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The gentlest of ocean breezes jostles the tall fan palms. All corners of the seaside resort are brimming with life beneath the mid-summer sun. Some innocuous radio hit from a decade ago plays from a souvenir shop’s speakers at a low, buzzy hum. Roller-skaters glide down the boardwalk with selfie sticks and Bluetooth boomboxes turned up louder than anyone around them would appreciate. There’s a table nearby from the outside dining area of a restaurant that’s getting frozen margaritas at this fine hour of ten-thirty in the morning.
Dorothea is at the center of it all. The fabric of her skirt eagerly follows where the wind goes. She keeps one hand held at the brim of her sun hat as the other hand gestures, outstretched towards Claude.
“Are you fucking serious?” She teases him. “All of this was yours for years?”
“I have no idea where you got the idea that I own any of this.” Claude trails behind her, dressed in only Tommy Bahama’s finest of garb. “Contractually, I own that condo over there. Or, uh. I wouldn’t even use the word ‘own’ . It’s only mine for one week in the middle of every Blue Sea Moon.”
“Don’t you have money?”
“Yeah, perhaps I own a dollar or two.” He playfully shrugs.
“Like, money money?”
“Multiple dollars, yes.”
“You know we have several lawyers in our friend circle who could get you out of this? Like, Ferdie? He knows contracts.”
“Dorothea.” A grave chill envelopes Claude’s face. “This condo is going with me to my grave .”
-
Right beside Dedue’s reasonably filled roller carry-on, Ashe digs to the bottom of his backpack.
“Oh gosh, I forgot to bring socks.”
He didn’t bring a suitcase. Dedue did. He didn’t. He tries to justify this by being the kind of pack-up-and-go person who can place the sum of his belongings in either his pockets or a single Jansport bag. He wouldn’t deny himself the necessity and pleasure of having amenities, but there is no way on this earth he would ever allow himself to become a pack-rat.
“What do you need socks for?” Dedue asks. He pulls back the curtains of their hotel room and looks out the window facing the ocean. “We’re at the beach.”
“Just in case it gets really cold at night. Isn’t that how beaches work?” Ashe joins him at the edge of the glass. From this height, the people below look like miniatures moving along a model set.
Dedue’s browline drops. “...It’ll be in the 80’s Fahrenheit all night.”
“Oh, I’m probably thinking about deserts. I think those are the ones that have big temperature drops at night.”
“Did you only bring shoes?”
“Just the pair I came with, yeah.”
“No sandals? You’ll get sand in your shoes and it’ll get all over the car.”
“Are you supposed to wear sandals at the beach?”
Dedue pauses. “...Have you never been to the beach?”
“No, I grew up in a cold, foggy forest.”
“You’ve never seen a beach?”
A sheepish smile spreads across Ashe’s face. “I’ve seen the coast, yeah. Like, I’ve been to a beach. Just the cold, rocky kind with algae and weeds all over the place. Not, like, a beach beach. With surfers and sun, y’know.”
Several beats of silence pass before a response slips from Dedue’s mouth. “...Oh my god.”
-
“Hey, Princess.” Claude greets Edelgard at the entrance of the beach resort the moment she hands her keys to the valet parker. He’s got a drink in his hand: something obnoxiously colorful with a little umbrella resting upon the rim of the cup. He doesn’t know what he ordered. He doesn’t even know if it has alcohol in it. He just knew he needed it.
“Hey, you,” Edelgard walks up and greets Claude back with a brief but cordial hug. He’s probably the only person on Earth who can call her a princess. Any other man who has foolishly attempted to call her such a pet name has had significant damage inflicted upon their psyche and credit score.
“You didn’t bring Hubert with you on this trip? He was invited, y’know.” Claude’s eyes dart away from the car, scanning the horizon. “Or is he just hiding in the shadows, waiting to strike?”
“Oh, god. No, he didn’t come. Are you kidding? I can’t take him out into direct sunlight, lest he shrivel up and combust.” Edelgard peers over her sunglasses. The sharp look in her eyes makes what she just said rather hard to interpret as a joke.
“Fun, fun. If anyone deserves a break from the office, it’s gotta be you.” He takes her roller suitcase and leads her to the resort lobby. “Don’t you dare check your work email this week. I’m banning you from Microsoft Outlook. Let me set up a bot that bounces all of Ferdinand’s messages back.”
“Oh, speaking of Ferdinand,” Edelgard begins as the edge of her lip curls into a smug grin. “He’s very good with handling properties. He can help you with this whole timeshare business. It wouldn’t even have to be a big deal if you let us handle it.”
“Edelgard, no.”
