am so sorry. My most sincere of apologies, sir Christopher, I was unaware of this."

The piece of driftwood continued on. "Well, since you can't see I might as well explain this to you. I happen to be a top-notch explorer and gentleman adventurer, you may have heard of the great Montana Jenkins, who raided the castle of the emerald femur? No? Never mind that then."

It continued to prattle on obliviously. "Anyways, after a particularly nasty encounter with a rather irritable genie, I have been turned into a piece of driftwood. Talking driftwood, mind you. I can't see or anything, though, so I'm a bit stuck here... say, are those other voices I hear?" Monty suddenly took a more cheerful tone of voice. "Hello, people! Can any of you hear us? And what's this about a noisy person being murdered?"

[Rosalie Dylas (Maddy)]

(If you don't mind Icon, I'm gonna sneak a time skip in your post, sorry xD I can change it if you want me to)

THE DAY BEFORE


"I.. what?" Christopher said, as he listened to Monty talk about being a piece of driftwood, and emeral femur and other things. He had many a time talked to inanimate objects, apologizing for running into them, but never before had an imitate object talked back, and it was weird.


"I am so sorry that happened." was the first thing Christopher could think to say. He suddenly realized he had left Nelly all alone.

"I'm so sorry, I hate to leave you all alone... you know being turned into driftwood and everything, but I should be getting back..." Christopher said apologetic, feeling guilty for leaving Monty.


Before he left Christopher realized Monty had no idea where he was.
"Oh, I've not left yet, but I thought it would be polite to tell you, this is a deserted island, and we are stranded on it," Christopher explained, "But now I really have to go."

Christopher went back to Nelly bumping into a few things on the way.


PRESENT


There was screaming, but that wasn't knew. Everyone was always screaming on this island. Then Nelly's warmth was gone. Christopher quickly got up and followed her out of the tent.

Christopher suddenly felt sad. Something was wrong... Thomas! His wonderful voice, Christopher couldn't hear it.

"The moron is missing," she announced. "We probably ought to send a search party."

Christopher had kept close to Nelly, and using the sound of her voice, he found her and nudged her gently. Christopher could see where it was all going, of course not literally. Thomas wasn't here, so where else could he be? The tears came suddenly. They were quiet tears that streamed down his face.

"Nelly... Thomas is dead isn't he? When someone finds him, it's just gonna be his body." Christopher managed to get out.

Why Thomas?

His voice was so, so calming. Now it would never be heard again.

[Celestial]

Shani smiled at Q's comment, which stayed in her head even during her evening fishing trip out towards the ocean. It did brighten her mood a little, albeit only temporarily but it was enough for her to return with a full stomach. As she settled to sleep in a tree near the beach, she thought about the righteous beaing she had delivered to Thomas. Even though she was bruised from it all, it was still more than worth it.

The next day, Shani woke up to the sounds of the other survivours talking. There seemed to have been another murder. The angel flew down from her tree and listened it.

Thomas was missing. It was likely that he had been killed.

Her eyes widened. She was unsure what to feel. On one hand, if anybody deserved to die it was that piece of annoying, insulting pondscum but on the other, nobody really should die. It meant the killers were still active. Plus, Shani realised with horror, her quarrel with Thomas was well-known. She could easily become a suspect.

Run, run away. That was her first instinct. Angels often ran from difficult situations and it worked for her. But this was the human world. If she ran, they would only seal it in their minds that she was a killer. And on this island, there was nowhere to run. Her death would be guaranteed. It was better to face them.

"If we're going to be looking for that idiot, I would like to be part of the search party. As much as I despise him, it's better that we keep him where we can see him," she hissed. Shani was very happy that she had managed to beat the crap out of him. If the tension had kept building, she would have been lynched before she was even awake.

[Robyn]

Moonflower stepped up to Shanti, brushing the overnight sand off of her legs as she walked.

"I'll go too," she offered, "and I believe my karma is in balance enough for me to say I feel very nearly the same way."

She peered over at the trees in the distance.

"Searching through the forest shouldn't be nearly as dangerous this time if we have you going with us, at least!" Moonflower said, beaming at Shani. The angel's aura was flaring a rich red, and it made her appear even more powerful than she was. With that sort of physical and supernatural prowess, they were sure to be fine under her wing. (No pun intended.)

