The river was unusually deep, that much was known. Occasionally a pod of dolphins would make their way upstream to give birth in Lake Lichside which was an oddity in itself but for an entire island to appear overnight was downright miraculous.
It wasn't a small thing either, measuring a couple of miles all around with strange trees that sure as hell weren't native to the area and had drying kelp tangled among the leaves. It was like it had raised itself from the lakebed somehow.
If that wasn't weird enough, around the same time the island appeared, an entire flock of sheep vanished into the lake. It wasn't until a couple of local divers went to investigate the new island that we found out exactly where they'd all gone.
Their farmer reckoned they'd somehow managed to swim across and were settled in on the new island which was a nuisance but not disastrous. When the divers went ashore and found that the grass was actually some kind of sharp bone-like protrusion, they realised that it wasn't an island at all.
Few people have seen a sea urchin's mouth closely but as the "grass" began to writhe and dig into their legs, they found themselves being pierced over and over and dragged towards a valley between a thick cluster of "trees" to where a circle of five jagged teeth opened and closed, the "grass" spines feeding small fish and vermin to it.
Their oxygen tanks washed ashore, heavily punctured and partially crushed.
The island vanished a few days later, leaving behind a lakebed full of bones and a fear of the ocean.
It wasn't a small thing either, measuring a couple of miles all around with strange trees that sure as hell weren't native to the area and had drying kelp tangled among the leaves. It was like it had raised itself from the lakebed somehow.
If that wasn't weird enough, around the same time the island appeared, an entire flock of sheep vanished into the lake. It wasn't until a couple of local divers went to investigate the new island that we found out exactly where they'd all gone.
Their farmer reckoned they'd somehow managed to swim across and were settled in on the new island which was a nuisance but not disastrous. When the divers went ashore and found that the grass was actually some kind of sharp bone-like protrusion, they realised that it wasn't an island at all.
Few people have seen a sea urchin's mouth closely but as the "grass" began to writhe and dig into their legs, they found themselves being pierced over and over and dragged towards a valley between a thick cluster of "trees" to where a circle of five jagged teeth opened and closed, the "grass" spines feeding small fish and vermin to it.
Their oxygen tanks washed ashore, heavily punctured and partially crushed.
The island vanished a few days later, leaving behind a lakebed full of bones and a fear of the ocean.
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