[Santo - The Beach]

[walk_ins]

[ master post]You have to walk down a ramp to get to the sand. The ramp stretches over sand dunes, with sea oats dotting them, blowing in the near-constant breeze. On the same level as the ramp: a boardwalk, dotted with places to get sketchy-looking fried food, to try your luck at a number of games of chance, to watch performers, to ride roller

Comments

[still_a_cop]

The sun is bright. It's also a little... off.

Charlie's wearing sunglasses as he's peering up into the sky. He's standing on the boardwalk.

"They'll fry anything these days," he says. Absently.

[simon_doctor]

"I saw a stand back there that was selling fried custard," Simon agrees. "I'm not even sure how that's possible."

[still_a_cop]

"You wanna try it?" Charlie cranes his neck to the left.

[simon_doctor]

"...well, I admit I'm a little curious."

A beat.

"Do you?"

[smallestopener]

Once she sees the water, Ingress runs down the beach, her not!blue hair streaming behind her. The adults can catch up or not.

She hasn't gotten used to all that light brown, but this is too much fun to worry with hair color.

[bad_in_latin]

Tom promised Mal. Promised him twelve million times or so even.

It doesn't matter -- Mal will not ever be one hundred percent convinced that magic does not come off in water.

"Slow down!" Mal calls, knowing it's mostly to no avail.

[young_tmriddle]

"It's no use, Mal. She's off. She's been looking forward to this too much to walk."

He eyes Mal. "I don't know. You might be too old to keep up with her."

[bad_in_latin]

Plaintively: "It's just a beach."

[yankeedoodle_dr]

It's a nice beach.

Hawkeye had paused for a minute when they came into sight of it, and then started walking again as if nothing had happened. It's a little too warm to be too reminiscent of anything; the sand is too white, the coastline not rocky enough. But it's well enough.

He sits down once they've hit the sand, and starts taking his shoes off.

"Yeah, well," he says. One boot off. "I've never been one for the peanut gallery." Other boot gone, he peels off his socks and stuffs them into his boots, and starts rolling up his pant legs. "This looks like a nice place."

[simon_doctor]

"I've never been here before," Simon tells him, putting down the two folding beach chairs and starting to unfold one.

[yankeedoodle_dr]

"What a coincidence," says Hawkeye, burying his feet in the sand for a minute before getting up and brushing himself off. He grins at Simon. "Neither have I."

[simon_doctor]

He chuckles, and sits down -- carefully; these aren't the sturdiest of chairs.

"This isn't usual, really," he says. "Spending a week in drydock, with no job to do planetside. There's plenty of leisure time, but it's all on board the ship."

A look around, and he smiles.

"It makes a nice change."

[ofthatantet]

Having ditched Susannah in a museum, Rose is now as free as any teenager carrying a tracking device can consider herself. (Her mother says it is a communicator, but it has a map that shows the other communicator as a blinking dot. Total tracking device)

The Susannah-dot on Rose's is still perambulating the Flemish History Museum. Rose can take or leave the Flems. What Rose likes is a beach. It helps if you have a bathing suit (although some of the people on the beach are getting by without much), but the boardwalk is cool, too.

The important thing is to look like you belong her; like this isn't interesting at all. Saunter. The worst thing in the world is to look like a tourist.

[river_meimei]

How about looking like a hippie?

River is barefoot in the sand beside the boardwalk, big black boots dangling half-forgotten from one hand; her sundress and long hair flutter about her, and her head is tilted up to the sunlight.

Like a hippie, maybe; also, entirely happy.

[ofthatantet]

Happy hippies get a second look. "Hey."

[river_meimei]

"Exactly," River says cheerfully to the sky, before she turns to look at Rose.

After a moment, her focus sharpens slightly; not much, but enough to turn her attention from the sky to the girl in front of her. "Hi," she adds, a little more seriously.

[river_meimei]

Most of the museums are over in the museum district, some ten klicks away. Still, there are a few attractions scattered around this area -- got to have something for the occasional beach-hating spouse or parent to do, after all -- and one of them happens to be a museum with rotating special exhibits. The current one is Strange Clothing Through The Ages.

It turned out to be aptly named, at least in River and Galadan's opinions, and River is still giggling (possibly at something Galadan's just said, to judge by his ironic expression) as they step into the sunlight.

[wolflord_andain]

"Your desire for roaming, I trust, has been adequately filled?"

There's no hint in his words, just the sardonic amusement that rarely leaves him, even now.

[river_meimei]

"I'm a nomad," River says cheerfully, and even truthfully.

[wolflord_andain]

"I shall hardly quibble with that description."

One corner of his mouth twists.

Galadan is, too. Look where he lives now, for example.