It’s fun, it’s really really fun to play around in the ocean with your family. As a first time experience for me, I think it’s fair to say that it’s an experience worth repeating. Although next time I would maybe like a couple of those plastic floaty toys. Maybe a big yellow duck or so to sit on.
Since I’ve not swam in a long time, swimming takes some getting used to. Luckily I had Sam next to me to guide me along.
“Do you think this beats the university’s pool?” I ask while she holds my hand.
“Personally, I do think it does.” She smiles. “Just look at the color of the water. You can’t get that kind of azure blue water in a pool.” She looks down. “Especially not with fishes.”
A tiny school of yellow and orange fishes swims away a meter or so from us.
“I still want to go swimming with you in the uni pool though.” I reply. “With Hailey, Max and Carol.”
“That does sound fun too.” Sam smiles. “We should do more things together with Hailey, she might feel a bit left out now that we are all couples around her.”
I nod. “She’s the only one who doesn’t play the game as well.”
“Yeah.” Sam nods and picks me up, spinning me around in the water. “We’ll find something to do with her, even if it’s just playing more boardgames.”
“Mhmm mhmm.” I giggle as she continues spinning. “Maybe some kind of hot sauce party?”
“Hot sauce? Last time I checked you couldn’t really handle hot sauce, could you?”
“Well…” I divert my gaze away from her and start blushing. “I read it somewhere and it sounded fun….”
“I’m all for it if you want to give it a try.” Sam chuckles a bit more. “Let’s just make sure there’s plenty of milk around for you then.”
“And ice cream?”
“Of course.”
Through the water I can see that my sister is swimming up to us while Nikki is wading over. Lise pops out of the water next to us.
“Having fun?” She brushes her hair back with her two hands, looking somewhat like those women in shampoo commercials.
“Yep.” I smile.
“What about you? Still splashing each other around with water?” Sam asks, she’s still holding me.
“I am somewhat missing the modern conveniences.” Nikki replies.
“Like?” I tilt my head.
“Badminton rackets or so. Or a beach volleyball. You know, modern toys like that.”
“I need lots of toys to keep my attention.” Lise continues. “In bed as well.”
“Pff.” Sam almost drops me because she starts laughing so hard.
While Nikki mostly rolls her eyes at her partner’s comment. “Yes, Amicia, your sister is kind off a toddler sometimes.”
“Don’t worry, I knew that already.”
“How rude.” Lise continues laughing.
Suddenly, fifty meters away from us, Hilda breaks the surface with fish skewered on her spear. “Finally! I finally got a fish, girls!” Her hands raised in the air. I’ve not seen Hilda be that enthusiastic in… ever. She must be really happy she caught a fish.
“Congratulations.” Lise starts laughing even louder than before. “Have you been trying all this time?”
“It’s surprisingly tricky to catch a fish underwater with a spear, you know.” Hilda replies as she wades over to us.
“I think I still prefer my explodifishing method.” Nikki says as she whips her hair back with the necessary flair.
Stolen novel; please report.
“That’s probably the reason why most of the big fishes are gone.” Sam whispers to me. “No wonder that it took Hilda this long to get some fish.”
“I’m more a fan of the hands-on approach.”
While Nikki and Hilda continue to debate about different fishing methods for a bit, I see my sister starting to squint in the direction behind us.
“What’s wrong, sis?” I ask.
“Is it me… or are those sails in the distance?” Lise points in the direction she’s looking at.
Sam and I turn around so we can take a look, while Hilda and Nikki stop their little debate to look as well.
“Amicia, can you hold this for a bit.” Hilda offers the spear with the skewered fishie to me.
“Uh… sure.” I grab hold of the spear. Now that I see the fish up close, it kind off looks like a small tuna but with purple scales.
-I should probably do a poison check on this before we eat it…-
In the meantime Hilda takes out her spyglass, presumably out of her inventory as I don’t think she was stashing it in her bra.
“Where do you see the sails?” Hilda asks.
My sister walks up behind Hilda and guides Hilda’s arms a tiny bit to the left. “Right over there.”
