The Story of Starshead Island
previous: The Storm next: Life on Starshead Island
The Arrival
It seems the Slumbering Titan gives as much as it takes.
And the Starless Sky was not so Starless after all.
Listing in the aftermath of the horrible storm, the survivors could not believe what they saw.
Glimmering on the horizon was an island, unrecorded on any charts, bearing glittering shores and rolling green hills, and as they discovered upon landfall, food and water aplenty.
But what stunned them the most was that the sky… changed.
You could stand in place, and the sun would rise and set, the days growing lighter and darker.
No more was there one side of perpetual night and cold, and one side of perpetual day and heat.
Things seemed to breathe, instead of standing still.
Naming the island “Starshead”, symbolic of actually finding a star in the so-called Starless Sea, the surviving members of the Ruto clan and The Shadoka’s Crew made the island their home, carving out a new life there.
Together they founded Starshead Village.
And for a while, despite all they had lost, they found peace in what felt like paradise.
Conflict
The peace born from wonder and relief, and gratitude at this miracle, however, was one that could not last, once people became comfortable, and accepting of their new lives here.
Understanding they were in an impossible place, and likely to never be rescued, the Ruto Clan and the Shadoka’s crew began to salvage The Shadoka for wood, to construct homes and facilities for Starshead Village.
But during this salvage operation, members of The Shadoka’s crew insisted they be the ones to break the ship down, for sentimental reasons.
Grayson and Mateo both had their suspicions, though. They pulled in Ester, known to be quietly observant with a keen eye for detail while remaining unassuming (and probably would’ve made an excellent detective had the times been less turbulent), and asked her to try and investigate.
Ester returned to her father and husband with evidence that confirmed their worst fears.
The Shadoka’s crew, or at least some of them, had carved charms, suggesting they were believers in the [[Slumbering Titan]]. A religion, or ‘cult’, that had sprung up after [[The Great Drowning]].
Ester implored them both not to jump to conclusions, explaining that some sailors wore the charms in a hope to pacify or ward off the Slumbering Titan’s storms of rage, their worship being a worship of fear and capitulation, rather than love and exaltation.
But Grayson, hollowed and angered by the loss of his beloved wife, began throwing accusations, blaming the crew-members for the storm having struck in the first place, going so far in his grief as to suggest she’d been given as a sacrifice.
The remaining crewmembers, still hurt and heartbroken from the loss of their own companions, and angered by these accusations, left Starshead Village to form their own encampment, which they named SunRune Outpost.
Though never one to get angry, in cold disappointment, Ester told her father that what he had done in creating such division among the survivors was no different than the division fostered between Astrialum and Iothaenea.
Quietly ashamed, Grayson admitted that what he had done was wrong, but blinded still by grief, could not bring himself to retract his accusations.
Mateo and Ester attempted to apologize in his stead. But the damage was done, and the Ruto clan and the surviving crew have remained separate every since.
Discovery
For some, despite the miracle of mercy they had received, their curiosity still could not be sated. Though the beaches and hills on the outskirts of the island had everything they needed, the allure of the unexplored depths of the rainy forests, lakes and swamps were too much.
There were too many questions left unanswered.
Why were the stars different here? Ones that had never been charted before?
How did they, and the sun and moons, move in the sky?
Did the two navies lost in The Great Drowning end up here too?
But bit by bit, discoveries were pieced together to make a clearer picture about the island they now called home.
Slyvain’s Self-Exile
Months after Starshead Village was founded, and weeks after The Shadoka’s crew and the Ruto Clan went their separate ways, the youngest of Grayson and Rosa’s children (besides his twin Ester) Sylvain, disappeared into the wilds of the Ebon-Rain Forest, much to his family’s shock.
In his home, they’d found a letter, where he revealed to them that he’d been in a romantic relationship with a crew-member aboard The Shadoka. That he thought he’d fallen in love with her, even.
He’d planned to tell his family once they’d arrived in Iothaenea.
But the woman, known as Sola, had been lost in The Storm.
And Sylvain’s further hesitation had been compounded by his father’s outburst toward the Shadoka’s crew.
As Sola had been one of the so-called ‘cultists’, who Grayson blamed for Rosa’s death. And Sylvain had known.
Ashamed and conflicted, Sylvain forced himself into a self-imposed exile, hoping following in his mother’s adventurous footsteps, and discovering more about the island’s mysteries, could help find something to ease his father’s pain, to help his family come to term with things, and to clear Sola’s name.
Rather than joining the remaining crew-members in SunRune Outpost, Sylvain built his own home in the depths, near a spring he named after the woman he loved.
No amount of persuading his twin sister Ester or Grayson could bring him back home. He was determined to find answers and make amends first.
The Mirrored Moon and The Otherworld
As Sylvain and members of the Shadoka’s crew made further inroads into the island’s depth’s, and unraveling its mysteries, they discovered something astounding.
The island was in the shape of a crescent, curved along a cove.
However, many things were strange about this cove. For one, the water of the cove was inexplicably fresh, with none of the diversity of marine life from the reefs on the island’s coastline entering it.
