holding her clothes and torch.
Maria put on the outer most layers of clothing, the heavy jacket and sarong, and hunted by torchlight for as many loose sticks she could find.
She walked in the opposite direction she had walked earlier and soon came to a large pile of dried brush. None of it was strong enough to hold a real fire. Not like her branch had been, but piled together, she might be able to make a bonfire out of it. Maria took the twigs and threw them into her empty fire pit. Once she had enough twigs in the circle she placed her torch on top and the flames roared.
By this point Maria's flesh was covered in dry sand, it itched like hell, but her skin was dryer then it had been and she felt closer to comfort. Maria laid her jacket and sarong behind the fire and sat facing the doorway. She damped a rag with her bottle of water and cleaned herself as best she could, the fire kept her mostly dry and when she felt as comfortable as she thought possible, she pulled on her underwear and shirt and climbed into her sleeping bag.
Maria decided to open the corked glass bottle which she'd left, nearly forgotten, beside the fire. Cold, skeletal hands traced the outline of the brown glass until they came to the opening, plugged with a cork. It took some effort but Maria got the cork out, open sesame, and dumped the contents of the bottle in front of her.
The first thing she saw was the letter. The hand writing was strong and well-practiced, it was beautiful and sedated. The letter read:
Whoever finds this, please know there are other people alive. My name is Beatrice Villalobos, I live on a small island off the shore of California. Everybody else on the island is dead. A rare disease came to our island and drove the men insane. I owned a book store and lived with my wife, Rosario, who had accepted me for what I am and loved me because of who I am, and after the men went barbaric, she was raped and slaughtered for becoming pregnant.
I found strength in God to continue my life, hoping to find someone else, hoping to start life again and to continue Gods work of learning from the world and passing that knowledge to the next generation. Please, whoever is out there, write back, include a general location and I will do what I can to find you. I have maps and astronomy charts. I need to build a boat so it may take a while. My wife was far better with her hands than I. I can't stand to be alone any longer.
If, by some act of God, someone reads this, know that I love you. You've lived a beautiful life and I wish to share my life with you. I will scan the ocean as often as I can for your reply. I will write a reply to you the day I get it. Today is Wednesday, the date is October 15th and the year is 2025. I hope someone is out there.
Also inside the bottle was a few pieces of clean white paper, a pen, and a map. Maria looked on the map for her general location and placed an X mark, hoping the author would understand. On the paper Maria wrote out her full name, Maria Garza, and explained that she was also a woman, never married and no children. Maria told Beatrice that she was still a teenager when the fires and terrible weather started and that the disease took both of her parents. She explained that she lived alone as a nomad in Los Angeles ever since, not wanting to leave her home, but not wanting to stay in one place to long, either.
Maria assumed that the disease Beatrice spoke of was the same one she herself had experienced so she described the way she looked to Beatrice would feel safe enough to let Maria know how she had changed, if she had. Maria told Beatrice of the books she used to love to read and how her biggest fear was that language would soon be lost and all the literature would turn into fire kindling. Maria dug through her things, found the book of poetry and ripped out her favorite poem, written by a woman a long time ago, it spoke of isolation and fear of being alone and fear of other people. In Maria's letter, she asked Beatrice how she could still believe in God after all that has happened, and if the island she was on was the large island called Catalina on her map.
Tears fell from the almond shaped, grey colored eyes of Maria as she wrote. She knew there was no way the bottle would find its way back to Catalina, and that the two would never meet.
With the bottle corked; her letter, the map, the poem and the pen inside, Maria decided to make the best of her new home. "At least I have a beautiful view of the shore," she said, in a pathetic attempt at seeing the bright side.
Maria knew that she wasn't alone, not really, there were people on the large planet who would hurt or kill her on sight, but she didn't want to tell that to Beatrice. Maria ached for her company.