[Lizica]

The tropical bird had woken up bright and early to fly over to the humans' camp, eager to pick up more sounds and phrases from them. There had been screaming, yes, but for the most part, the campsite was quiet today.

Even for a bird too dimwitted to understand what was going on, this shush was disturbing.

Ruffling his feathers in discomfort, he took off further down the beach and heard a new sound:

"Hello, people! Can any of you here us?"

The bird landed and gazed around the beach, bewildered.

"And what's this about a noisy person being murdered?"

He squawked in shock. With very little of his usual finesse. A piece of talking driftwood! Why--why--...

...Why it was positively novel!

Delighted with his discovery, the bird lightly picked up Monty and flew back to the top of one of the humans' nicer huts. Maybe he could build a ramshackle nest here so he could hang around longer.

"What's this about a noisy person being murdered?" he cawed to the remaining humans, proudly practicing his newly-acquired phrase. "Stupid fishing line! They're already dead... What is it like being dead? What is it you need me to do?"

And ever the bird with no sense of propriety, he started to lightly whistle something that sounded like one of Mina Saelune's songs.

[Terra]

Calista woke up to find that her head was throbbing.

She touched her head and felt that it was covered in something wet. When she looked at her fingers again, she saw that they were covered in blood.

What had happened?

She sat up and looked around. She couldn't see anything in the thick forest, but she thought she could hear voices. She staggered to her feet and started to walk toward the voices.

Then she stopped short.

There was a body lying on the forest floor, mangled and bloodied. She checked it for a pulse and found none, but she recognized his face. She should have known, based on his clothes - even all torn and bloodied, she could tell that they were finer than those of any of the other survivors.

Thomas Everington had been shut up once and for all.

She stared at the body, shell-shocked. When had this happened? What was going on? Was it an accident, or was it intentional, like those other killings had been? Who had done it? And was he or she still on the loose?

She thought she could hear voices, far away, and she began to stagger toward them. But she couldn't make it far before her knees buckled, and she was too dizzy to stand up.

She took a deep breath and screamed as loudly as she could.

"HELP!"

[Avery]

She was on the trip of her lifetime-- a world away from her usual existence out in the country. She'd been so excited for the cruise, so excited to have an adventure, but then it turned into a bit too much of an adventure when the ship sank.

Fortunately for Sam, she made it into a lifeboat, along with a few dozens others. She made it to the deserted island, the place where murders then began to happen. Too much adventure, indeed!

But there was something else that happened to Sam, something no one else knew about. Someone no one else knew about.

She'd first noticed there was something familiar about the hippie, Moonflower, their first day off the lifeboat. Not the crazy babblings about auras, of course, but something deeper than that-- the way Moonflower walked, carried herself, the twinkle in her eyes, the curl in her hair. Sam knew this girl. Or she had, once upon a time, in what seemed like a different life. Before her twin sister had run off to find something Bigger and Better, leaving Sam behind in the dust.

It took her a few days to buck up the nerve to confront Moonflower. But finally one morning, Sam couldn't hold back any longer. So when Moonflower wandered into the woods to pick flowers, Sam followed her.

"I think I know you," she announced with no preamble.

Moonflower turned, stared at Sam. "You have a pretty aura," she said cheerfully.

"Cut the bullcrap," Sam snapped. "Stop pretending you're some mystical, aura-reading girl called Moonflower. You're not. You had a different name once."

Moonflower stiffened. Narrowed her eyes and surveyed Sam. Realization dawned on her, then; it was unmistakable.

"Sam," she said weakly, looking as if she might faint. "I... I didn't even... I had no idea... I... it's just, not something you expect, you know?"

"You left our family," Sam murmured. "You abandoned me."

"No, not you," said Moonflower. "Just... just the farm life, you know? I needed to be free, Sam. I needed to be something."

"It doesn't matter," Sam said. "You left me all the same. You're my twin. You were supposed to be there for me. But you weren't. You left."

