LOLs @ Beach

Charlie walked onto the somewhat crowded beach, bag in hand and daemon on her shoulder. They both looked around at all the clio, trying not to look behind them at Wesley Lucas, Charlie's newly hired bodyguard (one had recently gotten fired for losing Charlie on Theodore Lane). He was a nice guy, and fortunately was letting them go off on their own without him standing over her shoulder the whole time. He said he was just going to be at the bar.

They found a good spot, one close to the water but with enough dry sand around to play a little. She set her bag down, getting her towel out of it. She took one end and Mae jumped from her shoulder to grab the other end with her beak. They laid the towel down on the sand nicely and Mae hopped onto the sand to pick at some crumbs.

"I don't know how sanitary that is, Mae," Charlie said as she slipped off her tank top to reveal her orange bikini top, which matched the orange bow in her hair. She took off her pants, showing her orange short-short bottoms as well. She put her clothes into her bag and sat down on her towel, looking around at the clio again.

"It's fine," Mae replied, walking around the towel and bobbing her head down at the sand. "And free."

"Ra?" Aven looked around himself, sitting cross-legged in the sand in the sun. His daemon had disappeared again and Aven didn't know where he could be. "Raaaa?"

The tiny daemon poked his head up out of the hot sand and seemed to grin at Aven apologetically. "Sorry..." he purred. Aven shrugged, yawning with his daemon and stretching his arms above his head. He shook sand from his reddish locks and examined the slight burn on his shoulders. He wore torn jean shorts, no shoes or shirt. Just his jeans. He noticed other clio joining him in the sun, but unless he felt up to it in a few moments, he was not going to talk.

Charlie got easily bored by just looking around at the clio around the beach, and thought of a way to entertain herself. She crossed her legs and leaned over them, reaching the sand with her fingers. She stuck her entire hand into the sand and brought it back out quickly, wet sand falling between her fingertips. A smile grew on her face as she stuck both hands under the sand. She moved her hands apart slowly, the top layer of dry sand moving with her hands.

"There we go, now we have something to work with," Charlie said to Mae, who hopped over to watch her. She started moving her hands this way and that, and whenever she did it something new arose from the flat wet sand and added to the three-dimensional castle she was building. Before she was done, three obnoxious clio ran by her, the last one stepping right on the castle.

"Aww mann," she said, frowning at the fallen castle. Sure she could do it again in a second, but it was unique. She sighed and noticed that the three clio who had destroyed her castle had also kicked sand onto the clio closeby, a guy with just shorts on and a squirrel of some sort for a daemon.

"Ohmigosh," Charlie said to him, "I'm sorry!" She knew it wasn't her fault exactly, but if she hadn't started to make the castle, the clio wouldn't have kicked it at him...

Aven squealed and brushed the sand from his face. He looked at the clio next to him, and shrugged. "We're on a beach," he grinned, flicking some sand from Ra's ear tufts and laughing a little at his upset expression. "It's okay."

Aven looked a little closer at the other girl and tilted his head. "What happened?"

Charlie smiled in relief when she saw that he wasn't angry. The clio probably didn't even notice that they crushed Charlie's dream castle. Any leftover sand on the guy's towel was removed by Charlie, who moved it back with the rest of the sand.

"Well," she started, and Mae popped her head out of the sand she had been covered in. The bird flew onto Charlie's shoulders and ruffled her feathers to get out the excess sand. "I was making this wonderful castle...and the clio over there just ran right by and smashed it."

She frowned for a second, thinking of how rude those clio were, but then she thought about it, and she probably would've done the same, though she would have been more careful than they were. She looked over and saw them splashing in the water...at least thye were having a good time.

Aven smiled sympathetically at her. "Do you want help making a new one?" Ra scurried right next to Aven and perched on his led. "Because I..." he proclaimed proudly, "am an avid sandcastle builder." He grinned down at Ra who was flicking his tail over Aven's skin.