-
“Not this shit again.” Felix Fraldarius finds himself at the beach, standing on the edge of a massive hole in the sand. Leonie has made tremendous progress digging herself several feet deep by the time he came across her on a broody coastal stroll he intended to take just by his lonesome. The hole is incredibly impressive, deep and unencumbered by the swaying tide.
“If I wanted you to fall into this pit, I would have made it so,” Leonie says, raising her voice from behind a pile of sand. The hole has enveloped her waist and is proceeding onwards onto her shoulders.
“You could have.” Felix playfully toes a small pile of sand back into the hole.
“Nope, not in this terrain. It’d be easier to trick you into falling into a hole if it was under a cluttered forest floor.”
“Where’d you get the shovel?” He points at the tool she’s holding. It’s not the kind of plastic shovel you’d find in the hands of a young child building sand castles. What Leonie’s got in her hands is a tactical tool, matte black and rigid sharp on all sides. Jagged saw edges and hex wrench perforations line the head. It’s very cool and it appeals to Felix’s interests very much.
“Oh, I think this came from some As-Seen-On-TV ad.” She twirls it in her arms like it’s a color guard rifle. “I’ve got an auntie who keeps falling for all those apocalypse preacher shows so she keeps buying emergency food buckets and survival crap like this.”
“Let me look at it.”
“Get in my hole, dude.”
“Don’t word it like that, asshole.”
She flips him off. “Come take a closer look in my hole!”
“Why are you even digging a hole anyways?” He reciprocates the gesture, flipping her off as well.
“Just felt like it.”
“Sure.” Felix’s eyes roll.
“Ever just feel the urge to dig a hole? No real reason. Like it’s some sort of ancient lizard brain thing.”
“No.”
“Dogs do it all the time. Dogs just go dig holes. It’s a dog emotion. I just really needed to dig a hole. Want to join?”
“Not really,” Felix blatantly lies.
She holds up the survival shovel. “You wanna check this out, don’t you? The edges are very sharp. Like a weapon. Could probably kill a man with a swing at the right angle.”
Felix hesitates before he rolls his eyes and slides down into the hole with Leonie.
-
“Hey, you-with-the-new-mustache.” Ingrid takes the wicker seat right next to where Sylvain (and that new thing on his top lip) was sitting alone, watching people pass by because his phone’s screen brightness beneath the summer sun is taking a great toll on his device battery.
“Oh, ‘Grid. You’re not melting in this heat?” Sylvain’s so happy to see a very familiar face around these parts. Ingrid’s hair is even shorter than it was last time and it’s hard to see those pretty green eyes behind her glossy, mirror-like aviator shades, but it’s her, just as handsome as ever.
“Look at you, city boy.” She slugs his shoulder lightly. “You’ve gone west for good.”
“You’re free to follow me anytime, y’know.”
“Can’t right now. Finally got a gig I really like.” Ingrid makes a move to rest her feet up on the low table in front of her, but immediately puts them back down after realizing that she’s still wearing boots at the beach for some reason.
“Good god, you’re finally done with the farm,” he replies with a mighty exhale of relief. “What’s the big new job?”
“It’s, uh… with this non-profit. I teach elementary school girls how to pilot helicopters.”
“...Is that legal?”
“I’ve had a pilot’s license for years, yes.”
“Like, legal for the kids?”
“Sure. Anything is legal in Faerghus,” Ingrid said with the sincerity of someone who is very, terribly Faerghan.
“How far can they go?”
“Depends on whether or not they can reach all the controls but we usually just take them up and around a few acres.”
Sylvain reaches over and gently grasps the edge of Ingrid’s wicker chair. “How do you think it takes for you to take a helicopter down to Enbarr?”
“A single helicopter won’t survive that trip down.”
“You can try.”
“You’re 2,000 miles away and I can only reach 300 of those in a chopper.”
“Take your dad’s little crop-duster. Just steal it, like a car.”
Ingrid now reaches for the hand Sylvain’s keeping latched to her chair. “You really want me to leave Faerghus.”
“I’ve got a couch. Edelgard’s got a couch. She likes you.”
“I wouldn’t want to impose.”
“You’d never be imposing.” Sylvain lifts his hand to take her fingers in his. She reciprocates with a hearty squeeze.
-
“What’s it like in Faerghus this time of year, Dedue?” Dorothea walks along the beach, watching Dedue unleash his dog to roam where the waters gently crawl up and down the sand. Her preference for dogs never sways towards the larger breeds but the retriever from the Blaiddyd estate is an old, affable soul. He doesn’t bolt when Dedue unclasps his lead, but rather chooses to arthritically hobble near Dorothea’s heels and follow her pace.
