The first island report came while Adam was trying to sell two cooked fish.
A buyer had offered three Wood but had not confirmed when a message appeared above the trade window.
[Marnie_S] Trees north-east.
I can see a beach.
Adam left the offer open and checked Regional Chat.
Two other people had reported the same thing.
One saw palms, the other a strip of sand beneath a darker patch of green.
Their positions were several kilometres apart.
Either the island was large enough for all three to see or they were looking at different places.
The fish buyer withdrew his offer while Adam was reading.
His Map showed the usual dot, compass and current arrow.
There was no island on it.
He asked Marnie for a bearing she could give without leaving her raft.
Her answer put the sighting north-east of Adam, close to the direction of the current.
Harlan had already seen the messages.
He pulled his raft against Adam’s and pointed over the water.
Nothing stood out yet except a low bank of cloud.
“How far?” Adam asked.
“Too far for me to say.
Marnie’s north of us.
If she’s got trees in sight, we’ll see them by evening.”
Chloe came across with her bottle of radishes held against her chest.
The three plants were less yellow today, though the stems were still thin.
She had brought them because she would not leave them alone on her raft while everyone was looking away from it.
“Is it the island Pilgrim saw?” she asked.
“No way to tell,” Adam said.
Pilgrim’s report had come from another region more than two weeks ago.
“This one is close enough for us to reach.”
“It has soil,” Chloe said.
“Maybe.”
“It has trees.”
“Those we can check.”
Harlan looked at Adam’s planter.
Four small radish leaves stood above the kelp.
They would need more than the poor mix beneath them.
The two sacks of soil Adam wanted did not exist yet, and neither did anything to carry them in.
Regional Chat changed from sightings to plans.
People asked where to land and whether anyone could carry a raft up a beach.
A few offered positions to trade for help rowing.
Then a new handle appeared.
[Frey] My group is headed in.
Eight rafts.
Everyone’s welcome.
We’ll coordinate the landing and share it out fair.
[Reeve] Who put you in charge?
[Frey] Nobody.
Someone has to keep thirty rafts from piling up on one beach.
We have ropes and people who can help.
Adam read the exchange to Chloe.
She had seen Marnie’s tarp disappear into Frey’s group yesterday.
Harlan did not answer Frey again; he began checking the ropes that joined their three rafts at night.
“We go,” Harlan said.
“We don’t take orders.
We take soil.”
Adam asked him to save his knee until they could see where the beach was.
Harlan moved an oar across the gap and tapped the edge of Adam’s raft.
“I can row.
I can’t make you three more hours of daylight.”
Adam took the tarp ledger out and wrote soil at the top.
He could gather wood at sea, but he had no soil for another planter.
He had nothing to carry it in.
He posted an offer for three more Cloth Scraps at one unit of water.
The first reply wanted two units.
Adam declined.
Another survivor, farther west, had been saving strips from a ruined tarp for rope and wanted drinking water before the island reached her.
She placed three Cloth Scraps in the Barter window.
Adam placed one full bottle.
They confirmed together, then traded the empty bottle back with a small bundle of fibres from Chloe.
The woman thanked them and said she was drifting toward the same beach.
Adam did not promise to find her there.
Six Cloth Scraps lay on the raft.
He and Chloe cut four of them into two bags, tying the edges with short lengths of fibre.
The cloth was thin, but it held five kilos of wet kelp in a test lift.
Adam emptied both bags and left them to dry by the shade.
Two scraps remained.
If the bags tore, the storage crate could carry loose soil once they emptied it of fish and seeds.
Adam moved eight Wood to Harlan’s raft to clear space around the purifiers and planter.
Chloe wanted fruit.
Harlan wanted fresh water so he could stop drinking what he had saved from the squall.
Adam wrote fruit and spring below soil, then wood.
He left space for anything they could not identify from the sea.
“You wrote them in order,” Chloe said.
“We’ll have less time than we want.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do the people who’ll arrive after us.”
She took the charcoal and added her own line: seeds from the fruit.
Adam left it there.
By midafternoon a dark smudge appeared beneath the cloud Harlan had pointed to.
It held its shape while the cloud moved.
Half an hour later Adam could distinguish the green tops of trees.
The lower part was still hidden by the curve of the water.
Other rafts came into sight as they drifted.
Two were north of Adam’s group, both moving toward the same point.
A longer shape to the west had several people standing on it.
Harlan counted eight separate rafts joined in a loose line.
Frey’s group had oars and a broad net rolled high between them.
They were farther from the island, but their rowers kept the line angled across the current.
Frey sent another message, offering to mark a landing place for people without oars.
Adam did not answer.
He asked Harlan whether they could reach the southern end of the beach first.
Harlan said they could if they tied together now.
Adam checked the corner that had opened in the storm.
The repair rope still held.
He put Chloe’s bottle of seedlings beside the storage crate and covered it loosely so it would not tip while they moved.
Harlan brought his raft to the left of Adam’s and Chloe’s to the right.
They used their existing night ropes, with a second tie from Harlan’s spare supply where his raft took most of the pull.
The first strokes barely changed their line.
The current was running northeast already.
Harlan was trying to keep them south of Frey rather than force the rafts directly at the island.
Chloe worked her own paddle for a few minutes until Harlan asked her to stop pushing the right side ahead of the left.
She moved to the middle and held the two empty sacks out of the spray.
Adam ran the purifiers between Harlan’s rests.
Their jerrycan was nearly full.
He gave Chloe her two units and offered Harlan another.
This time Harlan took one, drank it and returned the bottle.
His hands had begun to shake after rowing three joined rafts under the afternoon sun.
Adam told him to wait until the current slowed before taking another turn with the oars.
At the end of the day the sand was visible.
The beach curved around a small line of darker rocks, with trees behind it.
A few rafts had already reached the northern edge and were holding themselves off the shore.
Adam could not see a spring or soil from here.
He could see people getting ready to step onto land and one of Frey’s rowers steering the larger group toward them.
“We should take the crate ashore,” Chloe said.
“Fill that as well as the bags.”
“We’d have to carry it back full,” Adam said.
“The bags hold ten kilos together.
That’s enough to start.”
“Enough for two planters.
You keep saying we need soil.”
“We do.
I’ll empty the crate if we find more than we can carry.”
Harlan told them he would stay with the rafts at first.
His knee had stiffened while he rowed.
He pointed out a gap between two rocks where he could bring them in at dawn.
Adam and Chloe would take the sacks inland while he kept the rafts off the shore.
Chloe put the seeds from her bottle tin in a pocket rather than leave them aboard.
Adam asked her to keep the bottle plants with Harlan.
She made him promise not to move them into direct sun while she was gone.
Harlan gave an offended look, then set the bottle in his own shade where she could see it.
They ate while Harlan rested the oars across his knees.
Their rafts drifted south of Frey’s group, close enough that Adam could hear water breaking on the sand.
They waited for daylight before landing.