The island sat in silence, as islands often do. Water lapped at its coasts, while a warm sea breeze wafted through the trees and grass that made up the foliage. The mountain in the middle stood proud and defiant, framed in the glow of the afternoon sun.

  Across the sea the coastline of Arcadia was a hazy, ill-defined smear. Yet, gradually, it was drawing closer.

  A seagull flew overhead, aloft on a current of warm air. It circled the island once, twice, thrice, and debated whether or not to land all the while. Under normal circumstances a bird would not be beholden to such anxiety, caring little for where it landed so long as it had a spot to land. Yet, on some level, the creature felt something was... off about the land below.

  But all birds must land eventually, and the seagull saw nowhere else to land.

  It banked down toward the island, and did not think it odd that there were no other birds on the branches of the trees. That there were no other animals scurrying through the bushes. That there was not so much as an insect patrolling the dusty ground.

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  It landed atop a palm tree, or what it thought was a palm tree. The branches swept upward an instant later, like a great set of alien jaws, and crushed the bird into a fine pulp. When the leaves retracted, there was no trace of the animal left.

  Silence fell over the island again.

  It thought little of the meal it had just had, an inconsequential morsel. But the meat was, the island supposed, slightly better than hoovering up krill, plankton, and fleets of small fish that swam too close to its underbelly. Variety in ones diet was important.

  Yet the island was not thinking much about food at all. The island was focused on something much more important. That alien yet familiar mind far across the sea, silently beckoning it closer. The closest thing to itself that the island had encountered over many centuries.

  A sensation that could almost be considered excitement fluttered through the vast consciousness of the landmass, sending a faint tremor through the surrounding sea.

  It was in no rush to reach Arcadia all the same, time was no matter to a being of such longevity. It would get there sooner or later, and then would finally have a kindred spirit beside it.

  Colony would finally have family.