Preview: the storm is ending and the villagers are leaving the huts.

Chapter 7. Age 16-18
As the sounds of the storm died down, the villagers began leaving their huts and going outside. Koro had been napping, so everyone who had been in the hut was gone. When he woke up he joined the rest of the tribe on the beach. The sand didn't feel normal to his feet.
"Why is everyone on the beach?"
"You know how the rain usually cleans the beach?"
"Yes"
"Well look down"
Koro looked down and realized that the sand felt different because there was shredded wood on it. Koro ran to the spot where his raft had been tied. All that was left was a few partially demolished logs tied together.

Koro immediately gathered a few villagers and they started rebuilding the raft. Since they had built a raft before this one only took a year and a half to build. He gathered the villagers who had originally signed up to go on the raft with him.

Then the tribal elder came up to him and asked if he'd be willing to take a few things with him so that if he found they south shore, they'd understand more of the west shore culture. He thought each shore spoke the same languages, so he also included some scrolls talking about what the west shore had discovered.

In order to safely hold everything the tribal elder wanted him to take, Koro and the builders need to build storage holders, which took five and a half months to build. The raft started looking more like a boat. It took another week to load everything.

It was the night before his birthday when he was finished. He decided he'd stay, since the only birthday bigger then 18 was his fourteenth, which he didn't have happy memories of (read above). So he decided to stay for his birthday.
To be continued...