Though seemingly connected to the sea, the ecosystem seemed completely isolated, as if something invisible barred any of the aquatic flora or fauna from migrating from open sea to cove or vise versa.
For this reason, they named the cove “Lost Lake”, given that it acted more like a freshwater lake than a saltwater cove connected to the open ocean.
But the next revelation was even more astounding.
The waters of the lake, rather than reflecting the mossy swamp trees, instead held a reflection.
…and occasionally, they swore they saw the silhouettes of people on those Otherworld shores.
Once per month, this strange moonlight would seem to solidify the water, into a glassy surface that could be touched, walked upon, and gleamed brightly as a mirror.
The images on the world on the other side became even more distinct, and one evening a group of the Shadoka crew-members swore they saw a group of faces, a ragtag group of sailors, dressed in uniforms that both the Iothaenean and the Astrialum Navy had worn, staring back at them.
At this revelation, both [[Slyvain]] and the The Shadoka’s crew attempted to break through to this Other World, trying everything they could, though ultimately in vain.
In time, they came to accept that there was seeming no way through. And soon the reflections of strange, lost faces faded with the bright of the moon.
Accepting, many simply settled down, only returning whenever the Mirrored Moon phenomenon manifested once again.
Though some, like Sylvain never gave up hope, dedicating their days to learning and uncovering as much as they could about the islands secrets.
But in the end, it was not anyone who came to this strange island who would ultimately find a way through.
But those born here.
Petra’s Visions, and Lourenco’s Birth
Within the first year of their arrival upon Starshead Island, Taza and MC had their first child, a daughter named Petra.
She spent it playing with domesticated island animals and following her older cousins Luca and Isabel around, pretending she was a wild adventurer like her late late Great-Grandmother she heard so much about.
But around seven years later, when Petra’s younger brother Lourenco was born, Petra began to have strange visions.
Sometimes, while playing among the hills or within the outskirts of the forest, she’d feel dizzy, as if struck by sudden vertigo, her ears would ring, and her vision would blur.
And once it cleared, she’d see herself standing in a completely different realm, with everything strangely mirrored and reversed, as if upside-down.
Noting down her observations, and sharing them with her favorite uncle Sylvain when she visited him in his hut in the Ebon-Rain Forest, the two began to piece more things together.
The “other realm” she’d see was often the same depending on which region of the island she found herself in.
While in [[Solrise Hills]], closest to her home village, she’d see a strange burning land of seething fire and choking smoke, with red airless skies and flows of magma, glowing rock, and toxic plumes.
In [[The Ebon-Rain Forest]], she’d see a strange, airless expanse of floating rock and stellar gasses, and a sky bright-lit with the raining glow of falling stars.
While running along the white beaches and shallow tides of [[Solrise Strand]], she’d see beautiful pastures and rolling green hills more lush than [[those they called home]].
And while within the wetland reaches of the [[Lost Lake]], she’d see the same lake, but the landscape towering around it, which seemed to hint at holding previous three mirrored regions she noted, was flipped.
When Sylvain sketched all of this down, and compiled it all together with his own observations over the years, he came to a conclusion.
Starshead Island existed on two separate dimensions, or planes.
And the reason [[the Lost Lake]]’s ecosystem seemed strangely isolated for that of a cove seemingly connected to the ocean, was that if you put both crescent-shaped versions of the island together, they formed a perfect halo of land encircling the mystic lake.
Lourenco’s Dreams
While many in the family had doubts, handwaving Petra’s wild visions as childlike daydreams, (or worse, dangerous omens that should be avoided), as her little brother Lourenco grew old enough, he too often speak about strange dreams, which worried MC and Taza greatly.
Even more so when he described seeing the same things his sister saw, and described being able to walk through these strange mirrored realms of the island in his dreams, unharmed by their hostile and alien environs.
And more so still, when he described the being who guided through these dreams, seeming to lead him toward the center of the island, toward the [[Lost Lake]].
A woman whom he called “Gramma”, who fit the exact description of the late Rosa.
Grayson distraught, and refusing to be hooked by false hope after all of these years, refused to believe it.
But Taza was convinced of something more.
That island was attempting to speak to her and MC’s children, to unveil to them its secrets.
And this final revelation was the largest one. The one that must spur everyone, even the most complacent, into action.
For it seemed that those who had been lost in The Storm and even in The Submerging, were perhaps not so ‘lost’ at all.
And if so, if the sailors lost in The Engulfing lived in this other realm, having found harmony and forgiveness in the wake of such a bloody war, perhaps delving deeper was the right thing to do, perhaps it would unveil the chance to find not just peace for themselves, their family and surviving crew, but peace for all of Iothaenea and Astrialum as well.
The only questions they had to answer were this:
Was the force who communed with the children born on its shores the same voice of the Slumbering God, of the Weeping Titan?
Was it one wicked, or benign?
And knowing that they had found heaven on this side of Starshead Island’s shores, what’s to say on the other side, they would not find hell?