“Hot,” Dedue answers. “Humid.”
“Is it a good time to visit? I’ve had the itch to go out and visit ever since you and Ashe opened up that Airbnb in the big Blaiddyd house.”
“First of all, don’t book. Just come over. I’m not making you pay.”
“I wouldn’t want to take advantage of your kindness, dear.”
“Why Faerghus?”
Dorothea shrugs. “Just felt like getting out there. I love the sensation of waking up in a new city on vacation, and I’ve toured all the other coasts for long enough.”
“Fun.”
“Also, the tickets are cheap and I need the miles.”
Beneath the mid-afternoon sun’s rays, Dedue squints across the sea’s horizon. His focus drifts to the point where the waters become vast, featureless the farther they reach away from the beach. He asks, “Have you ever been to Duscur?”
“Oh! I’ve not!” Dorothea replies. “I’ve always wanted to visit.”
“There’s a valley near the border where all the regional flowers should be in full bloom right now. It’s a long hike but it’s beautiful. They’re all meant to thrive and be seen right there, not in the backyard of some farmhouse in Fhirdiad.”
“How’s the weather there in Duscur?”
“Hot. Humid.”
-
Ingrid brings her driver down with a mighty swing. Her heel pivots; chunks of grass fly up into the air and contact sends the golf ball careening, skimming the green before coming to a hideous and unceremonious stop within the rough.
“Oh, goodness,” she says, shoulders dropping as she reluctantly lets her eyes follow her ball down past the edges of the fairway.
“Do you accept constructive criticism?” Claude waits for her in the golf cart, comfortably out of the boundaries of the tee box.
“Is it my downswing?” She doesn’t set another ball down on the tee. She’ll play this one where it lies.
“It is,” he tells her as he loosely demonstrates a swing from his seat. “You’re bringing your club down way too hard and fast, and that’s not going to get you far. You gotta have enough control over the motion of your swing to follow-through smoothly.”
“Sorry,” she apologizes, removing her visor to wipe her head down with a towel. “I think the heat’s getting to me.”
“Want to sit out the next few holes to catch your breath?”
“No, I’m good.” Ingrid now begins to stretch her waist, rotating her torso as she brings her club to the edges of her shoulders. “You spent crazy money getting this tee time.”
“Take it slow. Keep your eyes on the ball. Pretend it’s something you hate.”
Ingrid starts cycling through several men in her head.
“You want to send the ball far away, not into the ground,” Claude continues. “Follow through.”
“Follow through?”
“Follow through, man. Follow through.”
Ingrid’s ball takes to the skies and soars over the next three hundred yards, landing plushily into a sand bunker.
-
Despite never being one to let his guard down so easily, Felix Fraldarius finds himself being lulled to sleep as he makes the valiant effort to hold himself upright on a hotel lobby couch.
“...So Pokémon Sword and Shield actually made it really easy for people to identify Pokémon with perfect IVs,” Ashe passionately drawls on. “I think that gives way for more new players to get into the competitive format of Pokémon battling.”
Felix doesn’t respond. He’s searching his line of sight for something to keep his eyes open on. Not much interesting is happening as he trails the motions of vacationers walking by.
“There’s this thing post-game where you can actually unlock this feature that tells you the IVs of Pokémon in your PC Box. You just have to win a few battles in the Battle Tower but it’s a neat addition and it’ll just tell you simply put if you have perfect IVs.”
Felix’s eyelids continue to drop. The tension in his body slips away as he sinks further into the plush and leather.
“And I don’t know if you saw it online or if you made it that far but Toby Fox was the one who composed the Battle Tower theme! The Undertale guy! He did a battle theme for a mainline Pokémon game and it came out really cool! Turns out the main riff of the song came from this joke he made on the Homestuck forums where he—”
-
Ingrid and Ignatz find themselves on the pavement lining the outskirts of a skatepark. Every square inch of concrete on every dip and curve is lined with graffiti. Ignatz is enraptured by the miasma of spray-painted colors. Ingrid’s attention is drawn more so towards the baggy street fashions of skate youth and the vast number of people trying to land complicated kickflips that she can’t possibly try to pull off herself.
“My horse can have hands, right?” She drags their conversation along from wherever it last left off.
“It’s your fursona,” Ignatz replies in his tiny little voice. “You can have anything.”
“But would it be disingenuous for her to have hands? I feel like having hooves is essential to the horse experience.”
“Then? It’s all totally up to you whether or not you want hands or hooves. I don’t have a ‘sona that’s a horse but I think I know and drew enough to say that having either or won’t make you more or less of one.”