Moonflower didn't know what to say then. She couldn't come up with any proper response, because deep down, she knew Sam's words were the truth. At the age of 16, she'd left behind her life in the country and reinvented herself as Moonflower. Became the aura-reading hippie, the laid-back, free thinking person she was today. But that hadn't come without abandonment-- her parents, her friends, and mostly, her twin sister. Sam.

"Please... please don't let anyone know," Moonflower said eventually. "If people knew where I came from... I wouldn't seem as real, you know?"

"That's all you care about?" Sam growled. "How you come across to people?"

Moonflower started to reply, but before she could, Sam whirled and stomped away. This wasn't the reunion she had hoped for. The twin she'd once known was, it seemed, truly gone.

**

Some number of days later, after the murder of Thomas Everington, the islanders were getting restless once more. They weren't upset over Thomas's death, really, but they knew the killers might strike once again, and this time they could choose a victim who actually did not deserve it. They had to execute someone. They had to feel useful.

After much discussion, suspicions turned towards the country girl, Sam.

"She's from a farm," said a survivor. "They kill cows and stuff at farms. It's not much of a leap to humans!"

It was a flawed argument, but the islanders were desperate. So as Sam ate a lunch of coconut and fish, they snuck up behind her, grabbed her. Hanged her from a tree as she screamed and screamed.

**

Moonflower watched this all in shock.

Sam. They couldn't kill Sam. Her twin. Sam was innocent, after all. Moonflower knew this. Sam wouldn't harm a fly, wouldn't ever kill anyone. She wasn't a killer.

Moonflower, on the other hand...

After Sam was dead, the hippie rushed into the woods, feeling sick. Feeling guilty. Sam was dead. Her twin! Moonflower had never wanted this to happen. She hadn't ever thought it was a possibility, really. And it was all her fault. If she hadn't joined the killers, there would have been no execution. If Moonflower hadn't murdered so many others, Sam would still be alive.

She couldn't deal with the guilt. Couldn't. She hadn't wanted to associate with Sam-- the relic of her old life-- but that didn't mean she wanted her sister dead.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. She could not live anymore, not with this guilt.

She had to go be with Sam. She had to end herself before anyone else got hurt.

Sam was innocent.
But Moonflower... was guilty.
They were a sibling pair, and one could not survive without the other.

[Rosalie Dylas (Maddy)]

Screams.

Sam.

Christopher tried to block out those horrible screams. Sam couldn't be a killer. What was the point of this? Why did there have to be hangings? And why Sam? Why? Why? Why? Why?

There wasn't an answer was there? Christopher had cried his eyes out over Thomas, now the farm girl was dead, hanged for a crime she probably didn't commit.

Christopher knew he couldn't think about this all. He had to ignore what was going on around him.

"Nelly... do you want Sam's body?" Christopher asked softly.

[Celestial]

Sam's execution, like all of them, was terrifying. Shani still could not get used to the screaming of executions and Sam's had been the worst one yet. She had flown away deep into the forest to get away from the sight of the corpse. She time alone and possibly food. Hunting would be a good way to get all those thoughts of murder out of her head.

The angel landed in a clearing in the forest, away from the beach and began searching through the undergrowth. She pounched on a rabbit and supplemented her meal with some berries and a coconut. Shani had not seen boars in a while and she had no idea where the oasis Q was talking about was. However, as she foraged, she suddenly came across something human-looking. The angel got a fearful lump in her throat. She turned the corpse over and leapt back fearfully when Moonflower's dead, agonised face met her gaze.

Shani sat down, her eyes widening in fear. Sam and Moonflower...but how?! Why were they both dead? Did Moonflower die because of Sam? Shani could not even see how died and frankly, she had no desire to. She flew back to the beach as quickly as she could and upon landing, began washing her hands in the sea, feeling the cold water wash away the warm sticky feeling of what felt like blood. The angel was unsure and she did not care.

"Moonflower is dead. Moonflower is also dead, darn it!" she swore and cursed. For all that hippie's talk of auras and balance and everything, all you really was were a gorram chunk of meat waiting to die. And she was no better.

Shani plunged into the water. She did not even care if she got her wings waterlogged. It felt like her whole body was covered in blood.

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Great, just great, Monty thought to himself.

