Sounds of the sea fill her ears. Her head is swimming. The tide laps her feet as it ebbs and flows. She feels a grainy substance against her face as she stirs awake. She is conscious, but she cannot seem to open her eyes. She tries again in vain.

Maybe this is one of those lucid dreams, she thinks.

She had a lucid dream before, but none this real. She thinks she really hears seagulls and feels grainy sand against her face. Her feet sure do feel as though cold water laps against her heels. She tries to shake herself awake again. This time, her eyes open partially. They’re crusted over...

She blinks again, trying to clear her vision, and she tries to move her arms. Her arms twitch as she struggles to come to. Once again, she tries again unsuccessfully. She can’t get her limbs to do more than twitch. Now, she begins to worry. If this is a lucid dream, it’s getting out of hand. Time to wake up.

She struggles internally for what seems like an hour to make her extremities move. She contemplates giving up and drifting back into whatever terrible nightmare this is, but she decides to try one last time. She concentrates on the parts of her body she wants to move - focusing hard - when suddenly, her eyes pop open. She tries to move her arms again, and this time, they twitch and then come to life. She feels as though she's being stabbed with thousands of tiny needles.

She lies face down in the sand. She wipes the sand and crusted salt from her eyes and struggles to sit up. A few more tries, and she’s finally able to sit cross-legged on the sand.

What is going on? Am I still dreaming? I must be, she thinks.

She looks around to get her bearings. If she isn’t dreaming, she must figure out what’s going on - the survival instincts kick in.

She’s sitting on a white sandy beach with frothy water rolling against the shore. A small boat lies in wreckage further down the beach from where she sits. It looks as though it broke over a giant’s knee like a twig. Other than the wreckage of the small boat, not much else exists to see.

She’s alone on the beach, and she gingerly begins to stand up. With the difficulty she had getting her arms to move, she doesn’t want to overexert herself and fall, but she manages to stand without incident. Lying around her feet are all of the things she discovered in her grandfather’s trunk.

But how?

She collects the assortment of things and looks around.

Where should I go?

The beach seems to go on endlessly in either direction, and nothing exists behind her but sea. In front of her are a small outcropping of scraggy rocks and more sandy beach. Beyond the rocks are sheer cliffs seeming to climb all the way to the sky.

Endless beach, open sea, or mile high cliffs - great, she thinks.

She chooses the cliffs. She figures there must be a way through or up, so she makes her way from the beach to the rocky outcrop with the items from the trunk wrapped in her arms.

A bag would be nice.

She picks her way carefully over the rocks and approaches the cliffs. The closer she gets to the cliffs, the more she realizes getting up them will be a real challenge. She did some rock climbing before, but it was in indoor rock climbing facilities with harnesses and gear - nothing like this. As she draws near the cliffs, she decides she won’t be able to climb all the way to the top - the cliffs stretch as far as the beach does in either direction. She stands staring at the impervious cliffs for a moment, trying to develop a plan.

The compass!

She places the rest of the items carefully on the sand and flips open the heavy brass case of the compass. The arrow points directly toward the cliffs - North.

Great, she thinks.

It didn’t occur to her the compass did her no good if she doesn’t know where she is to begin with. She looks at the compass again and back to the cliffs. Well, she can’t go North; she looks East and West. The cliffs seem to grow shorter toward the West - it could be the perspective from which she looks, but she decides to go West, anyway.

What other choice do I have?

She gathers the other items from the ground and begins walking West. She guesses it must be around mid-day because the sun is hot and blazes directly overhead. She needs to find freshwater soon. She is already beginning to feel the effects of dehydration. She walks West until the sky dips low in the sky, and the cliffs become less daunting with every mile. She becomes more dehydrated with every mile. She contemplates drinking the sea water, but sh knows the salty water will do nothing to quench her thirst, so she presses on.

The cliffs grow shorter as she walks along. Eventually, she sees where the beach begins to curve toward the North. She hurries toward this point, thinking it may be a break in the cliffs. She follows the curve of the beach and notices the cliffs evened out, but the water began to shallow.

It’s an inlet - the sea flows in and shallows between two walls of cliffs. She makes her way further into the inlet and looks around. Trees with wide fanning leaves bearing plump purple fruits line the base of the cliffs at the far end of the inlet. She is starving. She hopes the fruits are edible. She heads for the trees, and she hears birds calling overhead, along with occasional splashing in the shallow water. The water here is calmer than the water rolling along the beach and much clearer.

As she reaches the trees, she realizes they are taller than she originally thought. They are tall, and the bases are bare - no branches to climb. She looks around for a way to get to the fruits. Driftwood litters the beach. She eventually finds a long slender piece of driftwood, worn smooth by the sea, and she uses it to poke and prod at the fruit until one falls to the ground. The rind of the fruit is a deep purple - it reminds her of an eggplant.

The fruit is round and about the size of a cantaloupe but with stripes like a watermelon. She has no idea what it is, but she cracks it over a rock to get to the meat of the fruit. The rind splits open revealing the inside of the fruit. The inside rind is a brilliant green. There doesn’t appear to be much meat but instead, a massive amount of little seeds - like a pomegranate. She removes a few seeds from the fruit and smells them - they smell sweet.

She has no idea how to tell if they are safe to eat, so she risks it. She pops a few seeds in her mouth and bites down, hoping for the best. Juice from the seeds explodes on her tongue. Although a little tart, they are sweet, and they have a good flavor.

Here's to hoping they aren't poisonous...

