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Good morning, everyone! The time is 7:05 AM and today’s forecast is looking sunny and bright for Eisner Island. Today’s announcement is a special one and one I’ve been waiting to make. Alois is here today and that means the start of this season’s fishing tourney!
Ahh… The other day, I received my custom fishing rod in the mail. The seller even included a book of recipes. FIsh stew. FIsh steak. Fish oil. Fish ice cream…
Oh! My brother is pulling the microphone away by the cord. Alois will be in front of Island Services, be sure to talk to him to join the competition!
This is Flayn, signing off!
🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
“....”
CREAK
“Are you home, Claude?”
Dimitri peers into the Deer’s home with a cautious eye, staying put at his doorstep. The radio is chirping from its corner with news about Paradise Planning opening its doors to new clients looking for personally designed vacation homes and suddenly Dimitri is miles away, living on an island where it’s winter year round and colorful lights are always peeking out from inside snow covered cedar trees…
…until there’s a loud CRASH from deeper within the house.
“Claude!” Dimitri calls urgently, forgetting his manners and rushing inside. He hears Claude call out from the room to his immediate right, a room that could be mistaken as the back end of Anna’s shop. Filled with shelves and piles of junk, Dimitri looks for the tops of Claude’s antlers to find him through the clutter.
And he does, but that’s all of him he can see, the rest of Claude is swept up in a pile of fabric and tubes of wrapping paper. Dimitri hurriedly searches through the pile to grab his tiny hoof with his large paw.
“Whoa!” Claude exclaims, smacking into Dimitri’s chest. “Ouch.” He rubs at his nose. A square of wrapping paper is caught around his right antler and Dimitri quickly rips it off. “Ah, hey. Thanks! Wasn’t sure how I was going to swim through that.”
“What were you doing in here?”
“Like it?” Claude gestures to the room with a showman’s flourish. In his yellow knit sweater he is unbearably cute. “Welcome to the treasure trove, Dimitri. Population: all the things that caught my eye.”
“You’re… quite generous.” Dimitri squints at a box of materials. “Do you craft often?”
“Yep! I’m no Leonie or Raphael but I fetch a good price whenever I take a trip to the community fair.” Over Claude’s shoulder, Dimitri spies the paint splattered workbench and it clicks where all the odd noises that wake him up at night are coming from. “I’m not so good with fabrics or wire work yet but I’ve made my fair share of wooden treasures. And speaking of wooden treasures, I’ve got something for you.”
“Me?” Dimitri watches Claude dig through the pile on the floor and retrieve a long, thin box. He’s not prepared for Claude to open it and present him with, “A fishing rod?! Claude, this is beautiful. This cannot be for me.”
“Yep, it is. Pick it up and tell me how you like it.”
Flustered, Dimitri does as he’s told. It’s - perfect. It even has his name carved into the handle with careful letters. “Oh, Claude… You really didn’t have to. You know it will only break in the end.”
Claude waves him off. “Just because something isn’t permanent doesn’t mean it can’t be enjoyed while it’s here.”
“I don’t know what to say. Thank you feels like too little.”
“You’re welcome.” Claude winks.
Cheeky Deer… Dimitri shakes his head, “Is this why you called me over this morning?”
“Partly.”
“Oh?”
“I thought we’d figure out our team name before we go sign up for the tourney.”
“Team name?” Dimitri’s palpable confusion makes Claude laugh.
“Yeah! Should we do something snappy? Like team Leer or maybe something punchy like –”
“Hold on, wait. Claude, this is your first year here so maybe you didn’t realize but the tourney is an individual competition!”
“So.”
“So? It would be cheating to leverage our scores together if everyone else is competing on their own.”
Claude snorts. “Dimitri. Everyone on this island is doing that. Have you really not seen everyone paired up at the pier while they do their practice catches? I think you need to get out more.”
“R-Really?”
“It looks like a team effort is the only way to beat Byleth, or so I heard.”
“And you care about beating Byleth?”
“Well, yeah. And beating everyone else. Don’t you wanna win?”
“...I wouldn’t mind.” He does. Have an empty spot on his counter to display a trophy if he had one. Dimitri looks down at the beautiful fishing rod in his paws. “I do rather like the name team Leer.”
“See? We’re halfway to winning already.”
“I noticed you only made one fishing pole.” Dimitri pointedly taps Claude on the shoulder with said pole.
Caught like a Deer in front of a Lion, Claude gives his most disarming grin. “Is it really so different from delivering my packages to the airport and sparing my poor little hooves?” He holds up his poor little hooves and Dimitri rolls his eye.
