#ayanthos

The sand certainly was different. Greed had played only a few unofficial games of sand volleyball, and realized his attacks were basically useless without the typical give of a finished court. Greed based a lot of his movements off the vibration of that court. He measured his attacks in the force needed to fly off the ground. Sand, though, lended him no such niceties. It made him pay attention to the ball, of all things.

“You gotta take your shoes off, Greedy boy.” Envy tittered from his place beyond the row of rocks he’d set as the court dimensions. He was sloughing his shoes and socks off so fast that you’d think they were suffocating him. “The game’s not the same otherwise.”

Greed glared at him but slipped his shoes off anyway. He thought about leaving his socks on but didn’t want them to fill with sand. And he wasn’t certain that if they did fill with sand he’d ever be able to get it all out. He stuffed his socks up into the toes of his sneakers and stepped onto the “court.” 

His feet sunk to his ankles. Sand, grainy and warm from a day of soaking up the ocean sun, took up residence between his toes. When the wind blew, he heard the tides pulling against the earth, and felt droplets of water and sand hit his face and settle in his hair. It wasn’t long before he tasted the ocean on his lips, bit into the tiny granules of sand as they filtered between his teeth and into his mouth. It was equally unpleasant and pleasant, this sensation. Someone slapped him on the back and broke him from his thoughts. 

“Three-on-three,” Envy grinned. His teeth looked extraordinarily bright in the white morning light.

“How will we have a three-on-three without Pride here? Or, you know, Greedling? There are only four of us.”

“Pride is here, you dunce. You were just too engrossed in yourself to notice.” Envy swung his arm in an arc, and Pride was on the other side of the net. Shorty was doing stretches in the sand, which almost swallowed him halfway up his calves. “And Greedling should be here soon. He turned notifications for the group text off cuz he thinks we’re annoying as all hell, but I texted him a while ago. He said he’d take a leisurely jog out here.”

Greed blinked. A leisurely jog for Greedling from where he lived was, like, twenty minutes on a good day. Maybe today was one of Greedling’s good days, although Greed doubted it. The two of them — Greed and Greedling — were named for their similarities. Despite being a third year and Greedling a first, the two were nearly identical in everything but nationality. That was all right. Greedy as Greed was, he wasn’t too bothered by sharing with others. He liked to think volleyball taught him that. 

Greed did a few warm up laps barefoot along the perimeter of the beach as he waited for everyone to arrive. The sand was unforgiving, but there was something to be said about the wet air and the way it coated his throat, the way it tasted on his tongue. Greedling had arrived midway through Greed’s final lap and they lined up on either side of the net: Pride, Sloth, and Greedling on one side, their backs to the sun, and Greed, Gluttony, and Envy on the other. Without Coach Bradley, they’d have no way of knowing if anything they did was worthwhile during this impromptu bright-as-shit practice. And without Lust they were bound to break out into an argument or twelve, but Greed reasoned that, at the very least, some practice was better than none.

Greedling took the first serve. It flew over the net so fast Greed could hardly follow the ball with his eyes. Without their libero, Pride, he was almost certain the ball was going to slam into the sands and send it spraying up and out in all directions. Instead, Envy caught the serve on his forearms and it flew a few feet into the air. Gluttony, his massive arm swinging out in an equally massive arc, scooped the ball up, up, up. Greed barely knew where it was when he leapt and hit it, instantly feeling the satisfying sting of the ball smacking into his palm. 

It soared past Pride, throwing sand over the rock boundary line. Pride looked to the ball and then to Greed and back again, smirking.