Driftwood

Driftwood

The statuesque women stood in the water a few feet off the shoreline of the tiny island with her gray tapered khaki trousers rolled up to her knees as the waves slapped above her ankles. Her short cropped black tousled hair caught the warm breeze as did her brown cotton buttoned shirt and soiled white silk scarf. It was sunset and there was still no sign of a rescue vessel or plane as her crystal blue eyes strained into the horizon while a tear crept down her face.

She looked back towards her badly injured companion. The light from the signal fire lit his auburn hair and twisted features. His lanky frame leaned against one immense log of driftwood. He reached forward to tighten the haphazard splint of his blood soaked broken leg. His pale face grimaced as he adjusted the rope and bandages while his limbs shivered from loss of blood. He pulled his brown leather aviators jacket closer to his upper body like a blanket. He took a sip of water from his canteen and nibbled on some dried meat and gazed at the sunset and the women simultaneously.

The wrecked plane was still on the shelf reef.
He called out to her. “It’s time for the signal. Use 3105 kHz. The sky is clear tonight.”

A twelve-year-old kid was playing with his father’s ham radio equipment one evening. Between the strange whistles and harmonic sounds of the atmosphere on a clear night came a voice “Earhart.”
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250 Words
Originally Posted at Indies Unlimited and written based on the photo prompt “Driftwood” taken by photographer K.S Brooks.
A fictional account derived from actual events surrounding the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan in 1937.
A link to the “The Earhart Project” and to logs of radio transmissions captured between July 3rd and July 6th, 1937.
https://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/ResearchPapers/Brandenburg...