“Oh.” Hilda looks at the location for a couple of seconds without saying anything. “Those are definitely sails, alright.” She nods. “They are heading in this direction, parallel to the coastline.”
“Osvik ships?” Sam asks.
“No, definitely not, unless they’ve changed what kind of sails they use. I’m not one-hundred percent sure just yet, but I’m pretty sure those sails are from Taylor’s ship.”
“Élise, did you really just jinx us with a Taylor?” Sam laughs.
“How could I know that she was sailing in this direction? For all I knew she was doing some pirate business elsewhere.”
“We don’t know if it’s her just yet.” Hilda replies again. “Although I got to say that rigging does look awfully familiar.” She then closes her spyglass and puts it away again. “The wind is not in their favor though so it’ll take a while before they’ll even be able to see us.”
“Alright, then we’ll continue swimming for a while longer, or would you rather do a bit of sunbathing on the beach?” Sam asks.
“Hmmm… I don’t know if I want do do sunbathing… so let’s swim for a bit longer.” I reply.
“I’ll fish a bit more if you don’t mind.” Hilda takes her spear back but hands the fish over to me. “I want to perfect my technique.”
“Good luck with that.” Lise laughs and pats Hilda on the back. “I think we’ll swim for a bit longer too. Although I don’t think we’ll swim for too much longer.”
“Getting tired?” I ask.
“No, getting bored.” Lise chuckles. “I do need my toys to keep me amused.”
“Oh.” -Swimming purely for the act of swimming is not the most interesting past-time, that’s true.- My mind starts spinning to try and think of stuff we might possibly do. In the meantime, the four of us swim around a bit, after putting away the fish of course.
However, we do not last fifteen minutes before swimming gets a bit boring for all of us. At least Hilda is still having fun with her fishes. When we walk back on the beach, Sam taps me on my shoulder.
“I think I have an idea, Ami.” She says.
I can see this piqued the interest of my sister as well. “Is this about toys?”
“Kinda, yes.” Sam laughs. “And I actually needed your help for it.”
“Do tell me what to do.”
“Well, I need you to help me chop some wood into relatively small cubes.”
“That’s not an issue at all. Let me get my shirt on and I’ll help you. I’d suggest you do the same to prevent splinters.”
Sam nods.
I look at her with slight suspicion. “What exactly are you going to make?”
Sam grins. “You’ll see.”
I’m not going to say I enjoy Sam’s mysterious attitude right now, but it does get me very intrigued to what she’s planning.
“While they are busy we can do some sand sculpting if you want, Ami.” Nikki proposes.
“Didn’t you do that earlier already?”
“No, your sister wanted to make sand castles, I want to make something more… artistic now.”
“I suppose it can’t hurt while we are waiting.
And so, our group splits up once more. While Sam and Élise stay within line of sight, it’s quite hard to tell what exactly they are doing. Especially with me being somewhat distracted with sand sculpting. Nikki and I ultimately decided to do a collaborative sand sculpture project by trying to build a dolphin and a shark out of sand. I took the shark for my account while Nikki went for the dolphin instead. I got to say, that it is turning out a lot better than I had expected, especially since it’s the first time I’ve really done any sand sculpting. I guess those sculpting lessons at school do pay some divindents. As for Nikki’s dolphin, it looks a bit more derpy than my cutified shark does, but she’s having fun with it and that’s the most important part.
“Ami, dolphins have teeth, right?” Nikki asks.
“I think they do… why?”
“Maybe I should draw them on.”
“I’m pretty sure that will look weird but go for it I suppose.” I shrug and chuckle a little.
“Yessss.” Nikki takes a clam and starts going to work on the dolphin. I keep looking at her creation until I hear some footsteps behind me.
“We are done!” Lise calls out.
Nikki and I turn around and see my sister and my girlfriend walking towards us with in their hands a set of twelve wooden balls and one smaller one, of which each set of three has the same kind of patterns.
“Oh… is that…?” Nikki gets up from her dolphin sculpture.
“Yes, Sam got the marvelous idea to make us some pétanque balls.” My sister’s grin grows wider.
-Oh! I don’t think I’ve ever played that game before!!-