1. Landfall

For a long time, this island was rather quiet, but that would soon change...

This story begins on the shores of a quaint volcanic island poking out of the sea. A long ways away laid a far larger island locked in a conflict with the six moons in orbit above the world, and the span of ocean between the two had felt much famine and suffering. This, however, was a peaceful little island, no more than a few kilometers across, the sort of place you could clear in a bit over an hour. It hadn’t seen war or turmoil yet, and in fact it hadn’t seen much of anything aside from crackling crusts of sulfur and other fumarolic minerals, or the scuttling of tiny bugs in the spiny grass. It was a pleasant summer day like any other, and the quietude of the little island would be forever broken by a castaway, washed onto its black sandy shores.

This fellow was an average patroller, around six hundred years in age, which is certainly a lot, but not for him, because he was made entirely of gemstone and was effectively immortal, as with the rest of his kind. He was from the warring island, also a feature of the rest of his kind, wore the same clothes as all of his peers, had the same build, and was generally completely unremarkable. Today, though, he found himself completely divorced from all that which he came from, face down in the surf.

Waking up from what could’ve been anything from days to decades of unconsciousness, he rolled onto his back, and then back over, pushing up onto his knees. Instead of being met with what he might have expected, which was a scolding by the higher-ups (for the sea was off limits), he was met with an enormous mound of rock towering over him. A volcano, it probably was, though he’d only heard of such things in passing during his schooling. It became clear to him that something was very wrong.

“Where the hell am I?” He surely wondered, and looked around.

Rising to his feet, he figured he’d take a walk around to investigate. As he tried to stand, his leg lurched further into the ground than he was expecting, and he soon discovered that in place of one of his feet was a sharp spike where it’d been broken off.

“And where the hell did my foot go?” He probably thought, too.

He then noticed, as he looked down at himself, that not only was he missing a foot but he was also missing the layer of white powder that he (and the rest of all gems for that matter) would apply all over his body, partially for protection against sunbleaching and erosion, but mostly for aesthetic purposes and so that everyone would look more or less the same. It had been washed off by the sea, so all he could see was the glassy blue and pink material he was actually made of. He looked at his arms and legs closely. He couldn’t really remember the last time he wasn’t wearing any, so it was strange to see his limbs in all their shiny glory. They were covered in tiny scratches and subsurface fractures, and whether or not they were recent or if they’d always been there but just covered in a white topcoat was beyond his scope of knowledge. He also noticed the state of his clothes, which were not just soaking wet but also mostly in tatters. Overall, things were looking grim for him. He’d never hear the end of it if his peers found him like this. Though, it seemed like no one was around at all. He took a moment to think.

Well, if no one was around and that great big mound is there, then he’d probably be on another island. But as far as he knew, his island was the only one. After six sets of meteor strikes flattened the land into the sea, all that remained was just one beach. This proved otherwise, as it was so clearly not the beach he was familiar with. And if his foot was missing, his powder was gone and his clothes were wrecked, it must’ve been a rough trip getting here. But how did he get here? He struggled to remember.

The last thing he did remember was walking on the beach (not this beach, but the beach he came from) with his patrol partner. And then… no, that’s it. That’s all he could get. Maybe it would come to him later. For now, he decided to wander a bit. He noticed, far off the beach and into a grassy field, was a round beige object. He figured he’d investigate.

It was certainly tricky, trying to walk around while missing a foot, or perhaps to limp around, since that was closer to what his gait looked like now. Every now and again he’d stumble, having overestimated the length of his footless leg, but eventually he got used to shifting his weight to walk as normally as he could. The grass here was noticeably shorter and more stiff than the soft flowing grass he’d grown up around, and the little grey bugs that scuttled around were unlike anything he’d seen before. It was a totally new place with totally new life.

The beige object would eventually reveal itself, through proximity, as an enormous snail’s shell, at least twice as large as he himself was. Large enough to crawl inside and hang out in, large enough to make a home. Well, if this was a volcano, and volcanoes sometimes erupt and spew rock everywhere, that meant this place must be geologically active. And maybe, just maybe, other gemstones could be born. Perhaps this was someone’s home, this great big shell. He took a peek inside the aperture, and was rather disappointed to find nothing but sand and dead grass inside. Oh well.

So, he took a wander around the island, figuring he’d get to know it some more. The rest of that day was spent laying in the spiny grass, kicking dark porous pebbles along the beach, and calling out to see if anyone was there. Eventually, the sun began to set, and he was quite rather bored, so he returned to the empty shell and curled up in the dry grass. As he tried to sleep, a thought came to mind. He’d been so distracted by the whole “being stuck on a new island” thing that he neglected to realize that this entire day didn’t see a single attack by the moon people. Without a weapon or a partner, he surely would’ve been a goner by now, completely defenseless against being kidnapped and cut up into jewelry. Perhaps he was just lucky, and maybe they’d come tomorrow after realizing just how easy it would be to take him away, or maybe, just maybe, they didn’t know that he was there. And how nice would that be? Maybe this was a gift.

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