You Asked For It: The Beach Trip

[magicademymods]

Be Careful What You Wish For: A Beach Adventure Crowded Quarters To the joy and delight of the Sundered students who feel joy and delight over going to the beach, the Sundered students get to go to the beach in celebration of their completed midterms! Professor Trammel has graciously paid their way on the local airship, which runs regular routes on summer days to the ocean some 45 minutes away, and so every student who so desires can pack up and head onto it to enjoy a fantastic day of fun and adventure! Slight downside: the airship is small and packed, as it keeps its fees low by relying on volume to turn a profit. The crowded travel compartment is standing-room-only, and even those who are lucky enough to get seats won't find themselves with much shoulder room. Some people may even find themselves in the lap of a fellow student, which only the most cynical and bitter of minds would abuse as a way to ship-tease (right?). The trip isn't long, just hot and stuffy. You can make it, students! Wave Your Hands If You're Shore The beach at last! Though the hot sun beats down from above, a gentle breeze blows in from the ocean and the water itself is delightfully cool without being icy cold. Waves run about five to six feet in height, enough to be forceful without dominating like some giant curl suitable only for surfing. Though scores of people have set up tents, umbrellas, blankets, and towels across the sands, the Diatu contingent has plenty of space to conjure up tables and chairs, an awning and plenty of shade. Professor Trammel politely deploys Spells of Sunscreening, as well as directing students to the swimwear the school has obtained and the screened canvas changing areas where they can don them. Helpfully, he's obtained all manner of suits to fit any taste, so... choose wisely? Baskets of sandwiches and drinks kept magically chilled offer sustenance for the busy swimmers, and all manner of balls, nets, and beach toys to enjoy. The Sand Castle Contest Early in the afternoon, Professor Trammel announces that a sand castle contest is open to all participants! The rules are as follows: 1. Headmaster Birony is forbidden from competing. (At this, Headmaster Birony sulkily turns Makerion Keep back into stone and sends it back to the Magicademy Campus. Ka students will be finding sand in odd places for a while.) 2. Students may work in teams of no more than 2. 3. You will have an hour to work with any of the sand-castle tools available. 4. Judging will be on creativity, quality, and durability. 5. 'Bedmaster Hirony' is forbidden from competing. (Headmaster Birony rips her fake mustache off and throws it to the ground in frustration.) You have a few minutes to form pairs and get ready. Who will win the competition? Teachers' Day Off Some of the Professors, too, have taken the day off! Students are treated to the sight of Professor Trammel digging a hole in the surf so his own knocked-together sand structure goes up against the waves, leaving him to improve its walls and channels each time to make for a better hope of surviving. Professor King is teaching anyone who will listen about a new game she calls Sunder-inlota, which involved lobbing a ball through portals to get it into the other team's goal. Headmaster Birony occupies herself doing a Sorcerer's Apprentice thing with the waves, making them smash and crash against each other with glee, while Professors Porfsin and Trent fail to put campus politics aside and both spend the day trying to attract an audience with their own personal performances. And Professor Kith just... swims and enjoys herself, like a normal human being, which is probably in violation of the Adequate Wackiness In Teaching Staff Proclamation, but no one seems inclined to call her on it. Fire in the Sky As darkness falls over the beach, swimming comes to an end as the gathered people move to get home, their day off done. The Magicademy, however, still has some tricks up its organizational sleeve. With fires conjured along the sands, the Professors take turns cooking -- simple fare like sausages and hamburger patties, that even the less adept among them (coughCamBironycough) can't screw up. And as the last vestiges of sunlight vanish behind the horizon and the beach and ocean are both swept in darkness, Professor Trammel pulls off his final flourish: a Discovery of beautiful lights exploding in the sky, a mixture between fireworks and aurora borealis that paints the night in glory. All in all, not a bad day.

Comments

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Well, I wasn't going for a ducking, but that's what I did," Isabel admitted with a shrug.

"So, are you enjoying yourself?" He sure seemed like it so far, which was a welcome change...

[mithrarin]

"More or less. Not fond of the swimsuits." Since they really reminded him of just how far from home he was, the only Warmblood representative here.

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"You look just fine, though. And borrowing one of those is better than wading around in soaked silks. Saltwater will ruin them, anyway..." At the very least, they wouldn't be the same, if that was what Dust had chosen to swim in.

"Although I guess it's sort of icky to see so much pasty skin, when you're used to seeing fur folk," Isabel mused idly. "I kind of wonder sometimes what I'd look like if I was a Warmblood, and not a human."

[mithrarin]

"It's not -- icky." That definitely wasn't the right word. Especially not since that mishap with love-potioned water had left him with a slightly greater appreciation for humans. "It just reminds me that I'm the only one like me around. Not the best feeling."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Yeah, but technically, everyone's like that. No two people--any kind of people--are alike. Even clones are different. You're just the only guy with excess body hair, I guess." The last was definitely meant to be more of a joke. She might joke about it, yeah, but Isabel thought Dust was a perfectly attractive example of his species. Without going into uncomfortable detail.

"I do get what you mean, though, and I'm sorry. It does suck." But at least she'd gotten him to smile and play for a little bit.

[mithrarin]

"Humans actually seem to vary a lot less than Warmbloods do," Dust mused. His own kind had a lot greater variety in any number of things -- ears, size, fur type, more. "That's a little weird too, honestly. I can tell you all apart, but it's kind of like... imagine if everyone you were around was about the same height, same hair color, same basic shape."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"We have different hair and skin and eye colors..." Isabel wasn't sure what he meant by that, but it was probably some sort of difference in perception that she didn't get, because she wasn't a Warmblood.

"That would be weird..." she admitted. "Kind of hard to picture, unless I somehow fell into a room full of Iteration X clones--which I haven't done yet, and it's not really on my list of things to do..."

[mithrarin]

"You do. But you all have about the same shape. Same ears, same noses. Variations on the theme, but..." Dust leaned his head slightly to the side, calling attention to his own ears. "Maybe I'm not explaining it well, but that just goes to show the difference."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"I suppose when you get down to it, we mostly are in the same mold, but there are still things like...color and texture that differ, at least with hair." She hadn't inherited her mother's brilliant burgundy hair color, at least, but her eyes somehow managed to be between her parents', almost exactly.

"I meant humans, not Warmbloods. But still, I mean...oh, never mind, I need to stop babbling!"

That said, Isabel slung a bit more water at him, for the heck of it.

[mithrarin]

"No, I understand what you mean!" Dust said, ducking behind his arm again. "Those are just more subtle than, you know. Fur, at the very least." Which covered everything, after all!

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"I see what you mean, I think. When it covers everything, colors and patterns and so on are a lot more obvious than...I guess, eye color when you look at a human." She'd been about to say 'person', but that would've been a bad error. Dust was a person, he just was a furry person!

"So are you enjoying yourself a little bit, here? I know this is like...way out of what you're used to. Beyond the swimsuits. The sand, the sun..." Getting splashed by a punk teenager.

[mithrarin]

Not an unforgivable error. Dust had learned that some people just didn't expect this sort of thing -- by which he meant, him.

"It's all right. It's not exactly my scene, but that doesn't exist here and the world's a better place for it, so I'm trying to learn something new and enjoy it."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"That's good, then! New experiences!" Even if she wasn't her mother's Tradition, even Isabel could see the benefits of certain aspects of the Ecstatics' viewpoint.

"Do you want to go look for shells or something? Get yourself a souvenir? I mean, since you are enjoying yourself?"

She kind of wanted to look for a few things herself, so...why not ask for company?

[mithrarin]

"Shells as a souvenir?" Dust tilted his head slightly -- there's an idea that hadn't occurred to him. "Something to remember the day would be nice."

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Yeah, I thought so. Why not? So let's find some. Neat ones, hopefully, but you'll find a lot of shards and broken ones, too. That's just the way this goes. Sometimes you can find sea glass, too."

Isabel sounded like she'd done this before. Probably because she had. She was fond of the beach at the bay, even if some weekends she went there was more for 'trash cleanup' than actual fun. Still, she felt that one led to the other, and cleaning up the bay helped a lot more living beings than just herself, so that was a benefit as well.

[mithrarin]

"Sea glass?" Dust imagined literal glass, somehow formed in the sea and washing ashore, and couldn't imagine how that would work.

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Yeah. Bottles get broken--ships go down with them, sometimes people just throw them overboard. When they get broken, the sea and sand tends to buff them into frosted pieces of colored glass. It's really kind of cool. At least where I'm from, white and green and brown tend to be really easy and popular colors, and others are a lot more rare. It might be different here, but I don't really go looking at potion bottles or anything."

She chuckled a little at that. "Though I'm looking for some green pieces that are about the same size. I wanted to make something for a friend."

[mithrarin]

"Huh. The idea of something like that never occurred to me." But it sounded simple enough to find -- look for glass pieces, nothing special or weird that was named glass and was something else entirely.

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

Isabel shrugged at that. There was probably a lot about the world that Dust hadn't thought of before, for any number of reasons. Ones she really didn't want to remind him about.

"You could even find little pieces and just put them in a bottle. Then you could put it in a window and it'd be like a kaleidoscope. Could watch the sun through it or if it was bright enough, make the colors show up on your wall? I don't know."

She knew Dust kind of liked to do things, and having a souvenir he couldn't do something with was kind of out of his sphere of experience, and maybe his comfort zone, even.

[mithrarin]

"That sounds interesting." Though honestly, Dust had already begun thinking of giving them as gifts to others rather than something for himself. Still, either way, why not give it a try? "All right, let's look for some then."