Just west of Barra, right in the outermost Hebrides, there is an island that hasn't been seen for over two hundred years. The remnants of a tropical storm touched down, mixing with the harsh northern air and an unusually warm undercurrent that's kept it perfectly in place all these years.
Boats wouldn't go near it for fear of washing ashore and getting trapped among a culture that hasn't seen outsiders for such a long time. Of course as the years progressed, the world only grew more and more fixated on the longest standing storm ever known.
Rumours soon began to flitter about, talks of disrupting the storm and freeing the island. Counter-talks wondered if the island's ecosystem might have already adapted to the eye of the storm and after two hundred years, what culture had been brought up by it.
As arguments flew between furious keystrokes, a plan was already underway. Several planes dropped specially made early-release firebombs over the weaker parts of the eye wall and set the perfect storm loose to drift about the oceans once more, leaving utter chaos in its wake as the island experienced its full force.
When the first few boats docked they expected to be met by survivors, furious and utterly alienated from their forced isolation but instead they were met with an eerie silence. As they walked up rickety wooden stairs to the main body of the island they saw the carnage the storm had caused.
Not even the birds survived its fury, their broken bodies scattered among the rubble of old stone homes and the motionless figures trapped beneath them. The world wept for the island it had killed with its curiosity and then it moved on.
The nameless islanders did not.
No comments:
Post a Comment