Days earlier, he had been lying on the beach, trying to muse to himself how he would get out of this situation when he was pecked by something. He couldn't tell what it was at first but as it picked him up and started cawing he realized what was happening. Then he got dropped on the roof of some sort of hutlike building.

This was turning out to be quite an adventure.

Something started talking, repeating what Monty had said as well as what had presumably happened to the Islanders. He started talking to himself, to calm down. "Let's see... something here appears to be able to mimic others... why, it must be none other than the Lesser Mimicking Parrot, Psittacus Mimus! That's probably the bird, innit? The one that carried me up here! Livid!"

He continued his ramblings. "Okay, but the point is, I need to break out of here. Very soon... I just need to figure out how. To break out of this-"

His monologue was interrupted by the sound of people yelling, crying out, and above it all there was the voice of someone screaming. Monty had no idea what was going on but it sounded bad. "Hello? Hello, what's going on out there? Is everyone alright?"

[Avery]

Sam had only been dead for a little while when the angel, Shani, flew onto the beach and dunked her hands in the ocean, began murmuring about death. At first Nelly assumed she was talking about Sam, but no. Moonflower. She was saying the name Moonflower. Nelly frowned, glanced around the survivors, looking for the dumb hippie. But she wasn't there.

"Nelly... do you want Sam's body?"

"No, child," she said softly, watching Shani throw herself into the salty sea like she was trying to cleanse herself of something terrible. "Come into the woods with me, why don't you? We have an allegedly deceased hippie to find."

[Lizzie]

Sam was floating near her sister's body.

"Oh, sweetie..."

She crossed her legs and sat, still floating, closer to the body, and reached out a hand.

"You didn't have to die. I knew you wouldn't hurt me as long as you could stop them..." she went to brush Moonflower's hair away from her face, and jumped slightly as her hand went right through.

Sam was back to being alone, a ghost. Her sister had died after she did, but not long after, she thought. It would stop Moonflower from hurting more people-- Sam had known about that, too, you know, she wasn't dumb. She knew her sister better than anyone.

"Please come and be a ghost with me. I miss you," the ghost girl murmured to her sister's body, looking up at the trees that surrounded the two and brushing her practically see-through hair out of her face.

[Jayeee]

“Oh, this is good.”

Thomas grinned. He’d been keeping himself conveniently invisible while he decided just what to do about his death. Those foolish mafia members had killed him – after he had so kindly spared them their lives. He’d even supported them. And it wasn’t easy – well actually it was. What with the foolish mathematician spouting claims that he himself was a killer. What nonsense; how utterly ridiculous. If there was one thing that Thomas Everington - of Everington Cakes Limited - didn’t do, it was get his hands dirty. How uncouth and unseemly to think he would have blood on his hands – it was far too hard to wash out.

He finally appeared at the scene of Moonflower’s body, where Sam’s ghost was mourning. “Good thing, you know, if her and her mafia chums had managed to survive this, I’d have had them killed anyway. Daddy would be only too pleased to do such a thing. Now that I’m a ghost, he’s sure to buy me everything I want. I went through such trauma after all – goodness knows I did. Oh it was a horror. I was simply distraught. Daddy once bought me a spare house to keep the collection of guns I had taken a fancy too. You know, it would be ever so easy to accidentally drop a bazooka that unfortunately pointed to one of you still alive. Or perhaps if somebody were to trip and push a button that sent one of my nuclear rockets straight to this island. Oh that would be such a pity.” He grinned. “Awfully fun to watch though, wouldn’t you agree?”

Thomas floated around the body and the ghost. “You know, I could tell everybody who the last killers are, but where’s the fun in that? Now that I have absolutely nothing to lose, I can sit back and watch. You know, maybe I should have daddy make this an annual event. Pluck some helpless people and put them on an island, add a few serial killers, and watch the fun unfold. Oh that would be smashing, don’t you think? I can’t wait to tell daddy my next plan. After my book of course. Can you imagine how much money I’m going to make from that now? Oh, it’s going to be just splendid. Now it really can be ghost written.” He burst into a fit or rather loud laughter. “You know, because I’m a ghost? Oh, I am a delight, aren’t I? Sometimes I think I should just become a comedian. I’d make millions. But I have to remind myself, ‘Tommyboy, you know that you’re just bursting full of wonderful ideas, but we simply cannot pull them all off now, can we?’” he shrugged his shoulders.