Ingrid outstretches her hand and slowly takes her fingers through a grabbing motion, as if to further understand the inner mechanisms of her carnate body. “I think I’d want my fursona to have fingers. It’d make it less weird if I want her to be drawn holding things.”
“There’s this in-between option that other people with hoofed fursonas like to do where they just have normal fingers but with black nails, to kind of resemble hooves.”
“Oh gosh, that sounds cool.”
-
“Hey, I sent you something in the mail a few months back,” Felix says upon finding Sylvain in a hotel food court, deep in a tray of Panda Express instead of any other eatery he could have found outside. As a power move, he hovers over his table and talks to him below eye-level.
Is this the first time Sylvain’s ever seen Felix wear shorts? They’ve known each other for the length of a lifetime and Sylvain can’t recall a point in time in which Felix wasn’t wearing some sort of combination of a long-sleeved top and a pair of jeans that’s either black or dark blue depending on which one’s due for a wash. This Leicester heat must be really getting to his midwestern emo sensibilities.
“You sent me something?” Sylvain puts his chopsticks down.
“You didn’t get it yet? Your address is the same, right?”
“Should be. How big’s the package? I live in a building that gives us little tiny mailboxes so I might have to check in with the guy who runs the mailroom to see if I missed anything.”
“I’m not telling you how big it is. Fuckin’ customs makes it so goddamn impossible to get things over the Faerghan border.” Felix finally takes a seat. This conversation has progressed past the point where it would be cool for him to keep standing. Now he just looks like an idiot who refuses to sit.
“It’s a sword, isn’t it?”
“No.”
Sylvain starts laughing. “It’s absolutely a sword.”
“I’m not a Pottery Barn motherfucker but I thought you could use some home décor,” Felix continues, almost stammering. “It’s a conversation piece. Bitches are gonna think you’re cool when you take them home to your place and you have a big fuckin’ sword on your wall.”
“If it ever arrives.”
“It better arrive. Shit cost way too much to ship.”
Sylvain reaches across the table and latches onto Felix’s forearms. “I fucking love you, man.”
“I hate your mustache.”
“I know.”
-
“I know it’s not as beautiful as the beaches in Brigid,” Claude says, gesturing to the sun beginning to set over the resort city. “Nothing is.”
“It’s because they build all this stuff here,” Petra affirms, pointing to all the crap in the skyline. What would have made for a serene, calm beach experience is ruined by all the neon signs and casino resort towers clustering in the near distance. “In Brigid, we had to stop the Adrestians from building resorts. It’s still so beautiful and all natural.”
“Even the big cities in Almyra keep building these huge things for tourists, y’know. We have this one mall that has three Rolex stores. Three .”
“Come stay in Brigid more.”
“I would if I didn’t have so much work on this side of the globe all the time.”
“There’s no ugly timeshare in Brigid,” Petra laughs, playfully swatting at Claude’s shoulder. “Talk to Ferdinand. He knows how to do contracts.”
He laughs along with her.
-
“I’m surprised to see you here.” Ingrid reaches for the beer bottle in the cup holder of her lawn chair and clinks it against Felix’s. The two’s view of the evening seaside is accompanied by the light of ornamental bamboo torches. “Then again, I forgot you’re from a beach town too.”
“I’m not far. It’s no big deal,” Felix shrugs. “I just happen to be across the other side of the bay from Derdriu.”
“But your hometown is totally different from this place. The beaches are all… rocky and cold… and moody.”
The tide gingerly crawls in closer to where the folding beams of their chairs are firmly planted in the sand, filling the brief moment of silence between them with the sound of the waters.
“You missed your friends, didn’t you?” Ingrid asks.
Felix avoids giving her an immediate answer by continuing to sip from his bottle.
“I know you do. I’m not going to force you to say it,” she continues. “I miss our friends too. I miss all of us.”
Felix puts his beer down. “I can’t believe Claude von Riegan has a fucking timeshare.”
-
“Claude has a timeshare, can you fucking believe it?” That’s the question Dorothea decides to open with when she beckons to Sylvain Jose Gautier, of all people, to come sit with her at the least sweaty and threatening-looking bar on this resort strip.
“He’s so tender about it.” Sylvain smiles as he takes the nearest barstool that isn’t occupied by Dorothea’s Givenchy bag. “Feels weird having something to hold over the Claude von Riegan. I don’t deserve this much power.”
“Does Lorenz know? I hope Lorenz knows. That would be the funniest thing in the world.” She scoots a coaster over to his side of the counter. “I’ll have whatever you’re having.”
“Oh, huh. Are you sure about that?”
