The Crash

The roaring cry of the warning alarm still echoed in her ears, flashes of smoke, flaming engines, leathery wings, and her fiancé tightly clutching her hand, his eyes communicating the smile behind the air mask cycling through her memories. She wasn't sure if the memory of the pilot of the small biplane announcing the imminent impact was real or imagined, but all that mattered in the end was that they did, the metal bird forcing through dense jungle foliage until it lost all momentum.

She groaned, blinking her eyes open slowly. Somehow, her seatbelt was the only one she could immediately see that had managed to hold. That, or someone-- or something-- had emptied the plane of the other passengers. Predicting what she would likely see, she slowly turned her head anyway.

Her shriek echoed painfully off of the ripped metal surrounding her as she found most of the pilot still in his seat... except for his head. Clenching her eyes shut, she turned away, fighting back against her gag reflex.

"Ugh..." she groaned, shaking herself. There were more important matters to attend to right now. Namely, not dying strapped inside of that plane. She looked around the compartment she was sitting in, back to back with the pilot's seat. The hull had sustained massive damage, huge gashes allowing the branches which currently held the vehicle suspended to have a grip on it. She had ended up sideways, hanging a few feet above the nearest branch. It wouldn't be a comfortable landing, but she probably wouldn't break anything if she undid her seat belt and dropped to it. Cautiously, she did just that, landing with a thud and an, "Oof."

Her eyes widened in horror, her muscles contracting almost painfully at the groaning of overburdened branches and creaking of shifting metal. A prayer ran through her mind for the crash not to fall just yet. After a few seconds of bated breath, everything remained in place. She let out a sigh of relief. Cautiously, she crawled to the edge of the branch, as far as she could get without feeling immediately at risk of falling. Her stomach turned as she looked down, seeing the drop to the ground. She wasn't certain she would survive that, but there would certainly be no avoiding multiple broken bones.

A shiver ran through her as everything seemed to shake like an earthquake, again threatening to collapse the crash on top of her. The culprit, however, was a tremendous roar, like something out of Jurassic Park. She laughed nervously to herself. No way. That was a work of fiction. So was Godzilla, just to get that thought out of her mind. Dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago.

Sure, this island was completely mysterious, barely explored, barely even flown over, as weather in the surrounding ocean tended to drive air traffic around it. Sure, no maps or historical records anywhere mentioned it...

Oh, god. Another thought to get out of her mind: This was not R'lyeh, and that roar was in no way, shape, or form related to Cthulhu.

She closed her eyes, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself. She had to focus on getting down from the precariously perched wreckage and, hopefully, finding her fiancé and a way to escape back to civilization. Returning her attention to searching for an immediate escape, she noticed something that seemed impossible...

Was that... an arrow... stuck in the wing next to the engine...?