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Back and forth, Tallulah climbs up and down the lakeside beach. She wades knee deep to where the sandfloor gradient scales up to small pebbles, fetching smooth little rocks in her jaws and dropping them in a pile beside Wilbur’s sandcastle. He’s pretty sure they’re supposed to be used as decorations, though most are a bit oversized when compared to the scale of tiny sand houses. Each time she prances out of the water, she makes a point to stop up beside Will and shake out her wings, showering him in a spray of cold droplets.
“Oi, that’s the fifth time. Knock it off you little runt.”
Tallulah bares her knifeblade teeth in what must be a terrifying attempt to mimic a human smile, then bounces off to go bother Chyanne instead. One of Wilbur’s towers gets decapitated by the careless swing of her tail as she retreats.
“Tallulah! Stop wreaking terror on the innocent sand kingdom! I didn’t raise an anarchist!”
“Will, be nice to your daughter.”
Father down the thin sandy shore, Philza is building a similar castle. Quite similar. His maybe has a wider perimeter and an imposing border wall, and taller towers that don’t fall down. But whatever. It’s not like it’s a competition. Not if Wilbur’s not the one winning it.
“I am nice to her. She’s just being a brat on purpose.”
“Takes after her father,” Phil taunts.
Like I take after mine, Wilbur almost says. But doesn’t.
“I hope your city gets hit by a devastating plague,” he says instead. Phil chuckles to himself.
“Sand plague. For sand people.” He drizzles some wet sand into his hand, forming the blobby turret figure of a little sand person.
“Yeah. I hope the economy collapses after the working class labour force destabilizes and everyone falls into extreme poverty.”
“Jesus, Will.”
“I hope your citizens revolutionize and overthrow their tyrannical emperor for failing to establish a healthcare system accessible to the wider population.”
“They can’t overthrow me,” Phil retorts. “I have a terrifying dragon who will guard the doors to my throne room and bite the head off any revolutionary who comes too close.”
Chyanne is intently focused on digging a moat around the outer wall of Phil’s sand kingdom, shrugging off Tallulah’s increasingly frustrated attempts to get him to come play. It’s unclear whether this action was commissioned at Phil’s request, or if he somehow just decided this ring would be a nice spot to dig a trench.
“Oh yeah? Well I have a dragon too. She’s equally terrifying. And fearsome. She’ll beat your dragon to a pulp.”
Tallulah is still trying to break Chyanne from his focus. At some point she stands too close behind him and gets a clump of sand tossed directly back at her face. She startles and hops around in frantic circles, rapidly sneezing to try and dislodge the sand from her snout. It’s utterly adorable.
“I’m sure.” Phil shoots Wilbur a fond smirk and goes back to detailing the windows of sand buildings.
Noticing her befuddlement, Chyanne breaks from his moat-digging trance and stops his work to check on Tallulah. The moment he gets too near she immediately pulls him into a game of wrestle-fight. The two go tumbling into the shallows of the lake, stirring up a cacophony of distinctly dragonish growls and yips as they tug on ears and bat each other with their tiny wings. Chyanne yelps good-naturedly when Tallulah bites down on the end of his tail and makes a properly dramatic show of trying to shake her off. He draws the line though when she starts pulling at his stretchy wing membranes, swivelling to stand up and shove her into deeper water with his two front talons.
“Chyanne, play nice,” Phil cautions from up on the beach. He hardly makes it through his sentence before Tallulah surfaces in a rush and slams as hard as she can into Chyanne’s side, knocking both of them back into the lake. Wilbur grins wide and cheers her on. His daughter is terrifying. And fearsome. And she knows it. And he knows it. She can do anything.
In honour of Tallulah’s victory, he takes one of her rocks from the top of the pile she collected and places it gently on the top of his tallest tower. It’s of course, a bit too heavy for the fragile sand foundations and causes the whole structure to crumble. The rock tumbles down, forging a warpath through the middle Sand Town and laying waste to its population. It’s a mess.
“Hey Phil?”
“Hm?”
“What if my tyrannical empire and your tyrannical empire go to war, and then when I win, we can amalgamate our kingdoms into a much greater, superior tyrannical empire. Which I also rule.”
Phil glances up from his oh-so-perfect sand city, gazing upon the gruesome downfall of Will’s own.
“You running out of sand?”
“Yeah I started building in a patch that’s mostly just dirt. I’ve got a dirt castle. That’s lame.”
“Well, maybe Chy could—" He pauses, tapping a finger to the side of his head in a motion Wilbur knows to mean he’s just turned on the imaginary lightbulb that lives in his brain. “Actually I have a better idea. There’s something I wanted to give to Tallulah. Wait here a moment. Chyanne you too. Look after them while I’m gone.”
Phil jogs off in the direction of the waystone, quickly tracing a familiar pattern of runes on its side and then evaporating into a streak of purple particles. Wilbur sits back with a huff, obviously offended at the suggestion of having to be babysat by a literal baby. Chyanne, loyal as anything, pulls himself from the tousle in the lake and settles down on a dry stretch of pale sand nearby Will. He keeps a diligent eye on the forest to Will’s back—the side where they aren’t covered by the wall. The very last of Wilbur’s standing towers chooses this moment to topple into the remains of town square, rendering the structure much more of a sandpit than a castle. He hears Chyanne’s snort and looks over just in time to catch the dragonet giving him the side eye.
“Oh what, like you could do any better?” He retorts crossly. “I’d like to see you try building a sandcastle without hands, you featherless dumbass.”
Chyanne’s head turns in the direction of Phil’s remarkably well built castle. A gesture Wilbur interprets as ‘I did, prick.’