As the days passed, Maria would stare out at the ocean less and less. The weather was changing and food was scarce. No one had come by and bothered her and she was feeling comfortable and safe, but too lonely. She swam in the day light when the water wasn't too cold but day light faded quickly as the seasons changed from autumn to winter.
After doing the math one day, Maria decided, the bottle would return in mid-December. It took a little less than three weeks for her to find the bottle floating in the water, according to the date written in the letter Beatrice had written. If it took three weeks to get back to Catalina, and then three weeks back to her beach, that would mean six weeks would pass before the bottle would return. Six weeks from the day she had thrown the bottle back into the ocean would be December the fourteenth.
When it seemed that December was gone and January was young and bringing with her a new year, Maria gave up. She had rather begun to like her home and continued to sleep in the rubble but ventured away from the beach more frequently. She found a host of trees that were strong and solid, it took a heavy rock to break the branches off and collected the branches for firewood and tools. Using the seaweed as a rope she would tie rocks to the ends of the broken branches, sometimes making a hammer, sometimes a shovel, and with one special, sharp, jagged rock, she made a spear.
Making a water filter proved a little bit more difficult but after a few weeks of trying to filter the salt out of the water she was able to produce drinkable, though terrible tasting, water. It wasn't great but she could survive on it. Maria made several house hold things out of nothing but seaweed. She started with a hammock, she had had a hammock as a child and understood the basic form. She also made a tightly woven net and even a necklace. A girl has got to have her jewelry.
Maria was unable to find enough wood to make a boat, or even a raft for that matter, but she was turning her life into a stable and productive one.
When winter began to fade and the sun warmed the sands and the water, Maria began swimming again. It wasn't difficult for Maria to swim at all and she was easily able to catch fish in her seaweed net. She planted trees in dirt about a mile down the road, away from the sea after noticing a lot more plant life had grown there. Maria made sure to plant vegetables alongside the trees. Once the trees had grown they would be useful, she hoped, but the vegetables should be ready much sooner.
One day, in mid-March, Maria dumped her fishing net out and inspected the usual contraband of sea shells, more seaweed, a fish or two. There it was. Her skin took on a deep red tone as she realized that the same bottle she had seen before lay on the floor at her feet.
"It probably never found Beatrice," she said to herself. "It's just my letter come back to me." She had decided to open the bottle to make sure and as she uncorked it her hands turned a pale blue, and then back to grey as her excitement dulled into nervousness.
Inside the bottle were more pages than the first time. No poetry but a drawing of a woman with strong, broad shoulders. Her hair was short and an ugly brown. She was not a remarkably beautiful woman, not in the drawing anyway, but Maria had treasured it. She wondered how accurate the drawing was and decided that there was still hope of meeting her new friend. Her eyes flowed over the contents of the bottle to decide what to look at next. There was only the letter left.
She placed Beatrice's picture on seaweed mattress.
Nerves gripped Maria as she sat on the ground leaning against the wall of her shelter. She unfolded the new letter, the hand writing was excited but still legible, and it read:<
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Maria, you sound beautiful. I am sorry to hear that your life has been as lonely as mine but I think that is true for anybody who has managed to survive this long. Have you met anybody else?
Yes, I do live on Catalina Island. It is a beautiful place but when people began getting sick most of them fled. I was left to take care of my brothers. The disease drove them crazy. They didn't react well to the changes in their bodies and fought for dominance.
When my wife became pregnant they raped and killed her. They fought over which one had taken her as their own and killed each other over suspicion. They hadn't realized that I could impregnate her, now.
My changes were very different from yours. I look now how I used to look, mostly, but well, maybe I should explain to you what I am first.
I was not born a female. I was born as both a boy and a girl. I could neither be a woman nor a man because I would always be the other as well. The disease changed this and I've found that I am now a different kind of hermaphrodite. I am no longer both male and female but can change between either one. I look the same but my body shifts and changes. I never grow breasts and my hips are odd and square. Thank you for sharing your change with me. I was afraid that if I found other