She digs out every last one of the seeds from inside the strange purple fruit and eats them. She isn’t nearly satisfied, but she needs to find fresh water. She leaves the now seedless fruit on the rock she smashed it against. She makes her way through the thicket of trees toward the cliffs, but she still hasn’t found a way through or over the cliffs. She reaches the base of the rock wall and looks up. Vines and foliage cover the sheer side of the cliff.

Maybe I can use these vines to climb up the cliff, she thinks but quickly dismisses the thought.

She is athletic, but she isn’t sure she has the upper body strength to pull herself all the way up the cliff’s face. She gives up on the vines idea and moves along the wall. More of the same foliage covers the rocks. She continues walking. By this time, the sun is almost down. The light shining through the trees casting dusky shadows on the rocks. She’s running out of light.

She reaches into the depths of her mind for an idea. She recalls something about using flint with some kindling to make a fire, but she has no idea how to tell flint from any other rock. There may not even be any flint around, and she isn’t going to be a fool banging two rocks together trying to start a fire. She decides to keep looking for a way to get over the cliffs. She can worry about a fire later.

She hears the call of some sort of bird and jumps at the sound. She trips on a rock sticking out of the sand and loses her footing. She grabs for the rocky cliff to steady herself. Her hand pushes through the foliage but finds no rock. She falls. Her head hits the cliff hard. She clutches her forehead and cusses under her breath.

What the hell?

She brushes the sand from her clothes as she stands and shakes off the pain. Her head throbs as she investigates the side of the cliff. Her hand went straight through instead of bracing against the rock. The dying light isn’t helping her investigation. She parts the vines to see why her hands didn’t find the hard rock behind them. There is rock behind the vines, but in the rock are oval shaped indentations.

The indentations are a little over a foot wide, about eight inches tall, and deep enough for her hand to go in well past her wrist. She must have found one of the indentations when she tried to catch herself. The indentations are evenly spaced and precisely cut to be made naturally. They were not accidental - although they are worn smooth by years and salty sea air.

Hand and foot holds?

She knows she will either spend the night on the sand or make her way up the cliff wall before she loses what's left of the daylight. The light is fading quickly. She doesn’t like the idea of spending the night on the sand because she doesn’t know how far water comes up the beach during high tide. She doesn’t want to be washed out to sea or drown in her sleep. She decides to climb the cliff, but first, she needs to figure out how to transport the things she carries up the wall.

She cannot climb with them in her arms, so she collects a fallen leaf from one of the purple fruit-bearing trees. It is a few feet long and almost as wide. She wraps her things in the leaf and tears another leaf into strips, using it as ties to keep her bundle from falling open. The leaves are waxy but tough and tie securely. She takes a longer strip of leaf and weaves it through her belt loops, tying the ends to the bundle; now, she has a pouch on her hip. The weight on one side makes her feel off balance, so she shifts the pack to the middle of her pants line below her back. She feels more balanced now. With all her items secure, she begins to climb.

She puts her foot into the indentation closest to the ground and uses one above her head to pull herself up. The indentations are large enough for her feet and hands to fit securely, and she begins to pull herself up the wall. It's slow going at first as she gets acclimated to climbing. Eventually, she figures out the distance between the hand and foot holds, and this helps her guide herself up the wall more precisely. As she goes higher, it becomes easy.

The sun is almost below the horizon now, but she only has a few more feet to go. She grunts and pulls herself closer to the top. Her arms and legs ache, and she feels as though her left knee may give out at any minute, but she keeps going. After all, there's nowhere to go but up. Her hands find the last set of holds before the top, and she heaves herself up and over the top edge of the cliff. She made it.

She stands up and looks around to get her bearings. More of the vines and some small ferns cover the ground around the cliff's edge. Further North away from the edge, more tall trees - some bearing fruit, others not, but they cover the landscape and turn it into a dense jungle. Vines swing from the trees, and she hears animal sounds coming from the thicket. She heads toward the trees, and a wind picks up - blowing in from the sea - the heat from the sun disappeared. She needs to find shelter.

She makes her way into the trees - she really needs light. She remembers her cellphone in her pocket. The battery is almost dead, but for now, it provides a faint light. She wanders through the trees looking for somewhere to spend the night or, at least, fresh water. She hears leaves rustle in the undergrowth. She freezes.

She’s not normally this jumpy, but she is in a strange place, transported there by some unknown means, so she isn’t taking any chances. She shines her cellphone light toward the ground as the light grows steadily dimmer. A snake slithers over the toe of her shoe. She waits until it passes and backs away slowly.

Nope.

As she backs away from the slithering creatures, she hears something other than leaves crunch underfoot. She shines her light toward the ground again.

Bones. Possibly human.

She continues to back away, and she feels her back hit something hard and cool. She turns to see what she ran into. The trunk of a wide tree, different from the ones along the beach. Its trunk is yards wide - it reminds her of the redwoods with tunnels for cars to drive through. The bark is smooth and cool to her touch as she runs her fingers along the base of the tree. She moves gingerly to avoid stepping on any more of the bones. She makes her way around the tree and runs face first into a sight she never wanted to see.

A human skull.

The skull stripped of flesh and hanging by a rope knotted in the top of the skull. She could see the knot dangling behind the eye sockets. The lower jaw is missing, along with several teeth on the upper jaw. Some of the missing teeth replaced by shells and smooth stones. She stifles a scream. She backs away from the skull, and her feet crunch on what she only guesses are more bones. She isn’t looking down. She hears a noise behind her. Much louder than the snake slithering through the undergrowth. She freezes - there’s nowhere to hide - nothing around but more trees. None of the trees have branches low enough to climb. The noise grows louder and closer.

Something is coming. Something much bigger than the snake on her shoe.