“Yeah! I’m good with whatever.” She gives him a shrug, more affirmative than noncommittal.
Sylvain seeks out the bartender. “Two… uh. Ginger ales? Just ginger ales, I guess. Can you put a lime wedge in them?”
“Hm? That’s new.”
Sylvain reaches for his glass the moment it hits the bar surface. “The old me would have had this thing filled to the brim with vodka and paint thinner or something.”
“So how long have you been sober?” Dorothea asks intently.
“I don’t know. I actually don’t really know. Long enough, I guess.” He drags his finger against the condensation of his ice-cold water glass. It’s wet. Of course it’s wet. Was his brain any close to convincing him otherwise?
“You seem like you’ve been well.”
“I think so too. I think I’ve been well. Maybe it’s the Adrestian tap water.”
“You’re staying in Enbarr for good, huh?”
“It’s treating me better than Faerghus ever has. I mean… you know I love Ingrid and Dedue, I love the whole lot of them. Sometimes even Felix.” Sylvain doesn’t meet her eyes, even as he sarcastically quips. He’s watching the water droplets on his ginger ale glass drip down to the paper coaster. “I just couldn’t stay. It’s not my scene. Not for me.”
Dorothea saves him the trouble of filling in the silence that he left. “No, I get it. That’s alright.”
“I still keep in touch. It’s all good, besides the time difference.”
“What part of the city do you live in again?”
“The Hill. Few blocks away from the old cathedral.”
“It’s not going to be weird if I ask you to go get dinner with me sometime, right?”
“No, we’re adults. We’re civil. Good, even.” Sylvain returns her gaze.
“I just happen to be two train rides away, is all.”
“We can work it out. Just text me whenever.”
“I will.”
“I’ll be good.”
“I know you will.”
-
“I haven’t been keeping in touch. I’m sorry.” Dedue gingerly steps into the resort’s public hot tub to join at Edelgard’s side. The pressure of the jets spewing hot water at him nearly wobbles him off his center of balance.
“Don’t apologize,” Edelgard almost seems to instruct him with her restingly rigid tone of voice. She scoots a step over to the side to make room for her towering friend. “I know that both of us have a lot to tend to these days. Regardless, I always have time for you.”
“You’re very kind to me.”
“I consider you a friend, Dedue. Do tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“Cleaning, mostly. Figured I’d finally get a chance to go over the basement now that Ashe moved up into one of the actual bedrooms.”
“Sounds like quite the undertaking.”
“I don’t mind. It’s interesting, actually. Lambert really liked making home videos, I’ve learned.” Dedue manages to settle in and let the water jets rush against his back. He lets his shoulders drop. “I found something recently.”
Edelgard props herself up higher against the jacuzzi wall. “Hm?”
“Did you know Dimitri played baseball?”
“I thought he only ever played hockey?”
“He didn’t play baseball for too long. There’s this tape, dated 2004.” A smile drifts its way onto Dedue’s face. A sharp exhale whistles out from his nose. “A fly ball is heading towards the outfield and Lambert’s trying to capture the moment Dimitri’s going to catch it. He zooms in on Dimitri and he’s on the ground, pulling grass out from the ground and stuffing it in his mouth.”
Edelgard erupts into laughter. “He did that all the time when we were kids. I think he just really liked the sensation of grabbing fistfulls of grass. He used to sprinkle the bits he wouldn’t eat onto my jeans.”
“He did that as an adult. Something in him just snapped the day he learned that all the parts of a dandelion were edible.”
“Goodness, what a handful.”
“He was my handful.”
-
Claude von Riegan never learned how to surf. He simply never had time to, and what little time he had anyways was spent on letting his parents get him into equestrian sports that he’ll never bother to revisit as an adult. Despite this, he owns a full-sized surfboard and he’s spending the night drifting alongside the edge of the waters where no wave dares to come and envelop him with a mighty crash.
He shares the other end of the board with the golden retriever that he gladly agreed to watch over while Dedue and Ashe went out for the night. The dog lays down comfortably with his lifejacket on, lazily hanging its front paws off the edge of the board.
“It’s nice out here, isn’t it?” Claude asks the dog, not expecting a response stronger than a raised brow. “I thought you’d like it.”
The dog slowly swishes its tail as Claude slowly paddles closer to the sands.
“I don’t know if I’m gonna get that timeshare contract cancelled,” he continues. “I probably should, right? I think I might.”
The dog starts to pant, curling his lips upwards into a smile.
“So if I do, I’m glad I got to share it with you. You’re a good dog, a smart dog. Real smart. Probably wouldn’t have gotten suckered into a timeshare contract like yours truly.”
