7 - Beach episode

Hub

The atmosphere was tense as we trundled down the road. My brain buzzed with excitement about my ability, but Brask’s reaction to my first experiment gave me pause. I thought that I was safe since I was using the Heroic that Brask expected me to have, was I wrong? Am I not supposed to be able to use it that well yet?

“Lily, come up here. We need to talk.” Brask spoke sternly, without taking his eyes off the road. Raaf looked terrified, and given his recent history it wasn’t difficult to guess why.

I sat at the head of the cart and opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t think what to say.

“Were you paying attention when I told you how dangerous it is for you to have a Heroic?”

“Yeah, I-” I stammered, but Brask didn’t seem to notice.

“And the first thing you did was tell someone you’ve only known for two days?”

“Well-”

“Even before that, you completely overextended yourself, you could have been hurt even worse than you already were!”

“Y-”

“Lily, that kind of recklessness will get you killed! I’ve seen it happen, I need you to take this seriously!”

My pulse quickened, and at first I didn’t realize I was shouting. “Of course, I’m taking it seriously! I trusted someone I’ve known for two days, because everyone I knew a week ago might as well be dead!” Tears welled up in my eyes, but I didn’t care. “Forgive me for not wanting to keep another earth-shattering secret from one of the two people I know out here! I’m fucking sorry I got excited because I thought for a moment that I might be able to have some control over my life!”

I slumped back into my seat, allowing myself to sob. I heard Brask sniffling at the reins, but I struggled to find empathy for him at the moment. After a while, Raaf crossed the cart and sat next to me. I wrapped my arms around him, at first because I thought he needed it… but when he hugged me back, I realized a part of me needed it too.

When we arrived at Barrel, Brask murmured an apology and shuffled into town, leaving us in the cart. The village itself was quaint, but its surroundings made for an unforgettable sight. The metal scraps that dotted the plains were dense here, making it look almost like a war zone, and the beaches reminded me of the pictures I had seen of Normandy on D-Day, though the sand was red with rust. The steaming water was as clear as glass, and the great wreck at the center of the lake loomed even larger up close. It looked to me like it was once some kind of tank or furnace, but something had peeled away its layers like the petals of a flower.

As we sat on the beach, Raaf and I watched the waves lap at a sand castle that one of the townsfolk had built earlier in the day. Idly, I wondered how it could have waves like this - I knew that on Earth, the waves and tides were caused by the moon’s gravity, but that effect wasn’t nearly strong enough to be noticeable in a lake this small.

“Have you ever been to the ocean?”

Raaf shook his head. “No, before I got stuck in Millstone, I was even further inland.”

“I think I’d like to go there, someday. Salt on the air, water as far as the eye can see…” I hadn’t ever been to the ocean on Earth, either - my family went on vacations relatively often, but they were happy to leave me home alone in exchange for pinching a few more pennies.

“It’s not that far south from here, if you want to see it. I’ve always been, uh… Wary of that kind of thing. Not being able to see the bottom, worrying about getting sucked out to sea. Brr… I’d rather not.”

“Ah, yeah, I can understand that.” The murmur of the night fell back over us, the water gradually wearing away at the foundation of the sand castle… which gave me an idea. “I wonder… This place is private enough, right?”

Raaf glanced at our surroundings. The steel forest that protruded from the beach was dense enough that the village wasn’t visible, and the road was quiet this time of night. “Yeah, I guess. What for?”

I got up and strolled closer to the water, where the sand was wet. “Gotta practice somehow, right?” Taking a knee, I pressed my hand into the earth. As my senses suffused the sand, it felt similar to the inside of the rock - cool and pleasant, but with a metallic hint that told me the red color in the sand was, in fact, rust. My magical nerves lit up the beach with a shimmering glow, extending several meters in all directions.

“Whoa..! What are you going to do?” I could feel Raaf’s feet on the sand as he followed, and on some other level, I felt a radiant warmth and an impossibly hard surface that stopped me from probing any further - the boundary of Raaf’s soul?

My awareness was stretched out so far that my mouth felt uncoordinated, like trying to write with my foot. “Y-you’ll see. Be careful, I hab- er, I haven’t done this before.” I took a deep breath, and as I relaxed, the sand began to ripple like water. Raaf’s feet began to sink, but I caught him before he fell too far and pushed him back to the surface. Sand is heavy, so he would probably float if I let him, but it seemed wise not to have him swimming in the beach. Bewildered, he whirled around to marvel, failing to realize that I had to use the warmth I could feel pouring off of him to predict where he was going to step and consciously solidify the sand to catch him.

After making some experimental moves and getting a handle on how it felt to “be” sand, I mustered my strength for the first step of what I wanted to make. The fractal lines of light dancing across the beach went taut as I pulled the sand inward, carving a moat big enough to stand in and lifting myself and Raaf up onto a dune. I was a little winded from the effort, but I was far from exhausted.

