Jason stopped at the edge of the trees and listened.
The wind moved through the upper branches with a dry, restless whisper. Somewhere deeper in the forest, something clicked once, then went quiet. After the open violence of the sea, the shade in front of him felt almost unreal. Too still. Too full. Too alive.
He shifted his weight and immediately regretted it. Pain flared through his leg, then up behind his swollen eye in a bright, ugly pulse.
"You're fine," he muttered.
He was not fine, but the lie had become useful.
He tightened his grip on the knife and took a cautious step forward.
The ground changed at once. No more bare stone. Here the earth was soft with old leaves and damp soil, springing slightly under his boots. Branches brushed his shoulders as he pushed through the first screen of undergrowth. The air felt heavier too, warm and green and wet enough that he could taste it.
Jason stopped after a few paces and looked back.
The strip of sky behind him already seemed farther away than it should have. Beyond the ledge lay the grotto, the cliff, the sea that had nearly killed him twice over. Ahead was shadow and trunks and the promise of water, food, shelter, or some new disaster he hadn't met yet.
"Cool," he said softly. "Love a mystery forest."
His stomach cramped hard enough to bend him slightly.
That settled it.
He moved on.
The trees rose high above him, their trunks dark and straight, bark ridged in deep vertical seams. Sunlight slipped through the canopy in broken shafts, striping the forest floor in pale gold. Moss coated fallen logs. Thick roots twisted over the ground like buried cables. Every now and then he caught sight of movement: a lizard vanishing into brush, something small and winged flashing between leaves.
Food. Maybe.
The thought sharpened him.
"There's got to be something in here," he said, half to himself. "Fruit. Nuts. Bugs. I'm not picky anymore."
That last part was true enough to be depressing.
A length of dead wood caught his eye near the base of a tree. Jason limped over, nudged it with his boot, then picked it up. Straight enough. Solid. About as long as his arm and thick enough not to snap on first use.
"Good enough."
He braced it against his knee and used the knife to shave one end down. The blade was duller than he liked and his hands were still unsteady from the climb, but he worked patiently, turning the wood, peeling away strips until the tip narrowed to a rough point.
A spear, if one was being generous.
A sharpened stick, if one wasn't.
Jason tested the point against his thumb and gave a short nod.
"Look at that. One week from now I'll be weaving baskets and speaking fluent wilderness."
The joke landed flat, but it helped.
He kept the stick in one hand and the knife in the other as he moved deeper between the trees.
The forest changed as he went. Not all at once, but enough that after a while he realized he had stopped comparing it to anything familiar. The plants were wrong in small ways. Leaves with vein patterns he'd never seen before. Vines that seemed to shimmer faintly when light touched them. Ferns too large, too glossy, unfolding in spirals that looked almost deliberate.
Then something buzzed past his face.
Jason jerked back on instinct.
The insect circled once at head height before vanishing into the brush. Its wings caught the light in a slick of impossible color, blue sliding into green, then into something almost metallic. Its abdomen pulsed with a dim inner glow.
He stared after it.
"Nope," he said quietly. "That's not normal."
A second one drifted between two trunks nearby. Then a third, smaller and stranger, with four delicate wings beating so fast they blurred into a halo.
Jason kept walking, slower now.
He could still convince himself the trees were trees and the dirt was dirt, but the insects made the whole place feel tilted. Not a fantasy forest. Not a dream. Something worse, somehow. Something real that obeyed rules he didn't know.
"Please don't be the venom kind," he muttered as one hovered briefly near his shoulder, then darted off.
The buzzing thickened deeper in. Not loud, not aggressive, just constant enough to sit at the edge of his hearing like a warning he couldn't translate.
He pushed through a stand of broad-leafed shrubs and stepped into a clearing.
Then he stopped.
The trees at its center were enormous.
Not tall in the ordinary sense. Massive. Their trunks were so wide he could have stretched both arms out and still not reached halfway around one. They rose in straight columns before branching high above into a canopy dense enough to blot out chunks of sky.
Jason tipped his head back slowly.
"Okay," he breathed. "That's ridiculous."
High overhead, tucked among the upper branches, hung clusters of round green fruit.
For a moment he only stared at them.
Then his mouth filled with saliva so suddenly it hurt.
"There you are."
He crossed the clearing toward the nearest trunk, every step more purposeful than the last. Up close, the bark looked rough enough to grip in places, broken by natural ridges and shallow knots. Not easy, but not impossible.
He put a hand against it and looked up again.
The fruit hung maddeningly high.
Jason exhaled through his nose.
"Right," he said. "So this is a terrible idea."
His stomach cramped again, and that was the end of the debate.
He wedged the knife back into his belt, hooked the crude spear through a loop of torn fabric at his side, and started climbing.
The first few feet went better than expected. The trunk was broad but not smooth, and the bark gave him enough purchase to work his hands and boots upward in slow, careful increments.
Then his leg shook.
His right foot slipped. His shoulder slammed into the trunk. He clung there for a second, breathing hard, before dropping back to the ground with an ugly, jarring thud that sent pain through both knees.
Jason stood still, head bowed.
"Fantastic," he said.
He spat dirt off his lip and tried again.
