 1469/2649 WORDS 4540/6000 TOTAL @Dela@Vera Walden THEME SONG I have seen war, famine; witnessed the genocide. Have seen the changes in human nature and history, and I am still here, standing alone. Til the end, I will be there too. To witness the endless carnage, to live this harsh reality. Cause I have been cursed, Cursed with immortality. | It was simply mesmerizing to see how good Dela was at this game. Granted, she held quite the advantage over everyone due to how tiny she was in stature, but size wasn’t everything in a game like this. He and Vera could only watch in awe -- and thirst, on Vera’s part -- as the blonde passed under the bar time and time again, making it look so easy with each pass, no matter how far back she had to bend.
Between all the cheering, Vera’s voice pulled his attention away for a brief moment as she asked to have a discussion with him. Apparently, she was still stuck on the topic of his self perceived beer belly. The violet haired woman reached out and pressed her palm against the offending organ, informing him in no uncertain words that he did not, in fact, have a beer belly. According to her, the flesh above his stomach was pure muscle. As if to accentuate that fact, she tried to pinch him, barely able to find purchase among his washboards. Yet just like every other person in existence that was irrationally self conscious about their image, the tall man could only return his own hand to his stomach with an uncomfortable shift of his feet, his crimson eyes cast askance.
Yet as he opened his mouth to speak in protest to her comments, the moment was soundly interrupted by Dela’s resounding victory. Cillian turned his attention back and hollered his enthusiasm for her as she approached, giving him a solid smack on his ass and Vera a kiss on the cheek. The necromancer grinned wide, unbothered by the gesture. “Yeah, man. That was nuts! I’ve never seen anybody actually get that low before! I honestly didn’t think people could do that. Always thought it was one of those impossible games that people do cause it’s fun but no one actually expects to be that good at. Unreal!” He was absolutely beaming with how much fun he’d had watching her show off her mastery of the sport, even at his own expense given how poorly he’d done by comparison.
But they were once again between activities, and Cillian was not often a person who stood still for very long. With the attention span of a squirrel with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, he was a man that liked to keep himself busy. So once they were done congratulating their lithe, bendy friend, Cillan would, with the most genuine and child like of grins, wrap an arm around each woman’s waist and hug them against him as he walked. “Alright, let’s see what else they got going on around here!” Boy, was there a lot. Volleyball, fishing, horse shoes, surfing… Cillian honestly loved the beach.
It did not take long for them to stumble across a sand castle building contest, and he was immediately locked on to the competition. “Oh hell yes! I’m so fucking good at building sand castles!” He quickly signed up and cracked his knuckles. “Alright, ladies! Prepare to be amazed!” Bouncing on his toes, he let himself be lead to his station by one of the attendants, where a somewhat large square had been sectioned off as a reserved space of sand for the competition. In the center of the station was everything he would need to participate, including buckets, shovels, and other various tools.
He began by digging a small pit just outside of the station and filling it with several buckets worth of sea water. The key ingredient to any sand castle, besides the sand of course, was having enough water to make sure the sand would actually adhere to itself and keep its shape. With plenty of water on hand, he got to work building the base of his castle, pouring a healthy amount of water right in the center of the station, where he had put the excess sand that he’d dug from the pit. Once the area was plenty saturated, he began to pat and mould the dirt into a large hexagonal shape, making sure all the air was patted out so the base was as tightly packed and secure as possible.
When that was done, he added another, smaller layer on top, and then a third and a forth, with each layer getting smaller than the last until he had what would closely resemble a tiered cake. After he had the basic shape he was going for, Cillian began to expand on the design. Utilizing one of the spatulas he had been provided with, he started carving sections of the tiers out where he did not want the shape to be fully hexagonal, and also began smoothing down all the surfaces. With that out of the way, he selected a couple of the basic plastic moulds that had been provided and packed them in with as much sand as they could hold, saturating them with water and making sure they were the right consistency to hold shape before he began setting them around the structure. With these moulds he started erecting the basic shapes for towers and buildings around the base of his creation until it started taking on a more castle-like appearance.
But he wasn’t done there, oh no. It wasn’t enough to him to use prefabricated tools to get the general shapes. Like any master cook, Cillian required detail, and while building a sand castle wasn’t exactly the same as cooking and baking, there were many principles of it that were similar. Selecting a smaller knife like tool, he began meticulously carving all around the structure, starting with the top and working his way down. He added three dimensional details to really make each individual portion of the castle pop, adding shingle appearances to roofs, and carving little bricks into the walls, and stair cases leading from each level to another. There were doors, windows, gates, parapets… even around the outside of the base, he carved and sculpted the ground so that the castle wasn’t just sitting on the beach but appeared to be set upon a series of rocks that had been worn over the years by the ebb and flow of the ocean tides.
By the time he was done, his castle was quite the masterpiece. Many people walking by had stopped to admire it and even the judges would stop and silently take notes with a little nod before continuing their rounds of observation. Standing back to admire his creation, Cillian dusted off his hands and just smiled at it. “Now that’s a sand castle!” Turning to his female companions with a giddy expression, the man asked, “What do you think? Not bad for a disgraced prince, right?”
And that was when everything changed. As he took a step to go alert the attendants that he was done, a slight tremor was felt beneath the ground. “What the..” Cillian frowned, putting both feet on the ground and trying to feel for the source of the vibration, which seemed to be drawing closer and closer, like something was digging its way up from the ground toward the surface right beneath them. It was concerning, yet something about its presence felt familiar…
By the time it dawned on him, it was far too late. His eyes went wide in horror as his castle burst apart in a violent spray of muddied sand, and in its center was none other than Virgo. “MASTER!” she exclaimed, her face writ with excitement, completely ignorant of the damage she had just done. “Look what I found!” The zodiac spirit was holding up a fully intact sand dollar like she had just discovered a lost chest of gold from a sunken pirate ship. Speechless, Cillian dropped to his knees in shock and defeat. All that effort had been wasted! Tilting his head back, he groaned his lamentations to the open sky.
“Oh man, that is super unfortunate..”
One of the judges had come by on his rounds again to bear witness to the carnage. The look of disappointment on his face was strong, as he had been enjoying the sculpture. Giving Cillian a look of pity, he did his best to help. “There’s still time to rebuild it if you want… It will be a little tight. You may not have enough wiggle room to meet the same detail, but you could get it done…”
The necromancer shook his head. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass. It just wouldn’t be the same.”
The judge nodded. “I understand.” Offering Cillian one of the many leis hooked around his arm as a consolation, he wandered off to go back to his duties. Cillian sighed and set the lei over his head where it hung around his neck with the other two he had received earlier.
“Well, that sucks…” |
