Chapter 17.

She turned away from me and wandered forth in the direction of the lush greenery not too far away. It didn’t take long before we arrived at the edge of the densely populated thicket of trees.

I didn’t realize it at first, but my nervousness rose the closer we got. When we finally entered, I felt the full brunt of unease one experienced when venturing into foreign unexplored soil with countless unknowns 

Just what sort of creatures were laying in wait, watching, and observing, as we ventured further into this man made land of mysteries. There were no guarantees the animals were identical to the ones found in the outside world. I couldn’t ignore that possibility when I considered who the mastermind behind this island was.

To alleviate the heavy atmosphere in the air, I thought starting a conversation was the best method, “Adele, is there anything in particular we should be looking for in terms of shelter?”

“A clean water source nearby is ideally what we want, but it can’t be too close to where we set up base. Wild animals will also visit water sources frequently as well. It would be a pain to have a confrontation with them every time one shows up.”

“What about near the waterfall from earlier? Don’t you think if we follow it inland we could come across a clean water source?”

“Duh, where do you think we’re heading now?”

After we travelled on foot for about an hour, we arrived at the waterfall. Like I suggested, we  followed the flow of water inland to the source. At its source, it appeared the water was being pushed out from an underground pressurized pocket. Somewhere in the island’s vicinity there was likely a much wider canal with strong flowing undercurrents that forced the water through the ground into this narrow opening towards the cliff that formed the waterfall. 

It was similar to a hose when you pinched it, the water pressure increased proportionally to the cross sectional area of the channel it was moving through. When the opening narrowed, the force the water came rushing out with was much greater. I now had a somewhat vague understanding behind how this strangely unnatural waterfall had seemingly defied gravity in an uphill battle and came into existence over the elevated cliff. 

The rotation of the Earth was also a factor in the equation behind the mystery of this unusual waterfall. Due to low friction between water molecules they tended to prefer to stay at rest when something was pulled out from under it. The Earth was rotating such that the water on the surface essentially slid over the water deeper down below it due to low friction and lower pressure acting on it the closer you were to the surface. 

This could be attributed to the centripetal force exerted upon it, as well as the counteracting force of gravity acting on the body of water as a whole. Only at the equator did the two forces point in the exact opposite directions. The further you went from the equator, the bigger the difference there was in the direction the two forces pointed. This discrepancy in forces being cancelled out creates an imbalance in forces on the horizontal axis, which gives rise to a current that pushes the water uphill in this manner. Essentially, it was the coriolis effect at play in which currents moved perpendicular to the direction of rotation.

This was just my assumption based on the tidbits I knew on the subject though. I wasn’t a hundred percent certain if that was the real secret behind this peculiar waterfall. Whether there was some sort of hint veiled by the mysterious waterfall, I had no idea.

It honestly didn’t matter much to me what secret there could be to it though. I just wanted to let myself get distracted by whatever I could to ease my nerves over the unfamiliar environment I found myself in. You could say it was a means I’d adopted to try and assimilate and grow accustomed to the surroundings. The more I understood about the island, the less scary it became; that was my reasoning.

It’s only spooky and scary when you don’t fully understand it. To overcome fear, you must comprehend the unknown and see through the confounding veil of mist.

As time progressed, I grew more accustomed to the forest and I eventually reigned in my constantly on edge nerves. It was right when I’d gotten used to things that Adele finally said, “Darling, this should do.”

Adele came to a sudden stop in front of a cave inside a tall rocky cliff that intersected a desert biome full of sand and the forested area we’d been travelling through. It was at the impasse directly between the two distinct biomes where trees had grown sparser and patches of sand had mixed together with the soil.

“Why here?”

“The stream isn’t too far from here and we can safely set up fires here without worrying about accidentally starting a wildfire. There’s natural shelter against rain so we don’t need to worry about building or maintaining a leaky roof overhead during a downpour, and we can store plenty of supplies in here. It’s also very easy to defend, we don’t need to worry about keeping an eye out on all directions all the time. It can give us a sense of reassurance.”

“In addition, with the desert nearby, it will be easy to spot any predators coming our way without the dense foliage to obstruct our line of sight. With the cave to our back, we can even climb up the cliff to escape. We can also flee into the forest where denizens of the desert aren’t able to thrive. The same goes for the forest, once an animal from the forest enters a desert biome like this, they’ll instinctively stop their pursuit from fear of the unfamiliar environment. Forest dwellers wouldn’t be adapted well to cope with dehydration in a desert as well.”

Honestly, I didn’t really care, I was just happy we were finally at a location we could settle down. I was already exhausted from our journey through the forest. The ground was uneven and you had to watch every step closely to avoid tripping on the thick tree roots protruding above the ground. The ground was uneven everywhere, so it was a constant game of trying to keep your balance. It was definitely far worse than the woods where Adele’s family mansion was located.

I sat down on a rock outside the cave completely drenched in sweat from head to toe. There was a lot of shade when we were back in the forest, but when the tree population grew less dense as we skirted along the border between the forest and desert, the sun’s rays were on full blast.

I stretched my body out fully on the large rock. I raised my hand over my eyes to block out the sun and watched the few small isolated clouds in the sky.

“Darling, you can’t go to bed just yet you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve still got some work to attend to before we can rightfully claim this cave?”

“Rightfully claim the cave? You mean-”

“GRRRRRRAAAARRRRRRR! GRRRRRRAAAARRRRRRRLLLLLLLL!”

A loud growl originated from behind me in the direction of the cave. With my body paralyzed by fear, I tilted my head backwards on the rock and discovered the origin of the loud sound.

What met my eyes were dangerous orange black stripes and patches of white.

“Darling, we’re in luck.”