The second attempt got him higher. The third nearly matched it. On the fourth, his injured leg gave out halfway through a reach and he slid down hard enough to scrape skin off both palms.
He hit the ground with a curse and staggered backward, sucking air through his teeth.
For a few seconds he just stood there, one hand braced against the trunk, fighting the hot rush of anger and helplessness that threatened to swamp everything else.
"I need this," he said.
Not dramatic. Just true.
He pressed his forehead briefly to the bark, shut his good eye, and forced himself to breathe until the shaking eased.
One more try.
This time he climbed like he was solving a problem instead of attacking it.
Less speed. More care. He picked the route before he moved, searched for each next hold before committing his weight. He used the deep seams in the bark, the slight bulges where the trunk narrowed, the first broad branch jutting low enough to reach if he stretched and didn't think too hard about the consequences.
His muscles burned almost immediately.
By the time he reached the first branch, his arms were trembling so badly he had to stop and drape himself over it for a moment, cheek pressed against rough bark, breath rasping.
"Most people," he muttered, "just buy groceries."
He kept going.
Above him, the fruit looked close enough to touch. Then not. Then close again. Each meter cost him. His eye throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Sweat ran down his neck and into the collar of his shirt. Twice he nearly missed a foothold. Once a branch shifted under him and sent panic slicing through his chest so fast it made him dizzy.
But he was higher now. Too high to think about the ground.
So he didn't.
He reached the first cluster on stubbornness alone.
The fruit was larger than he'd thought, each one the size of a small melon, smooth-skinned and cool to the touch. Up close, it smelled faintly sweet beneath the green, resinous scent of the leaves.
Jason let out a breath that almost turned into a laugh.
"There you are."
He wrapped one arm around the branch and used the knife to saw through the stem of the nearest fruit. It took longer than it should have. His hand kept slipping. When the stem finally gave, the fruit dropped straight through the leaves and hit the forest floor with a heavy thump.
Jason winced.
"Still counts."
The second time he was smarter. He pinned the fruit awkwardly against his chest while he cut. By the time he'd lowered it as far as he could and let it drop, his arms were burning so badly he could barely feel his fingers.
Two was enough. More than enough.
Getting down was worse.
Everything he had ignored on the way up came due on the descent. His scraped palms screamed every time he gripped the bark. His thigh threatened to cramp. His ribs ached every time he twisted to find the next foothold. By the time his boots finally touched the ground, he was breathing in short, ragged bursts and shaking hard enough to make the leaves tremble around him.
He bent over with both hands on his knees and laughed once.
"That," he said to the nearest tree, "was deeply stupid."
The tree withheld comment.
Jason gathered the fruit and half-carried, half-rolled them back toward the edge of the clearing, then further still until the forest thinned and the stone ledge near the bush came back into view. He lowered himself onto the rock with a groan and pulled one of the fruits into his lap.
Up close, it looked no safer than before.
Smooth green skin. No obvious signs of rot. No birds pecking at it that he could use as a clue. For all he knew it was wildly poisonous and about to finish what the storm had started.
His throat felt raw. His stomach felt hollow enough to fold in on itself.
Jason turned the fruit over in his hands.
"If this kills me," he said, "I'd like it noted that I had very limited options."
He cut into the skin.
Clear juice welled up at once. It smelled bright, sweet, and faintly sharp, like citrus crossed with something he couldn't name. Jason hesitated only a second before bringing a small piece to his mouth.
The flesh gave way under his teeth.
Juice flooded his tongue.
For a moment he just froze.
"Oh," he said.
It was good. Not just edible. Good. Sweet, tart, cool enough to make his mouth ache. He took another bite, bigger this time, then another, and after that caution lost the argument completely.
By the time he finished the first fruit, juice had run down his wrist and across his chin. He wiped at it with the back of his hand and laughed weakly.
"Okay," he said. "That's... that's absurdly good."
The second fruit went slower, only because his body finally had enough in it to remember moderation. The juice eased the raw dryness in his throat. The flesh sat warm and heavy in his stomach in the best possible way. Not full, exactly, but no longer empty enough to hurt.
Jason leaned back against the stone and closed his eye.
The rock was cool where the day's heat had already begun to fade. It pressed pleasantly against his scraped shoulders and sore back. For the first time since washing up in the grotto, the edge of panic had dulled.
He was still hurt. Still stranded. Still half-blind in one eye and alone on an island that might not even be Earth.
But he had water in the fruit. Food in his stomach. Trees overhead. A place, however temporary, that wasn't open sea.
His hand drifted up to his right eye and stopped there without touching.
That problem remained.
The swelling hadn't gone down. The skin still felt hot. Every pulse behind it carried the threat of something getting worse.
Jason let his hand fall back to his side.
"One disaster at a time," he murmured.
The leaves above him shifted in the breeze. Somewhere in the forest, one of the strange insects buzzed past with that faint electric shimmer.
He should have been more afraid than he was.
Maybe exhaustion had something to do with it. Maybe the fruit. Maybe the simple fact that after days of surviving one immediate problem after another, his body had seized on this small victory and refused to let go.
Jason breathed in damp earth, green things, and the fading sweetness on his hands.
"Maybe," he said quietly, eyes closing, "maybe I can do this."
It wasn't confidence. Not really.
Just enough hope to make sleep possible.