Part Twenty — The List, Item One

　It took the better part of a year before the timing actually lined up — no urgent jobs, no reason to stay put, and Doran, of all people, the one who finally suggested we make good on it.

　"There's a fishing town two weeks west," he said, over breakfast, like it was the most ordinary observation in the world. "Coast runs right along it. Thought you had a list."

　Fenrik nearly choked on his tea. "You remembered that?"

　"I remember most things," Doran said, which from him was practically a confession of sentimentality.

He's been sitting on that for a year. Waiting for the right stretch of nothing to spend it on. Didn't expect that, honestly.

　"West it is, then," I said. "Add it to the itinerary. Such as our itinerary is."

　The two weeks of travel passed easier than most stretches on the road — lighter, somehow, with an actual destination that wasn't work-shaped for once. Fenrik grew steadily more insufferable the closer we got, asking increasingly specific questions about what the ocean would actually be like that neither Doran nor I could answer with any real authority.

　"Is it loud?"

　"I don't know, Fenrik."

　"Does it smell like something specific?"

　"I genuinely do not know."

　"You're both useless."

　"We're aware," Doran said, entirely unbothered.

I don't have the heart to tell him I've technically seen an ocean before, in an entirely different life, on an entirely different world. Feels like it would take something away from this version of the moment. Let him have his first ocean uncomplicated by mine.

　We crested the last hill outside the fishing town on a clear afternoon, and I watched Fenrik's face do something I hadn't seen it do before — not the careful, guarded expression he usually wore around anything unfamiliar, but something open and entirely unselfconscious, jaw actually dropping a little at the sight of water stretching out further than either of us could see the end of.

　"That's—" He stopped. Started again. "That's so much bigger than I thought it'd be."

　"Yeah," I said, quietly pleased, watching him rather than the view. "It usually is."

　He walked straight down to the waterline without waiting for either of us, boots and all, and stood there letting the tide wash over his feet with an expression of pure, uncomplicated wonder that made something in my chest ache in the good way.

　Doran came to stand beside me, watching the same scene with something softer than his usual careful stillness.

　"Worth the wait?" I asked him.

　"Would've been worth it years sooner, if I'd thought to suggest it," he said. "Some things you just don't think to do, until someone else starts a list."

Huh. Didn't expect that to actually mean something to him. Glad it did.

　We spent three days in that town doing absolutely nothing productive, which felt, by that point, like its own kind of luxury. Fenrik ate more shellfish than was probably wise, declared himself in love with the ocean and immediately, deeply betrayed by it when a wave knocked him flat during an ill-advised attempt to wade in deeper. Doran taught me to properly gut and cook a fish, a skill I'd apparently still been missing after all these years of "learning to cook something that wasn't burned." I taught them both a card game from my old life, badly remembered and mostly reinvented, that Fenrik took to with an intensity that suggested I'd created a monster.

　"Again," he demanded, for the fourth time that evening.

　"You've lost every round."

　"I'm learning the mechanics."

　"There are no mechanics. I made half of this up."

　"Then teach me the half you made up better."

I don't think I've laughed this much in years. Not since before the mountain, probably. Maybe not even then.

　Our last night there, the three of us sat on the sand well past dark, the fire small, the ocean loud and constant in a way that felt less like noise and more like something underneath everything else, holding the whole scene together.

　"Item one," Fenrik said, apropos of nothing, staring out at black water under a scatter of unfamiliar stars. "Off the list."

　"Off the list," I agreed.

　"What's item two?"

　"Haven't decided yet. We'll figure it out. We've got time."

I want that to be true so badly it almost hurts, saying it.

　Doran didn't say anything, just watched the water with the same quiet, unguarded stillness he'd worn since we arrived — and for one clean, uncomplicated evening, none of us reached for anything heavier than that.

Whatever's coming, eventually. This was worth having first.