After a moment’s pause to collect myself, I started on the main elements - I threw a mound of sand back into the moat to work as a bridge, flattened the sides of the dune into walls, and formed four towers to mark the corners of the castle. I was going to college for civil engineering in my past life, but in the same time it would have taken me to draw this in CAD, I had already built something real..!

I was sculpting the parapets when Raaf’s voice caught my attention. “…Lily? Lily! Hey! Come back to me!”

When I retreated to my body, I noticed several things in succession. First, my eyes were painfully dry; I had only been working for five minutes at most, but evidently I had neglected to blink in that time. Second, Raaf was looking at me with fear in his eyes, and third, I had to crane my neck to make eye contact with him. Fourth… It seemed my body was now immobilized, due to being buried from the neck down in sand.

“Lily! Are you okay? I was distracted watching everything come together, I didn’t realize you were sinking!”

I blinked furiously to try and moisten my eyes. “Ack-! Y-Yeah, I’m fine, I just, uh… Got too focused, I guess.” I connected with the sand again, this time just so I could lift myself out. Raaf offered a hand to help pull me up, and though I didn’t need it, I appreciated the sentiment.

“Thank goodness..! That was… Simultaneously the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, and one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever been through.”

I peered over the edge of my castle - it seemed so much bigger now that I was actually using my eyes to look at it. It had to be at least two or three meters from where I was standing to the bottom of the moat. “With great power, comes great responsibility?” I turned back to Raaf with a sheepish grin, but fearful awe on his face set me straight. “Sorry. I didn’t think that through.”

“No, it’s- Yeah, you definitely could have thought that through more, but this is still incredible! Even if you just did this with dirt, you could build houses for a whole village in a week! If you came with me to the Beast’s Den, you could completely change the…” Raaf trailed off as his gaze fixed on something behind me. “Oh boy.”

“What’s-” I followed his gaze and realized the problem before I could finish asking. The twisted wreckage on the beach was dense, but not terribly tall; my castle had lifted us high enough that we could see the town. “Shit, do you think someone saw that?” My magic wasn’t blinding, but it definitely gave off enough light to be noticeable at night.

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think we should take the chance.” Raaf’s gaze was fixed on the town, keeping watch for Brask or any town guards on the way here.

“Good idea.” I turned to leave, but quickly realized that we were too high to safely jump down. I crouched down to use my magic to try and make a ramp, but I stopped when Raaf put a hand on my shoulder.

“Don’t, we’re in full view of the town right now.” He paused a moment to think. “Uh… Rope! I’ve got rope.”

Raaf handed me half of a spool of rope after pulling it from his pack, but I was still confused. “Okay, but there’s nowhere to tie it-”

“That’s fine, just… Throw the end over the side, then pull the part between us tight.” I did as I was told, while Raaf did the same, positioning himself next to the opposite edge. “Now, on three, we both slowly lean back and climb down the side. You understand?”

Gears turned in my head as I began to grasp the plan. “I… Oh, yeah, I think I get it!”

Raaf counted us off, and we carefully leaned back - the tension in the rope kept us from falling, and I dug one foot into the wall after the other, carefully walking my hands down the rope to maintain the right amount of normal force as I rappelled. Once the rope properly bit into the top of the block of moist sand, I picked up the pace, and before long I was standing in the shallow water of the moat.

“I can’t believe that worked, you came up with that on the spot?”

Raaf grinned sheepishly. “Well… I spent a lot of time imagining daring escapes when I was cooped up in the tavern, I wasn’t sure if it would go well, but it seemed like it was worth a try..?”

“I’m glad you thought to try it. It wouldn’t have been fun to fall that far, even if it would’ve been a relatively soft landing.” I turned to look back at the castle, taking one last look at my handiwork. “We should probably get rid of it, right?”

“We can’t, can we? We’ve already risked being caught, someone will see if you change it again.”

“Not necessarily. All I have to do is avoid the top, right?”

From the edge of the moat, I fanned out to fill the sand that made up the moat and the foundation, but didn’t push any higher. I took a deep breath and did my best to relax, and like before, the sand gave way like a liquid, allowing the castle to sink. As it fell, I assimilated it into the ground, and by the time I withdrew, the castle was gone without a trace.

(Author’s note: Writing dialogue (especially emotional conflict) is one of the areas where I’m least confident, and I’m still not satisfied with this chapter, but pushing through my perfectionism is the whole point of this project, so I’m going to call it good for now. To make things worse, I’ve gotten into some academic trouble and my personal life has been very turbulent, so I haven’t been able to dedicate nearly as much time to this as I would have liked. Hopefully next chapter will come a little easier? See you then, in any case.)