#63 - Wren

Wren...

The word reached his ears with a wavy and unfamiliar timbre. Strange name, he thought. Who's name was it?

A light stinging patted at his cheek. A loud, protesting groan escaped his tired lungs, followed by the intake of the thick, salty air around him. Strangely, it filled him with an odd sense of calm; a brief memory of a woman he had once met upon the whitewashed, sandy beaches of his home. He had always remembered her smile, one of utter uncaring and novel kindness.

“Ey, Wren, ye still alive man?” the voice filled his head once again with added volumes of clarity and sense.

His eyes slowly opened, another pained growl echoing within his throat at the action. The world was uncomfortably blurry and excessively sharp at the same time. He blinked several times slowly, tears washing away the sting of salt water and sand.

Sand?

He attempted to sit up at the thought, but was forced back due to an overpowering wave of nausea and dizziness. He felt a strong hand come in contact with his bare chest and force him back to the ground.

“Ye still are alive, aren't ye?” the voice now spoke with an unnatural clarity.

Something found it's way into his limp hand, his fingers weakly curling around the object.

“Drink it,” the voice commanded softly.

His watery eyes shifted down to the object cradled within his hand. A wooden cup.

He brought it to his cracked lips tentatively, sampling the beverage with a sheepish tongue. He quickly gulped it down at the realization of his extreme thirst.

“Good te see ye still alive, Wren,” the man standing over him now muttered, “it be a wonder that any o' us are.”

“What happened?” he managed to say as his strength began returning to him in minuscule scraps.

The man shrugged. Wren thought he remembered his name to be Cedric.

“We was sailin' the blue yonder, when our ship scraped 'gainst somethin' on the bottom,” he explained, “turned the whole bugger on it's side, it did. I woke up here meself, lookin' fer others that still live.”

Cedric left him then, the wooden mug still in his grasp, his head filled with lazy thought. He had a difficult time recalling the events Cedric had spoke of; perhaps he had hit his head in the crash, he thought.

He sat up a second time, the waves of sickness absent. A shallow sigh blew from his nostrils as his eyes scanned his surroundings slowly. A large peninsula was present to his far left, the ocean mist tinting the distant cliffs a light aqua. Lightly lapping waves washed from the ocean, far enough to lick at the heels of his bare feet above the moist, white ground.

Gulls were heard overhead and to the peninsula beyond. His eyes looked downward at the blue horizon before him. How were they going to get home, he thought. How, and what if they did not?

Reguardless of the hundreds of questions that pounded in his exhausted skull, he slumped back upon the earth and shut his bloodshot eyes. Sleep took him surprisingly quick, a shaky sigh leaving him just as he lost consciousness.