Chapter Text
Little, delicate fingers plucked fragments of sand dollars from the ground below, seeking a shell that was whole - but so far no luck.
Her dark hair drifted in thin tendrils around her, carried by a breeze that was slowly starting to pick up in both strength and speed.
Papa had driven her and Mama a few hours over here from the other side of the state. Her favourite part had been watching trees and bushes go by like emerald blurs and then the ocean was on either side of the car, flickering sapphire and steel depending on how many clouds lurked above it in that spot.
She huffed as she found only more broken pieces scattered around her, and abandoned her mission. For now, that is.
The grey sand surrounding her stretched as far as her eyes could see, the sea miles away as the tide went out ever further. Only little veins of water - forming a web of shimmering blue-grey streams that stretched from one end of the beach to the other - revealed its presence in that area earlier in the day.
The tiny patter that came from her feet sploshing through them was soon lost to the wind’s song. It whipped around her, tugging her hair and rustling the windbreaker she wore; a bright splotch of pink in the dreary landscape she wandered through. A storm was coming, but that didn’t faze Jolyne in the slightest. Her father and mother were only a short distance away, and she was happy here. There was so much for her green eyes to take in, so much for her small hands to uncover, overturn, so many new places to amble through on her tiny feet.
Her gaze turned outwards one more time to the far-off sea, and then she resumed her mission to find an unbroken sand dollar.
In the end, it was in her father’s hands that she found intact shells. He handed them to her and told her to take good care of them until they got home. She cradled them nervously, making sure to walk slowly and constantly vigilant to the whereabouts of trip hazards. The determination on her face was enough to make her mother laugh when Jolyne wasn’t looking.
After a while her feet got tired and Papa scooped her up without needing to be asked. He carried her the whole way back to the car, and she was sound asleep as they crossed the sea once more, heading for home.