Taking a deep breath, I let out a long, drawn out sigh as I gazed over the horizon. The late afternoon had become my favorite time of day on this island, when the overwhelming heat and humidity slowly began to fade. The gentle tropical breeze rolling up the side of the mountain danced over my skin, and the last drops of sweat scurried down my face until dropping from my chin to the ground. The sky would soon begin to dim and reveal the full beauty of the colors of dusk in the tropics. For the moment, however, all I could do was look off into the distance and pretend that I wasn't in the particular predicament which I currently found myself.
"This is pretty much what I thought it would be like," I thought to myself, "when I used to dream about living a simple life on a tropical island somewhere..." But that really didn't make my situation any easier to bear. True that I had only been here for a few days, but being stranded with no apparent way out will do that to a guy, especially when your only company happens to be a group of ornery natives who just tossed a couple of other expats into a bamboo cage!
Finishing my usual dinner of roasted crab legs and coconut milk, I laid back to take a nap. There wasn't much else I could do with the remaining daylight, but once the night fell, I knew what my plan was and I absolutely had to be well rested and alert to make it work. If what I had observed last night was a regular occurrence, there would be plenty of work to do if I wanted to have a chance at gaining entrance to such an ominous and dangerous place without becoming a permanent resident myself. Aside from the odd ritual these natives had performed, at least three of them were wandering the perimeter of the temple on what I could only surmise to be a patrol. Did they know somebody else was here? Were they gearing up their defenses for more unexpected visitors? I had my doubts. There happened to be a lot of dangerous wildlife on this island and none of these islanders strayed too far from their temple, so my guess was that they were protecting their sacred grounds from predators.
These thoughts and others bounced around my head as I closed my eyes. I was well out of sight and safe for the moment, and I figured that I'd hear the sound of their drums and wake up once the nightly ritual began. I had everything I needed to try to rescue those two poor saps (and their equipment) and all my preparations were in place. Now it was just a matter of timing. If everything went according to plan, I could fire off the distraction, spring the cages, snatch the gear, and get these two to safety all in a matter of minutes. Then we could have the last laugh as we watched the islanders from a safe distance, scratching their collective heads and trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Afterward, hopefully my new friends would have some means at their disposal to get us all off this godforsaken island.
It seemed like I hadn't been asleep for more than a few minutes when the chilling sound of drums began to pierce the air. Opening my eyes, I saw that it was in fact night, and the time had come to put my plan into action. Slowly I rose to my feet, getting in a satisfying stretch on the way up. As I gathered my things, an odd feeling shot through me. I could almost sense some kind of disturbance on the gentle breeze that continued to flow through the air around me. Slowly turning around, it was then that I heard rustling in the brush and the loud snap of a branch breaking on the ground next to my camp...
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