“That doesn’t count. So what, you dug a hole. Good job. It’s not like you actually did any of the heavy lifting, that was all Phil.”
Tallulah eventually bores of pouncing on crawdads in the pebbles and stamps back up the beach to join the party. She appears to recognize the fallen sandcastle as a perfect place for a nest and steps right into the centre of it, trampling anything that might have still been salvageable.
“Oh—now you’re just rubbing it in. Real nice, Tallulah.” He pouts over the destruction of his hard work as Tallulah shoves clumps of sand aside with her nose, working on smoothing out a nice spot to sit. Once it’s deemed worthy, she plops herself down the the middle and curls up in a bright purple ball of scales, tucking her talons under her chin and giving a contented little hum. Will can’t help but smile.
Just as well, he thinks. The mighty Tallulah devestates the entire kingdom in one fell swoop and makes her nest in the ashes. How’s that for fearsome?
Tallulah blinks slowly with large sleepy eyes, trailing the harrowing journey of an ant as it marches across the beach. Chyanne is watching her too, his tail snaking hypnotically back and forth through the sand, shifting the grains side to side. Will is almost sure the look he’s giving is as fond as the one on his own face. They both know Tallulah would never lay waste to a city. She’d never even squash a bug.
“Mrrp?” She asks, lifting her head inquisitively when she notices them both staring at her.
“I’d build a castle for you, if you wanted,” Wilbur tells her. “A whole kingdom, even.
“You could be the princess. Chyanne can be your royal guard. Phil can be the head advisor because he’s all old and wise and whatever the fuck. And…I’ll just be your dad. I think I’ll be happy with that.” He knows he’ll be happy with that. He already is. Wilbur wouldn’t trade in what he’s got now for anything.
Maybe he doesn’t know much about parenting yet, but he has this funny feeling that he’d move mountains, and change fate, and probably punch government officials in the face if it meant keeping his little girl safe. He’ll let her sit in the ruins of their sandcastle if it makes her happy.
Wilbur’s daughter is perfect and amazing and most of all—she’s kind. He’ll be as good a father as he can to her. All he wants in return is for her to never have to make the same mistakes he did.
The warp stone vwooshes as Phil makes his reappearance, weighed down by a large and very heavy looking bucket.
“What’cha got in there?” Wilbur asks.
“Sand.” Phil sets it down with a grunt and tips the bucket over, spilling its contents onto the beach. “Pink sand.”
“Huh.” Wilbur reaches to grab a handful and lets it sift through his fingers. That’s sand alright.
“You just have this lying around?”
“Brought it back a few weeks ago. It’s one of the things me and Chyanne found when we ventured out west. Hauled over as much as we could with the boat.”
“All that for a bucket of sand?” Will asks dubiously, watching Tallulah, interest already piqued, reach her claws into the bucket to spread more out on the beach. The colour definitely suits her.
“Came in handy, didn’t it?”
Chyanne gives Tallulah’s shoulder a gentle nudge with his own in an ask that she stops spilling sand out of the bucket and mixing it with all the white grains. Instead he shows her how to sweep it back in with her tail and they try to recollect as much as they can.
“So erm…your castle,” Phil inquires. “It seems to have suffered a natural disaster during my absence.”
“Squashed flat by a dragon’s arse,” Will confirms. “Not much to be done against the forces of nature.”
“I guess these things happen,” Phil nods. “You can use all the pink you want to rebuild. If you like.”
Wilbur considers. He contemplates the roughly Tallulah-shaped imprint in the sand where his crumbling dirtcastle once stood. He glances over to where the pair of dragonets are working together to haul the big bucket over to Phil’s fully developed sand kingdom. He reaches a decision.
“Phil, I say it’s time we put an end to this futile rivalry between neighboring sandcastles and come together to unite our great nations. Will you accept my official peace treatise?” Wilbur extends a hand in the name of democracy or something. Definitely not democracy. Teamwork tyranny. Double dictatorship.
Phil shakes it with a grin.
“Sure mate.”
The new castle becomes a vibrant array of pink towers and pink walkways and happy pink sandpeople. The buildings are embellished with Tallulah’s little seashells and Wilbur helps her draw little doors and windows on all the houses she picks out. Chyanne reinforces the outer wall with a border of stones and plants sharp rocks outfacing from the walltop. Phil works on a grand pathway to the Dragon’s Lair—built atop the once prosperous but recently conquered city of Wilberia. An hour passes in a breeze and the sun eventually peeks through the matte gray sky to join them. The adults decide to strip their shoes and sandals and dip their feet in the lake. They stand in the shallows, trousers rolled up, watching their kids splash about in the water.
“I still don’t understand how you keep your towers from just collapsing under their own weight,” Wilbur says.
“It’s probably ‘cause you make yours way too top heavy,” Phil explains. “Sand is not a structurally sound building material.”
“I guess that’s why you’re the builder of us two. All that handy expertise is really holding our kingdom together.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“What would I do without you, Phil?”
(What would I do without you? Phil almost replies. But doesn’t.)
“Probably starve,” (he says instead). “I don’t know who thought making you a parent was a good idea. You can hardly even feed yourself.”
“Oh piss off!” Will gives him a hard shove, nearly knocking him into the sand. “Like you’re so much better? I haven’t seen you eating anything but avocado toast in weeks!”
“Fuck you! Don’t disrespect the avocado toast!” Phil pushes him back. Will shoves again, this time hard enough to get Phil down with a splash. Soon Chyanne is on the scene, taking a lunge at Wilbur in retaliation. Tallulah is close behind. Soon they’re all completely soaked, trapped in a dogpile of stray limbs and wings and tails and giggling with reckless abandon.
And Wilbur thinks, if this is what it’s all about, he’ll be happy with that.