Aven really had nothing else to do and had just woken fron his nap on the beach that had unfortunately ended in sunburn, so he figured that the sun had already done it's worst and he had nothing to lose staying out in the harsh rays. "Only if you want help that is," he nodded, flipping his hair from his eyes.

Charlie laughed a bit and nodded, "Sure, I'd love some help."

'What are you talking about? You don't need help,' Mae said. 'You're from Adhbhar.'

'Maybe I'll do it traditionally this time,' Charlie said. 'It might be fun. Plus, I have someone here with me. I don't wanna turn down their offer.'

'I guess it could be fun,' Mae admitted.

"My name is Charlotte, by the way," Charlie said, putting her hand out for the guy to shake. "You can call me Charlie. And this is my daemon, Mae."

"We're pleased to meet you," Mae said with a nod.

"Okay!" Aven went to stand and Ra scampered off his leg, prancing behind in Aven's footsteps in the sand.

'Aven, I'm hot.' Ra complained in Aven's head.
'It's not that bad, Ra, chill out.' Aven replied.
'Easy for you to say. You're the one without fur, remember?'
'No, I seem to have forgotten,' Aven teased with a smile.

"I'm Aven, and that's Ra." Aven pointed at his daemon who sat in a little pool of water in one of Aven's footprints with a sulky expression on his face. "The pleasure's all ours. Or at least it's all mine"

Charlie nodded, "Well it's very nice to meet both of you," she said again. She looked down at the blob of sand that she was forming in her hands and was a little sad that she was this helpless without her Eilemaiden.

'It's just a sand castle,' Mae said.

'I know, but still. What would I do without my Eilemaiden?'

'...not make sand castles?'

'Shuddap,' Charlie said with a laugh. She looked back up to Aven and started wondering which Eilemaiden he belonged to.

"So tell me something about yourself," she said, looking back down at the blob-castle.

"Uh." Aven scratched his head, getting sand in his hair. "I'm seventeen, and I just moved out of my parents' place. I just kind of kick it with Ra. Ra tends to go where he wants and I just follow. "

'I think she's asking what Eilemaiden you're from, smarts.' Ra laughed in Aven's head.
'Oh.'

"I'm from Solas." he said, taking a bunch of sand from around Charlie's knees and patting it into a large lump by his knees. "My brother taught me everything I know." he grinned proudly, forming another lump next to the original one.

Charlie smiled when he mentioned that his brother taught him everything he knew.

"I'm from Adhbhar," she said, figuring that there would be no way that he would recognize her as the Overloridian. "My brothers taught me all that I know, too." She was glad they had something in common.

"I'm sixteen and I love playing sports and meeting new people." She smiled up at Aven again to show her interest in new people. It was so strange to her that people fought all the time and hated other Eilemaiden, and yet she'd enjoyed the company of practically every person she'd met who wasn't Adhbhar.

'That's just how it works now,' Mae said.

'Guess so.'

"Oh!" Aven grinned, "Okay. So that's why you're not so great at this sandcastle thing," he teased, holding up his hands to prove his insincerity in the matter. "Kidding. You must have had awesome brothers. Mine was pretty cool, but he was a little hotheaded."

'You sure have a way with the ladies,' Ra mused in Aven's ears. 'Making fun of them always makes them like you more.
'Shut up, Ra!' Aven laughed.

"I used to play some sort of sport. I'm really not that sports inclined at all." Aven confessed, "I also love to meet new people. I, personally, don't understand why we all fight all the time. I'm really not the type to argue. I always thought it was stupid."

Charlie laughed, "I was trying something new and traditional, thank you very much." She smiled at him and listened. She was glad she found someone at the beach to hang out with and talk to, someone who didn't seem to talk about how awesome their Eilemaiden was. She liked to think about the person, not their Eilemaiden...which was probably the problem with the guy she liked. Stupid world.

"Yeah, my brothers were really cool, even though they were a little rough sometimes," she shrugged. "That's what having five of them will do to you," she said with a laugh. "And yeah, I'm not sure why we argue much either...I don't really find much point in it, since we've been going at it for who knows how long and no one's succeeded yet. We're all pretty equal, I'd say. We're just all taught that our Eilemaiden is the best."