“You haven’t caught a single fish and you’ve already won.”
“Nonsense. I caught a Lion, big difference.”
Charmed by his boldness, Dimitri follows Claude out of his workroom and knows he’s going to do his lionhearted best to win.
🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟
That afternoon, standing and sitting on sandy shores, Dimitri and Claude look down at their empty scorecard. Somehow, they haven’t caught a single fish.
“Perhaps… this is why no one else was using this spot.” Dimitri murmurs, his heart breaking every time he glances at the disappointed Deer by his side.
“Should we try switching our bait?” Claude suggests for the third time and Dimitri shakes his head.
“There are fish here… but for some reason none of them are taking the bait. In the months I’ve lived here, I have never seen this happen.” Dimitri scowls as another tiny fishy shadow disappears after approaching his fishing hook. “It’s too late to move elsewhere, the others have already settled down.”
“We could elbow our way in and catch something at the very least.” Claude grumbles, unhappy that Dimitri has dug his heels in and refused to move. But Dimitri has his way of doing things too – and if he is the one fishing, he’s doing it his way.
“It will be too busy. We’re not likely to catch much of anything either. Let’s just wait and see.”
“Ugh.”
“I never knew you were so impatient.”
“Only because I feel like we’re frozen in time. The only thing keeping me sane is the sun starting to set.”
Dimitri doesn't say anything, disappointed too. His silence must rub Claude the wrong way because he whispers an apology in Dimitri’s direction.
“Sorry. I’m the one who asked you to do it and here I am, sucking the fun out of it.”
“Oh, Claude…” Dimitri sighs. “It’s all right. Fishermen have their days like this… and I guess this is mine.”
“Yeah…” Claude looks around and quickly gets up. “Hey, give me that.”
“?”
“Go get a drink and take a break. I can man the line for a few minutes.”
Smiling, Dimitri passes the fishing pole over. “Sure.” He enjoys a blood orange soda from their shared beach blanket and thinks he should have Claude over for dinner, make something nice to end the day on a good note in spite of the afternoon’s disappointments. He’s going over pasta options in his head when Claude stumbles forward, the fishing line in front of him suddenly tense and threatening to snap the fishing pole in half.
“W-Whoa! I caught something? Dimitri. Dimitri!”
“Keep hold of it!” Dimitri rushes over and before he can take the pole from Claude’s hooves, Claude lurches forward, yelping. Without thinking, Dimitri clamps his arms around his mid-section instead and tries to pull Claude back. They both struggle and Claude grows frantic when the rod starts to slip from his hooves. Summoning all his strength, Dimitri lets out a roar of exertion and throws them back, pulling the catch out of the water with them.
On the shore flops a mammoth of a fish, unfathomably huge and staring at Dimitri with murder in its flat fish eye.
Claude is slumped in Dimitri’s lap with whirlpools in his eyes, knocked dizzy by what just happened. “Baba,” he says. “Tell Nader to put me down, I’m too old to play airplane anymore…!”
“Claude. Claude, are you all right?”
“Huh?” Snapping out of it, Claude shakes his head and pokes Dimitri’s chin with his antler. “Oops. Sorry.” He looks at the fish flopping on the shore and gasps. “A Coelacanth?!”
“A what?”
“No time, Dimitri. Let’s get him in the pool first!!” Claude is up and running over to the fish before Dimitri can say anything else. He’s practically vibrating in excitement and Dimitri smiles, quick to do his part to keep the fish comfortable so Alois can come down and judge for himself.
🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟~🐟
“What should we do with the trophy?”
“Keep it in your house, Dimitri.”
“But it has both our names on it…”
“So? I’ll see it plenty.” The Deer cheerfully replies, his arms loaded with books from the museum about the aquatic deep. “And I don’t have any room for it but you do, don’t you?”
“I should have known you noticed.”
“Only because the space was next to your HHA plaque. Hey, want me to build you a bigger shelf? Or how about a whole new one?”
“Another one? For what?”
“You and I make a pretty good team, don’t you think? There’s gonna be a lot more trophies in our future. You know the scavenger hunt at the museum is coming up too.”
Dimitri looks down at the trophy in his paw and the little metal plaque at the bottom where both their names are inscribed… Dimitri has never shared anything like this before. And if this trophy is truly the first of many…
He smiles, “Could I ask for cherry wood? A little Deer told me I need to brighten up my living quarters this year.”
Claude grins back. “Of course. That little Deer’s got an eye for treasures, big and small, you know.”