You set up a rudimentary base for yourself, to start with. It's a stretch to even call it that, though, if you're being honest with yourself. Really, it's just your bed and work station dumped by the water with a chest sat next to them.
You don't really want to put your bed right on the shore and drag sand and dirt up into it every time you lay down, but you're so relieved to dump all your findings in the chest and get the weight of it off your shoulders that you just choose to make it future you's problem. He can deal with sand in his bed.
Instead of building a mini-base raised off of the sand, you turn to the task of making this island a home. You don't want to go through the hassle of building some massive, six story monstrosity, not that you think you'd even use that much room, but maybe something a little bigger than a shack would be good. Maybe a little two-story place, with a small basement. And a balcony! You're building this place yourself, it can have whatever you've always dreamed of.
Exceptā¦ you do have to build it yourself.
You don't really know if you can do that. You don't know how you would go about doing it. Or if you want to. Or if you don't want to because you don't know how to. Or ifā¦.
....
....
....
You've been staring at this island for about an hour and a half now. Maybe two. This is ridiculous.
You're sure you can doā¦ something, at least. Maybe level the island. Deconstructing and moving things in this world - or these worlds, you suppose, now that you're in your second - it's a lot easier than where you used to live. Might still be faster with a shovel, though. So you get to work making one, letting your thoughts roam as you do.
You're bothered by something, in that last train of thought. Used to live? You haven't even been in this world a week! What makes you thinkā¦
You won'tā¦.
Something in you is very sure that you won't be going back. Even though you demonstrably can be pulled out of these worlds, something behind the memories that you can't quite seem to call up is very, very sure that you will not be returning to your home world.
Can you call it your home world when it can't be your home anymore?
It's not like you have anything better to call it.
You uhm.
You should probably get to work. You don't like where this is going.
You start digging.
It's about the time you're making your seventh shovel out of wood and drive a sliver of wood in between your index and middle fingers that you finally, finally admit to yourself that this isn't working. Or, rather, that it's working, but it is so, so not worth it. That you need better tools. Metal, or at least stone. Something other than the rough, flimsy wooden tools you're using now.
With a look around, you see an opening in a hill, maybe a cave of some sort, with exposed grey stone. That should work, right? It looks promising, at least. You fashion yourself what you hope to be your last wooden tool - a pickaxe, as sturdy as you can manage it - and set off.
