Chapter 247: Day 246

Day 246,

The mists are here.  We knew we were going to be cutting it close, but still, it’s frustrating, and I’ll admit a little frightening, to get caught out in them when we’re nearly home.

There was some debate over whether to keep going, using the bracelets to home in on Vernon as a guide or to just stay where we are until tomorrow.  Ultimately the latter won out.  While the bracelets might keep us in the right direction, there’s no guarantee that they’ll keep us from running into a rock or a reef or something.  And with us still being at least a day and a half out, we’d still be spending the night on the boats either way.  Besides, we’ve been gone nearly a month now, what’s one more day?

We spent the morning before the mists got too thick gathering up materials to try to make an anchor for the boats tonight, as well as some longer thick branches that we’re trying to use to keep the boats together pontoon style.  That said, neither boat has any good place to secure such a pontoon strut onto, so I’m not confident that part is going to hold.

As for the anchor - well, anchors really - it’s simply a matter of a bunch of vines tied around the largest rocks we could find and carry.  I’m only slightly more confident in how well that will hold, but we have to make do with what we’ve got.  Next time we need to bring actual rope.

Now it’s just a matter of waiting around on the shore until it’s nearly dark and then pushing the boats out a little ways to sleep on safe from shades for the night.  Attempt to sleep on anyway.  For once on a mist night I’m more worried about not being able to sleep than the nightmare that will come if I do.

 

Writing from the boat.  Still can’t get to sleep.  Anchor is holding though.  There’s just the one shade, far as I can tell.  A black patch in the starlit grey mist, accentuated by the lights of its eyes watching us from the shore.

 

Fear I won’t sleep tonight.  Just can’t get comfortable.  With the benches arranged the way they are, there’s only one spot halfway decent for sleeping without being too terribly cramped and Lin’s in it.  She wasn’t taking up nearly as much of it earlier, but I can hardly blame her for rolling over in her sleep.  Don’t want to wake her to try to make more room for myself.  She’d probably understand, but it just feels selfish.

So back to the old writing-as-insomnia-cure.  And if that doesn’t work, maybe straining my eyes from trying to read and write in the dark will do me in.

Just glanced toward shore.  Don’t see the shade.

Tried to peer over to see if Maiko and Cass are still okay in the other boat (they are) and happened to glance down at the water.  Two glowing dots down below staring back up at me.

It’s not that they can’t go in water, they’re just bound to the earth beneath it.

Time to try again to sleep.

 

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