RVA: The Red Vixen at Sea, Beached

All Melanie could do was stare dumbly at the space on the deck where Rolas had been. The sea roared past the boat’s fantail, dark and angry. It had swallowed his body as completely as a grass chaser consuming a tree leaper. Unconscious, with no life vest, he had surely sunk instantly, rain soaked fur dragging him down.

Another wave pummeled her back, shaking Melanie out of her shock. Sliding over the slick, wave soaked deck, the safety harness jamming itself repeatedly into her abdomen with each strike of a wave, she attached and released the lines one after the other, making her way to the navigation station. She hooked herself in front of it with both lines, as the waves continued to pound the little sailboat repeatedly, crashing over the plexiglass windscreen.

The waterproof flatscreen mounted over the wheel was a jumble of information, all in rendered in precise nautical terminology that only had a passing resemblance to the spaceborn terms she was more familiar with. Fortunately some of it was familiar. She tried the comm first. It breeped a loud error message to her, letting her know the antenna mounted to the top of the mast had ripped free in the storm. No help there. The navigation system’s rectenna seemed to be working however, giving her an idea of where she was when she consulted the electronic map. Their days of travel had put the Windskimmer a good five hundred kilometers off the western coast, according to the map display. The only nearby land appeared to be two small islands, relatively close by.

She tapped the autosailer’s nav function and after a couple of false starts managed to direct it to the larger of the two islands, some twenty kilometers away. If she could get the boat to a safe harbor at the island, or at least beach it, she’d be infinitely safer than being at the mercy of the driving storm.

The deck shuddered as the sails readjusted themselves, and the boat’s small propellers spun up to supplement the driving wind. Melanie then retreated to the Windskimmer’s cabin, stripping out of her soaking clothes and then curling up into a miserable ball on the bunk, a blanket wrapped around herself. The boat seemed to slam itself through the waves, driving towards the island, shaking everything in the cabin. Nothing fell to the floor however, aside from the first aid kit, which had slid of the table where she’d left it. Rolas had been careful to put everything away in its proper place in the latched cabinets when he’d finished using it.

Rolas was… had been.... always careful.

Melanie curled up a little tighter under the blanket and began to weep.

* * *

Exhaustion must have overcome her grief and fear, for eventually Melanie fell asleep, rocking in the bunk like a cub in the Mother Goddess’ arms. Which meant when the Windskimmer slammed itself onto the beach of the island shed been aiming for, she was thrown out of bed and onto the cabin’s wet deck. Sputtering and cursing, Melanie got unsteadily to her feet, hauling herself topside.

The sailboat had beached itself on a wide, sandy shore, a nasty grinding sound coming aft as the propellers dug themselves into the white sand. Melanie slapped the shutdown button the console and the sound stopped. Above her head, the sail snapped in the wind. It wasn’t as terrible as before, perhaps limited to five kilometers an hour, and the rain had abated to a steady drizzle. In front of the bow some ten meters up the beach stood a thick forest of tropical fan trees.

Going by the computer map, the island was perhaps three kilometers long and two wide, rising to an elevation of fifty meters at its highest point. A notation in the system didn’t even give it a name, just a numeric navigation designation and a note that it was part of the general oceanic nature reservation, and therefore uninhabited except for licensed eco tourists and scientists.

Melanie shook herself, flinging wet, salty droplets from her fur. Then she headed up to the bow, releasing the anchor winch and hauling both anchor and chain up the beach, until she could wrap the chain around the thickest tree she could find and jamming the anchor into the sandy ground, securing the boat firmly. By the time she had finished and made her way back to the Windskimmer, the storm had ended, the wind and rain dying down completely.

She hauled herself back up onto the boat, her gait ironically unsteady and swaying now that the deck was still. Plopping herself down on the bench, Melanie considered her options.

A sailboat carrying a viscount and his wife disappears in a storm, she thought. The coastal patrol will be searching. But how soon? They had only been three days into their week long trip, with no specific destination filed. She hadn’t seen Rolas checking in with anyone on the com the entire time they’d been out. Would the search be delayed until the week was up? Longer even? She mentally added another two days to allow for worry to build up in the minds of Rolas’ parents. Then she added another week to allow for Rolas’ youthful habit of remaining at sea for a month or more at a time. Then she started thinking about Rolas’ body sinking beneath raging waves and began sobbing again.

When she’d regained control once more, Melanie forced herself to get up and take inventory of the galley. The power was still on, so the freezer was still good. The battery embedded in the hull, assuming it hadn’t been damaged when the boat had beached, would be good for a month even with the props running flat out. Between the freezer and the pantry’s contents, she could eat heartily for about a fortnight, longer if she rationed things. Water came from the boat’s distillation plant. Therefore it would be essentially unlimited if she could find a hose and run it out into the surf, having no wish to consume anymore of her own reconstituted pee than absolutely necessary.

She had no doubts she’d be found before food became a problem. An orbital satellite survey would spot Rolas’ sailboat easily. High speed drones would be dispatched to confirm the presence of survivors, and then pick up by the coastal patrol would come shortly afterward.

Now if she could just find a reason why anyone would bother, after she had killed her husband.

Melanie’s stomach growled, and she became aware of a deep hunger inside her. She rubbed her belly gently, feeling the bruises the hastily secured safety harness has left under her fur. As tempting as it was to roll over and join Rolas in the Holy Mother’s peaceful green fields, she had to survive. If not for her sake then the sake of others. So she pushed herself to her feet, pulled out a sandwich from a waterproof plastic pouch, and ate it without enthusiasm. She chased it down with a can of tea, then clumped back onto the top deck, sliding downward until her back rested against the cabin’s rear bulkhead, watching the sun drop into the sea, painting the waters red.

