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Stories from the Verse
A Dozen Verses
Chapter 131: Cooper 115
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Kondor 300
Waking to the cries of gulls, Cooper rose to pray. He also focused on memorizing because he was not sure that there would be any power source for his Bible on the laptop. Breakfast was a smaller fruit which was grapefruit tart, and not at all to his liking, but needs must.
Getting his walking stick, he began exploring the area. Wherever he went, he saw no other land off the coast. Getting back from a pleasant hike along the beach, he decided it was time to hunt. Getting a book-sized stone, he went down to the beach and smashed several scuttling crabs.
Peeling them out of their shattered shells, he kebobbed them on a green stick from the nearby jungle. There was a supply of wood and heavy dry leaves near the fireplace, provided by his predecessor, which he lit with the flame of the sword. Crab meat was delicious when freshly cooked over the fire.
Taking his example from the targets, he practiced after lunch with the sword. As he had no teacher, he imagined what Red Swashbuckler would say. Cutting, slashing, foot-stomping, sudden lunges, and equally wild dodges filled up several hours. After this, he worked on the miraculous powers of The Sword, summoning them, dispensing with them, and repeating again, and again.
Tired, he tried another fruit. So far, he had not suffered any stomach or other problems from the fruit his predecessor had left. He ended the day as the night fell with a campfire near the pool in the cave, soaking tired muscles in the warm pool. This was pretty heavenly, he decided.
Over the next week he did the same, coming to find that the land he was on was an island, with no land in sight anywhere. All the fruit left by the shelter had been good to eat, and he found trees to supply more of the same.
The landscape near the campsite was varied--trees mostly, but ferns and grass in patches along with smooth and jutting rocks in the interior. The beach sand was at times white, and in other places, stretches of black. He thought this possibly volcanic.
The following week he had to add fruit finding to his tasks, assuming that as the seasons changed the available fruit would change with it, and so needing to know what else he could eat. It was not difficult. Also, remembering how he had been chased down by men who looked like him, and might even be Christians, before being stoned to death, he began to add windsprints to his exercises. This was the tradition among basketball coaches, much hated among players, of running full-tilt across the court and back ten times followed by a short break (very short), then nine times, and then eight, and all the way down to one. If the coach was unimpressed by the sweat-flying effort shown, he then said ‘do it again’. Making it harder, Barrelmaster did this in the beach sand, which was the best clear spot for an untripped run but provided poor traction for the runner.
The third week he got as close as he could to the heat and toxic gasses to the top of the volcano at one end of the island. The pool of lava under his feet bubbled as he cautiously craned his neck to look over the edge. A couple pebbles fell away from the curved stone mouth of the volcano near his feet, and he eyed the ground carefully. His muscles were primed to leap back if the stone gave way underfoot.
The smoke was wafting away from him, pushed by a breeze behind him. On the other side of the mouth, nearer the water, he would be right in the midst of the toxic gasses. At other times, the wind shifted to his right, which is the direction he had essayed the approach to the mouth the first time. After backing up, and trying again, he made it safely to the top.
Intensely curious, and feeling a trifle boyish, he picked up a stone and tossed it over the edge. Klunk. Hot stone leapt and splashed back down. Truly awesome, he decided, and not wanting to take too many risks, he turned about to go back down. On the way, he picked up some obsidian with the thought of possibly flaking it later.
The fourth week he added using his glove with its shield and lifting abilities and thrusting force to his practice routine after the miracle work with the sword. He hoped to learn to work with them together. Truth be told, what with his superhero union suit, his inertial belt, his glove, dart pistol, and the sword, he was feeling a bit like he might be becoming formidable. Pushing these prideful thoughts aside, he continued to work, keeping himself busy, but not overly so.
By the third month, he had integrated the glove, the sword, and fast-drawing and dry-firing the dart pistol into a unified system. He now wind-sprinted with weapons drawn, and had added two small logs as low hurdles. Each morning he woke with a smile, and each night after resting in the ‘hot tub’ he went to sleep satisfied. This continued on for another four months, and he added climbing trees by vines and trunks to the effort.
The weather stayed stable, with infrequent showers, and he cut the three hundred sixty-fifth notch in a log. It had been a year by his calculations. However, the weather had not notably changed. Did that mean this was a planet with almost no axial tilt? Was it even a planet? There was a sun and stars. How could he tell whether a year had passed? Maybe the local year was twice or thrice as long as an Earthly one?
Oh, constellations. He grunted. During the last ‘year’, he had enjoyed the look of the stars, but had not studied them. Noting repeating patterns which would indicate the passing of an annual cycle had not occurred to him. Well, he would fix that, beginning with this night.
He went out to do the windsprints backwards, and fell twice. Evidently harder than one thought, he noted ruefully. He worried that the same thing might apply to some of the other things he had taught himself. Maybe he was not that good with a sword, and maybe he was just learning bad habits?
As to the old stories that have long been here:
