Chapter 94: Watching

{Lily}

It was amazing what learning about your ex-girlfriend’s penis could do for the relationship.

We had dinner together that night, out by the wall where the fires were, and Serena talked more in one hour than she had in the entire month before we left. She has opinions about everything. She has an opinion about the correct order to eat a plate in. I’d forgotten that about her, or I’d decided to forget it, which is probably closer to the truth.

Out past the shallows, somebody was still swimming.

The instructors had packed up and gone in an hour ago, and the flags had been pulled, and there was one person left in the water, going back and forth between where the second marker had been and the sand. Slowly. Very badly. With a great deal of splashing.

Kohaku came up out of the surf, stood there with her hands on her knees for a while, said something to herself, and went straight back in.

[She’s doing laps. Out of spite.]

It was adorable. She was so mad at her earlier results she was trying to become an expert swimmer now.

She turned at the shallow end and looked up the beach, and she saw me looking, and I lifted my hand. She lifted hers back. Then she flopped forward into the water like a dropped coat and started thrashing north again.

She waited. She didn’t say anything about it, she just sat there with her fork down until I turned back around properly, and then she picked the conversation up from exactly where she’d left it, like nothing had happened at all.

"Sorry! Sorry, I’m listening."

"Right. Anyway, and so the tail," Serena said, "is the only part worth eating, which is why they sell the rest to the academy."

---

I woke up on the wrong side of the room the next morning, which is to say Serena’s side, which is to say I have no idea how that keeps happening.

I got out without waking her and went onto the balcony to walk for air.

Down on the sand, Kohaku was stretching.

She had the blue bikini on, the one she’d picked out for herself at the shop and then made an enormous show about, and she was folded over with her hands flat on the ground and her tail up, and the swimsuit was not... managing all of her. Not the way it manages the rest of us. There was a, uh, very clear situation happening in the front of it and she was completely unbothered by this, the way she’s unbothered by everything.

I blushed watching.

[Oh, that’s. Okay.]

Fenna came over the dune with a plate in each hand and said something I couldn’t hear. Kohaku straightened up, looked at the plates, looked at Fenna’s face, and then ran. Just ran, full sprint, down the beach, and Fenna went after her without spilling anything from either plate.

"Don’t stare too hard, now."

Serena was in the doorway behind me with her hair still flat on one side.

"I WASN’T!"

"Mm."

"I was looking at the sea! The sea is right there! It’s an enormous feature!"

---

They put us in pairs on the east beach that afternoon, and I drew Aldric.

He’s polite about it, at least. He always asks whether I’m ready before he starts, and he always waits for me to say yes, which is more than most of the Knight Course boys manage. We went through four exchanges and I won three of them and he took that well, too.

Then, over his shoulder, about forty feet down the sand, Kohaku started teaching Marisol Vantecca how to hold a sword.

I don’t know why. Marisol has never held a sword in her life and has said so, loudly, at dinner. But there they were, and Kohaku had her standing side-on with both hands up, and then she stepped in behind her to correct her grip, which meant putting her arms around her, which meant putting her front against Marisol’s back.

Marisol said something. Kohaku laughed and leaned in closer to say something back, and kissed her on the cheek.

[She’s not even correcting anything anymore. That grip was fine. That grip has been fine for a while now.]

"Everdawn?"

Aldric’s practice blade tapped me in the ribs. He pulled it so hard on the way in that it barely touched me, and I still felt my own guard hanging somewhere down by my hip, which is exactly the thing Serena has spent two days telling me about.

"Ah! Sorry. That one’s mine."

"Are you hurt? I can fetch someone." He’d already lowered his sword and stepped back, and he apologized three more times in about eight seconds, which I think he believes is chivalry.

Instructor Halvard came over and asked whether I’d like to sit the rest of it out.

I said I was fine, and I reset my feet, and I did not tell either of them what I’d been looking at.

---

I got through the rest of the session without embarrassing myself again, and then there was an hour before dinner, and I spent it on the seawall with my legs hanging over the side. Again.

Serena found me there. She sat down without asking, which is a thing she’s started doing again, and she didn’t say anything for a while.

"Your guard dropped," she said eventually.

"I know."

"You know, and yet. You were distracted."

"Yes, thank you for letting me know. I was there."

She scoffed, which was kind of like her equivalent of a laugh, and we watched the water for a bit. The tide was going out. The staff had come down and pulled the marker flags for the day, and two of them were carrying the rowing boat up onto the grass above the sand, and after that the beach was just empty.

"Instructor Halvard gave the speech again at lunch," Serena said. "About the flags. Third time."

"He gave it to me personally. Twice."

"He gave it to me and I can swim better than he can." She shook her head. "People look at water in the daytime and assume it’s the same thing at night." She leaned back on her hands. "It isn’t. The current past the second marker turns after dark and runs east along the headland, and if it has you, you don’t fight your way out of it. You go where it goes."

I looked out at the place where the flags had been.

There was nothing there now. Just green, and then blue, and then the dark band further out, and the light was going.

[I can’t swim.]

Oh, I’m terrified of the water. Properly afraid. The kind where my hands go cold just thinking about it.

I went under twice in eleven feet of water with a vest on, and I know I’m stronger than I look, but it doesn’t help when my head is beneath the surface.

"You’ve gone quiet," Serena said.

"I’m thinking."

"About?"

"... Dinner."

She let me lie, which was kind of her.

Down at the far end of the beach, past where the dunes start, somebody was walking back up toward the facility with a towel around their shoulders and a fox tail sticking out from under it.

Serena saw where I was looking, because of course she did.

"She was out there again," she said. "After they pulled the flags."

"She does that."

"She’s going to drown in nine inches of water, the fool."

"She’s not that bad!"

"She swam toward the wrong flag, Lily."

"She’s IMPROVING." I heard how that came out and corrected my volume. "She practices. Every evening, since the first day. She’s out there when everybody else has gone in, and nobody’s making her do it, and she’s terrible at it, and she keeps going. That counts for something. That’s HEART."

Serena didn’t answer right away.

When I looked over, she was watching Kohaku come up the beach with an expression I couldn’t read at all, and she stayed like that for a second or two longer than she needed to.

"I suppose it counts for something," she agreed.

Then she stood up and brushed the sand off and said dinner was in twenty minutes and that I should eat properly this time instead of talking through it, and she walked off toward the lights without waiting to see if I’d follow.

I stayed on the wall a minute longer.

Kohaku had stopped halfway up the beach to argue with Fenna about something. I could hear her voice but not the words, and then Fenna picked her up off the sand entirely, and the shriek carried the whole way to the seawall, and I laughed out loud on my own like a crazy person.

[Six days is a long time. Eh, I’ll say something before we leave. Not tonight, but before we leave.]

Behind me, the sea kept going out.