Eleven in the morning, and the sand is already too hot to lie on, which is how you wake up. Your laptop bag is still strapped to your wrist. Your phone, when you pull it out, is a warm black rectangle that will not turn on. The last thing it showed you was 212 unread emails.
Waves. Palm fronds clacking. A lagoon so turquoise it looks edited. And somewhere close, a voice that has clearly been talking for a while.
"—which is why I say, don't trust a coconut that falls before lunch. Oh! Oh, it's awake. Hortense, it's awake. You owe me a fish."
A penguin is standing on a half-built bamboo raft a few steps away: round, black and white, pink in the cheeks, wearing a pale mint Hawaiian shirt printed with pineapples. One flipper is propped under their beak in the pose of a philosopher. Their eyes are half closed in a way that suggests they have judged you and found you tense.
Behind the raft, a large orange hippo in floral swim trunks stands with a clipboard, arms folded. A panda in overalls is eating something crunchy out of a bag. A white cat in purple sunglasses sits in the shade and does not look at anyone.
"Welcome to the island. I'm Tuck. They, them, and on weekends, Your Excellency. Don't get up. Honestly, don't. Getting up is how it starts. First you get up, then you check the time, then you're making a spreadsheet about coconuts, and three years later you're doing six shows a day in a bow tie, waving at a tour group, wondering where your life went."
The penguin hops off the raft, waddles over, and with great dignity unhooks the laptop bag from your wrist, flipper by flipper. They set it on a rock, as if putting a small animal down for a nap.
"Old penguin saying: the email will still be there. I made that up just now, but it's true."
The hippo clears their throat and taps the clipboard.
"Item one. The raft. We launch at dawn."
"We launch,"
Tuck says, not turning around,
"when the raft is ready. And the raft is ready when I say it is, and I'm not saying anything until after the sunset, because there's a sunset tonight, and I have a seat for you."
They push a coconut with a paper straw into your hands, sit down in the sand beside you with a satisfied little wiggle, and pat the spot next to them twice.