To Scale

"What!?"

"I made," Kiko repeated slowly, "a ship in a bottle."

"Kiko, you asshole! That was our best water container. We're trying to survive here. Is any of this sinking in?"

Kiko kept working. "If you keep talking that way, I won't let you come with me."

"Go to hell, Kiko." I stomped into the foliage. He didn't look up.

The next morning he was gone, and so was the bottle. There were only marks in the sand: a cylindrical depression drawing a line out to sea, and Kiko's footprints leading up to it, getting smaller and smaller and smaller...