“Oh you know, I just had the most amazing idea. What with all of these rather irritating ghosts wandering about, why not make a haunted house? You can all come and be professional ghosts there. Oh, that would be a treat. Scaring all of those common people, and if we’re lucky they might die of fright, and then we can take their homes. That is just the perfect plan. Of course, you’ll all have to be interviewed first, you know. We can’t just be letting anybody in there. It’s going to be a high-class business. Only the best and brightest ghosts may be permitted to work there. You know, it’s rather funny, because when I was at school, an ex-friend of mine told me that she’d seen a ghost in the bathrooms. She was absolutely terrified, refused to go back, screaming that somebody was going to get her through the mirror. So do you know what I did? I took her by the hand and threw her into the bathroom and locked the door. Oh, it was simply hysterical to hear her screaming through the door. I did enjoy it. At the time of course, I didn’t believe in ghosts – I was only nine years old after all. But it was such a joy to teach her a lesson. After that of course we had her expelled for telling lies. Such a pity, I hear she had years of therapy after that. Serves her right, quite frankly.” He shook his head. “But who would have thought that ghosts were actually real? Funny that. It really is a shame then, that that ghost didn’t get her through the mirror after all. Could have saved us all some trouble then, couldn’t it?”

“But that is neither here nor there. You know if there’s one thing I despise its useless chatter. I just can’t stand it. So, if you’d please report your applications to me as soon as possible, that’d be simply amazing. Shame I can’t eat anymore though – I was so looking forward to trying roasted dolphin when I returned home. I hear it’s a delight. With a garnish of polar bear on the side, of course. Who could possibly have it any other way?!”

[Draco]

Q jumps up when he hears that Moonflower was dead.

"Hippie? Hippie is dead?!"

He rushes into the forest to find her, not finding her, but hearing a certain loud dead boy. He stops in his tracks to listen.

"The loud one, he returns."

He narrows his eyes.

"But in what direction."

Looking around he listens for the ranting and begins to walk towards it. He soon moves some bushes to the side and spots what he was seeking.

"Aha! I found the loud one, in ghost form! And another ghost. This is one haunted online. It could be another tourist attraction like Netwaffle if anyone can find it."

He looks down.

"Hippie! Dead Hippie! Why Hippie? Why?"

He kneels down to get a closer look.

"A dead body doesn't make a very good partner in adventures, and I was all ready planning future ones."

He pokes her.

[Robyn]

It had hurt more than she'd expected it to.

She'd gone into the woods to make it more natural when she went. Even at night, the oasis was a beautiful place, purified and natural and still basically untouched by any human presence. The chirp of crickets blended with the rush of the waterfall, and Moonflower focused on the noise as she knelt by the banks. With steady hands, she lifted the healing crystal necklace off of her body and sawed it against a rock until it was sharp.

The swipes were quick, unflinching, and incredibly painful. A strange feeling overtook her as her last breath left her body-- she could feel her entire being and consciousness follow that breath on its way out, swirling with bright turquoise energy and reaching for the sky. She could see it.

The soulosphere was before her.

It was so, so beautiful. There were no words. Moonflower let her spirit find its way as the light pulsed and coaxed her in, promising treasures and karmic retribution like she'd only dared imagine. At least, she did until she heard a voice across dimensions.

"Please come and be a ghost with me. I miss you."

There was a moment of suspension and struggle, and then Moonflower felt herself shift once more as her essence figured out its true path. Shimmering with an otherworldly blue light, she materialized beside her sister's phantom, smiling just as serenely as ever.

"Hey, Sam," she beamed, "It's real."

The two didn't have much alone time, as Q came bursting through the underbrush not long after Moonflower had arrived. She smiled apologetically at his laments.

"Sorry, soul brother. Some things just have to be done, you dig?"

She moved to pat his hand, not seeming to care as her own phased through it.

"But I truly do wish we could have spent more of my Earth time together."