#fesecretsanta2014

Tharja was fairly well acquainted with the summer sky, and with its sun, most of all; Being a native of Plegia made her used to all the associated heat, but the sand that her feet now touched was quite different from that which filled the desolate deserts of her homeland.

“Ugh…” was her first comment upon finally arriving at the beach, after days of travel - Truth be told, that was her first comment to a lot of things, though this trait was just one aspect of her person.

“Rest easy, my dear. I will look after Noire while you recover from the trip,” Libra noted, watching his wife lay motionless on the towel they’d set up above the sand.

The dark mage mumbled a few words that her husband took to be synonyms to a thank you, but her tone was far too slurred by tiredness for him to completely make out.

“Hey, you’re finally waking up!” Libra smiled as he held their two year old daughter in his arms. His voice was calm but cheery, the tone he always seemed to use, but it was specially effective with Noire, even more so when she was waking up.

Blinking repeatedly as her eyes adjusted to the strong sun of the coast, Noire buried her little face - still puffy from sleep - in her father’s chest, causing him to giggle while stroking her fine blond hair, that looked so much like his already, though much shorter.

Tharja let a smile greet her lips as she watched the scene from her place of comfort, before nuzzling the rich and smooth fabric of their towel, which Libra had made himself. A very skillful man, her husband was.

“Aww, Noire, dear… I am very sorry, but we do need to apply some lotion to your skin…” the war monk explained, or tried to, as he ran around trying to catch his little daughter, who fiercely evaded his efforts thus far. “You won’t like it when you have sunburns. I assure you, child,” he noted, placing his hands on his knees as he caught his breath.

“Let me,” his wife whispered as she turned around to lie on her back, before murmuring some incantations, causing the very ambient around them to darken, if only slightly.

“What was that, pray tell?” Libra inquired, his brow furrowing as he watched their little treasure sit and play with the thin sand between her fingers.

 “A sun-blocking hex,” Tharja curtly explained, letting out a yawn and adjusting her raven-black locks out of her face.

“That seems mighty handy… but is it safe for children?” the priestly man asked, sitting in the shade of a tall tree, just a few feet away from his wife.

“It is perfectly fine,” she exclaimed, neither fully confirming it nor branding it as bad. “It’s the same one I’ve used all my life.”

“Huh,” Libra muttered, carefully watching Noire at play. “Would this hex be the reason why your skin is so fair, Tharja?”

 “Why do you ask?” the woman wondered, turning to face her husband, after making sure the placement of her bikini covered the right places again.

“Er, you have told me you lived in Plegia all your life, so I’ve always wondered how come your skin was so pale. Not that it is a problem to be pale of skin, mind you,” Libra detailed, carefully measuring his words.

“I don’t know what your holy scriptures of Naga have been telling you, but us Plegians come in all shapes, sizes and skin tones,” she explained, a sly smile upon her lips.

“I suppose so,” Libra nodded, leaning his back on the tree and letting out a yawn, contagiously received from his wife, no doubt.

“I am pulling your leg… I’ve been using hexes to preserve this very light tone, else the sun of Plegia would have given me a tan for life,” the dark mage said, after a tiny giggle at her gullible husband’s expense.

“Oh you…” Libra gave her a smile, which she reciprocated before becoming unreasonably flustered and needed to look away from him for a second.

It was his darkness that pulled her to him, yet it was his light that kept her with him.

“Is something wrong?” the religious man asked, while fixing his long hair in a ponytail, to stifle the heat.

“Oh, don’t concern yourself with it,” the dark mage lied through her teeth, trying to avoid drawing attention to herself. “Ah, well… if you could do me a favor and slather my back with lotion, that would be nice.”

Libra almost questioned why she didn’t just use the same spell she’d used for their daughters, but he figured it’d be unwise to so casually cross the fearsome woman, no matter how much he loved her.

The need for her husband to actually perform the deed rather than just using magic herself, was, of course, completely deliberate on Tharja’s part.

She untied the back of her beachwear and let out a sigh, while waiting for Libra to pick up the product - which they had gotten from Anna (or one of her sisters, they were not sure) once the trickster girl learned they would be visiting the coast.

Libra wasted no time in helping with his love’s predicament, though she would have preferred if he had, but the feeling and the attention were still enjoyable, making her practically purr as her husband massaged her sore back while simultaneously spreading the lotion.

Tharja watched her baby girl play with a stick near the water’s edge, absentmindedly doodling on the sand and having the sea erase her efforts, only for Noire to draw again and again, intent on somehow beating nature’s whim.