Taking a long walk

Alice sighed, "I think it's a good idea. We have food and water for today at least and walking will mean that even if we don't find any civilisation we will have a chance to look for things that we can eat. I mean I've seen that there are coconuts and there's plenty of greenery, so there has to be other things we can eat, hopefully, some fruit or some kind of vegetables or something. So let's take a walk I guess?"

I nodded and we set off walking after digging a piece of wood into the ground and surrounding it with small rocks as a marker. We'd been checking the compass on the paracord bands we'd put on, it seemed that we'd started to change direction, when we first set off we were heading North-east, but over the course of five hours, we'd ticked past North, then North-west until we were roughly pointing towards the West.

I was honestly pretty tired walking on sand makes you work more and I had a heavy pack on my back, I dropped it in the shade and slumped against a tree. There was, unfortunately, no sign of anyone else on the beach up to now but we had fortunately found a couple of things, the first being that we realised that there was plenty of seaweed which according to Alice is pretty good for you. We also saw lots and lots of coconut trees but we knew there were lots from the small section of the beach he had washed upon. The last and probably most important find though was that as we walked we noticed more than a few small trees roughly half as tall as the palm trees that have bumpy cherry-like fruits on them, the field guide turned out to be almost completely useless other than the fact that it had a step by step process of determining if something was safe to eat.

So following the guide, I had picked one of the fruits and rubbed it against the back of my hand and let the juices sit there for around ten minutes, nothing happened so I grabbed another and rubbed it against my top lip, again I felt nothing, so I rubbed it on the tip of my tongue, which upon tasting it I was extremely surprised, the fruit was very sweet but not overly so and slightly tart, the inside of the fruit was quite gelatinous but not in a bad way almost like an extremely soft grape. But we still had to be cautious so after letting the juices of the fruit sit on my tongue for a while with no undesirable effects I put some in my mouth and again waited for a while, the book said that if you felt tingling or unpleasant sensations that it was probably not safe but luckily for me, I had no such feelings. Then for the final test, I broke off the tiniest piece and swallowed it. That was almost an hour ago and since then I haven't felt anything, I haven't thrown up or been **** to run into the bushes or ocean, so I assumed they were safe to eat.

The last thing Alice found was some kind of Aloe plant which she swore was Aloe Vera and that it was extremely useful. While walking Alice also mentioned that if I could get into the coconuts on the island she could get coconut oil out of them.

Alice took a deep breath before planting her ass next to me, "So, we didn't find any people or anything and all that we've been able to hear is the ocean, the wind, some kind of birds and insects. We also saw some kind of tiny lizard, so we know there is life on this island. But what do we do now? After we take a break, do we carry on walking? Or do we get ready for bed?" Alice asked.

I thought for a moment, "Well, I think it'll be a good idea to get a fire started, you said that you could get oil from the coconuts right? So it might be a good idea for you to start doing that over there, the husks are brown so that means they are mature. Then after breaking them open I'll set up the hammock and I'll put the tarp over it, there shouldn't be any rain or anything but it's better to be safe."

Alice nodded and after unravelling one of the paracord bracelets I wrapped it around the tree and around myself using the carabiners to secure it. It wasn't the best safety line but it would make it harder for me to fall and also make it a little easier to climb. I slowly shuffled up the tree and managed to pull a coconut off, I looked down and seeing a rock not too far from the tree I aimed for it and thew it at it. I did this another five times before shuffling back down the tree and unhooking myself from my extremely makeshift safety line.

Walking over to where I'd tossed the coconuts I was a little disappointed to see four of them hadn't cracked, luckily two had and it was somewhat easy enough to pry the husks away from the coconuts. I found some large rocks and after nestling one of the coconuts into it I picked up a rock I could barely lift before slamming it down onto the coconut, one shot was all it took to crack and I moved onto the next. We soon enough had six coconuts all dehusked and ready to be opened up.

Alice and I had been sharing one of the glass bottles of water and as it was almost empty we both took a last sip from it each. I then used the box cutter blade on one of the carabiners to drill into the mouth of the coconut before pouring its contents into the newly emptied glass bottle. The five coconuts roughly filled the bottle and the remaining coconut was poured into the kettle from the mess kit.

I took out the axe head and attached it to the piece of the shovel handle to make a short hatchet. Using that I cracked the coconuts in half and set them to the side. After that I left Alice to continue, while I headed out to find fuel for the fire, I found some dry-looking branches on the floor further into the tree line, I also piled up a nice amount of fallen palm leaves between two trees.

I dug a small pit and lined it with stones before making a little pile of wood. I used one of the many many firestarters from the pack and one of the husks from the coconuts to get the fire going. Lucky for me the fire easily started up and was roaring as the sun was nearing the horizon over the ocean. I quickly spread the palm leaves I'd piled under the trees before stringing up the hammock and tying a line between the trees around a metre above the hammock before tossing the tarp over it and tying it down, the tarp wasn't that big but it was large enough to create a roof over top the hammock.

By the time I had finished, it looked like Alice had just about finished getting the oil out of the coconuts, Unfortunately, we had nowhere to store it right now other than the coconut shells so putting the shells in a safe place we sat by the fire while we ate some more of the rations we had.

"Tomorrow we are going to make a giant fire ready for if we see any ships or boats passing us, we should also try to make an SOS sign in case someone flys over top and I should probably try to do some fishing or something..." I thought out loud.

Alice got closer to me and rested her head on my shoulder, "Okay... So you think we're going to be rescued, Robin?" She asked.

"Of course, any day now," I reassured her, wrapping my arm around her shoulder.