"Whatever." Aven laughed. "You're joining the commonfolk."

He slopped another pile of sand on top of the other lumps, "Five? Wow. I only had one and he gave me as much hell as he did help. I can only imagine multipling that by five." he sat back and rubbed his arms. "I totally think we're equal. There's a set of checks and balances obviously in place or else we'd all be dead." He rubbed his nose and glanced at Ra who seemed to have forgotten his anger and moved on to playing with the water that circled around his body. "They have to teach us that so we have a sense of drive to beat the others up, I guess."

"Well, I learned something different from each one of them, so I guess that's a plus to having five," Charlie said, adding more sand to the blob in front of her. She nodded as she listened to him talk, and he was right. He made so much sense. A big smile crossed her face.

"I had never thought of it that way, with checks and balances, but it makes so much sense!" she said with a laugh of...happiness. A happy laugh. (xD) "I'm glad someone seems to understand."

Mae flew off of her shoulder and over to where Ra was, and she hopped around in the water to play with him. Charlie saw this and looked to her castle.

"These are some good sandcastles," she said with a smirk.

"That's true," he nodded, "Lior was really eager to teach me everything, though, so it worked to his benefit that we were the only two."

Aven watched her smile and it made him smile. He loved making people happy. It was one of his great joys in life. "Well, I have a lot of time to think. It might seem like I don't do that much thinking, but you'd have to if you lived where I did. Finally I got out into the world around me." He smiled. In truth, the place he lived wasn't as boring as he makes it out to be, but Aven bores quickly of monotonus places like his house. "They, whoever's out there controlling us all, all the different clio in all the different Eilemaiden, have to keep us in check before one gets too powerful and destroys all the rest of us." (It's okay, sometimes you can't think of any other words to describe an emotion. Especially happiness. It's all been done before. =])

Aven glanced at the other's daemon go to his. He was thankful Ra had a distraction so he could talk without him telling him what a doofus he was. "They sure are." He laughed. He reached down and wrote in big, sloppy letters, 'A-V-E-N'. "You sign your name too, so everyone knows how sweet we are at making sand castles."

Charlie nodded along with everything he said, glad that she had met him. As he signed his name, she signed her own, making it wavy and fun. "C-H-A-R-L-I-E. There we go. And M-A-E, for Mae." She giggled a little and started drawing herself, as a stick figure of course, and Mae, as a...blob. "Whatta nice blob," she said under her breath, thinking it resembled Mae at least a little bit...tiny bit.

"I'm having a lot of fun with you, Aven," she said, looking from the sand to him. She was glad to have a new bodyguard that let her have fun in the first place. He was somewhere over by the bar, probably making small talk with the bartender. She liked him so far, though. And she liked Aven so far, too.

Aven peeked over her shoulder to see the pictures she was drawing. "That's you and Mae," he said, reaching down and making a crude drawing of himself and Ra next to her. "And that's me and Ra." He laughed. Then he wrote the name 'Ra' next to his own.

"Aw," Aven flushed, "I'm having fun with you too!" Ra skittered up next to Aven in the sand and nodded for emphasis. "I'm really glad we aren't fighting. It totally destroys everything. You're one of the nicest people I've ever met," He said, grinning happily.

Charlie giggled. "Cute picture! It looks just like the two of you," she said, and nodded in response to what he said next. "Oh, I know! So many people fight all the time, I'm glad I met someone who doesn't want to." Then it was her turn to flush when he said she was one of the nicest people he'd ever met. She always tried to be nice.

"Awww, thanks! Same to you!" She suddenly fell back onto the sand, smiling and looking up at the sky. "I sure do love the beach."

Aven laughed, "You're just bein' nice. But thanks anyways." He ignored Ra snickering in his ear. "You're welcome. It's true! It's not that often you meet nice people around here," he watched her flop in the sand, and he sat back on his knees, relaxing his shoulders and examining his sunburn again. "As you can tell I don't make it out to the beach that often, but something told me to come out today, so I did."