Well, mostly red. There was a small speck of yellow bobbing in surf, approaching the island. Some bit of debris from the storm, following the Windskimmer in the current. Maybe even from the boat itself.

Melanie’s deep fatigue suddenly vanished as the bobbing yellow speck came closer, resolving itself into the body of a foxen, his wet, dark brown pelt plastered to his body, face looking emptily upward into the sky. She let out a hoarse scream as she realized what she was looking at. She scrambled to get up, footpads sliding out from underneath her, dropping her to her knees with a crack that rammed her hips painfully into their sockets. She got up again, sliding on her knees across the deck to grab the aft railing and fling herself over it and falling into the urf licking at the rear of the pontoons.

She swam into the surf, feeling the water soaking her fur once again, wishing she’d remembered to grab her discarded life vest before going into the surprisingly chilly water. Kicking her feet and windmilling her arms like a madvixen, she swam deeper into the water, feeling the clinging  fatigue start to leach her strength once again as the adrenaline’s brief rush began to fade. A wave crashed over her head, and Melanie emerged from it sputtering, ear flicking water away rapidly.

She looked around, searching for the bright yellow jacket. It was off to her left, not five meters away, still bobbing in the waves. She kicked towards it, tried to call out Rolas’ name, getting a mouth full of salty water for her troubles. Another wave crashed over her head, and for a terrifying moment she was completely submerged, losing all sense of direction as she was tossed about, until she pulled her arms and legs together and bobbed back up to the surface like a child’s inflatable ball in a pool. Then her head was about water once again and the life vest was less than a meter away.

Melanie flung out her arm, catching the straps of the life vest in her fingers. The vest’s intelligent survival system was designed to wrap itself around a victim, even if they were unconscious. Some fortuitous random wave must have sent it against Rolas’ unconscious body when he’d been tossed from the deck in the storm, attaching itself like a friendly leech and keeping his head and snout above the raging sea.

She wrapped her other arm around the vest and Rolas’ body, kicking back towards the shore, backstroking to keep both their heads above the water, shouting his name whenever she could spare the breath. Rolas, still unconscious, didn’t respond. Then sand and shells were scraping her back, and they both driven onto the shore. With the last of her strength Melanie pulled Rolas by his vest up the shore, a good four meters from the smooth sand of the tide line. Then she feel her knees beside him, shivering, weeping, salt sore throat croaking Rolas’ name again before pressing her fingers to his throat, feeling for his pulse.

It was there, it was there. Weak and slow but it was there. Shuddering with relief, Melanie called out thanks to the Holy Mother, tears blinding her once again. She hugged Rolas tightly to her, the wet water still soaking his fur and hers.

I’ve got to get him warm, she realized. As cold as he was, Rolas should be shivering violently, The Holy Mother knew she was. If he was going hypothermic from his time in the sea she had to take care of that first. The life vests had an internal warming system that would stave that off, but the chemical reaction that would have been activated by the jacket being doused in the water must have run out after hours in the ocean.

Melanie looked despairingly at the boat from twenty meters up the shore from where she and Rolas had finally landed. In the climate controlled cabin would be the best place for him, but the idea of dragging him that far and hefting his considerable weight over the lip of the deck was laughable in her fatigued state. So instead she jogged back to the sailboat, grabbing the first aid kit and as many blankets as she could hold. Then she ran back, laying out one blanket, rolling his body onto it. Then she popped open the first aid kit, pressing a syringe of anti-shock meds to his neck, taping a heat pack from the kit to his abdomen, and then curling tightly against him as Melanie pulled the remaining blankets over them both.

In perhaps five minutes Rolas began shivering, teeth chattering so hard sh feared he might break a fang. Then his body body settled down again, his breathing deepening, his pulse growing stronger by the readouts from the first aid kit, taking data from the sensors she’d taped to his skin at the kit's built in data tablet. Melanie eased her grip on him, her paw stroking his head gently. Her fingers touched the back of his head, which felt disturbingly soft as she traced the outline of a large goose egg. Rolas moaned, eyes fluttering, and Melanie rose to her knees, staring into his bloodshot amber eyes as he finally looked up at her.

“Rolas…. Rolas… are you alright?” she asked, voice high and desperate. Please let him be alright. Please Holy Mother let him be alright.

The corners of his salt cracked lips turned up into a brief smile. “A horrible headache,” he rasped, “but I’ll recover, I think.” The smile faded, replaced by a look of puzzlement “What happened exactly?”

“I was trying to get a life vest to you when a wave came up and you lost your grip on the mast,” Melanie said. “You got tossed across the deck and must have taken a great whack to the back of your head, because your were unconscious when the next wave came up and tossed you over the side.” She shuddered, chest heaving as she started to sob in relief. “Oh, Rolas. I thought I’d lost you. I thought I had lost you....” She buried her face into his damp chest fur, sobbing as now his paw rose up to stroke her head.

“There now. There now,’ he murmured gently. “No need to cry, milady.”

“‘Milady?’” she half-laughed, half-sobbed into his chest. “Don’t go formal on me now of all times, Rolas.” She raised her head back up to look into his eyes, her brief moment of amusement disappearing as Melanie saw the expression of apology in his face. “Rolas?”

“I’m sorry,” he said politely, “but I’m not quite sure what else to call you right now.”

“What?” Melanie said flatly, her stomach lurching, as if they were still in the terrible sea.

Rolas looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I really don’t know who you are.”