#oslen

“You made it!”

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” I said, setting down my bag beside hers. “You even brought the old beach towels.”

“I dug them out of my mum’s attic,” she laughed. “They still smell like childhood.”

We laid them out under the shade of a half-tilted umbrella and kicked off our sandals. It didn’t take long before we were in the water, shrieking like kids again as we splashed each other and dove under the waves. The cool sea tugged at us gently, and for a moment, I forgot we were grown-ups with deadlines and real-world worries.

When we finally trudged out of the surf, hair dripping and cheeks aching from smiling too much, Elizabeth turned to me with a glint in her eye.

“Do you remember The Sandcastle Pact?”

I laughed. “How could I forget? Rule one: no grown-up ideas. Rule two: no peeking at the other person’s castle until time’s up.”

“And rule three…” she said, dramatically placing her hand over her heart, “The castle with the best moat wins eternal bragging rights.”

“Exactly,” I grinned. “Are we doing this?”

“Oh, we’re doing this.”

We dropped to our knees in the sand, grabbing at handfuls like we were eight again. For the next hour, we worked in mostly-silent concentration, only occasionally breaking into laughter when a wall collapsed or a crab scuttled a little too close. I felt the sun on my back, the grit under my nails, and the kind of pure contentment that only comes from being with someone who’s known every version of you.

When time was up, we revealed our creations. Hers had turrets made from upturned buckets, little shell flags, and a moat so deep.

Mine was crooked but charming, with a winding seaweed path leading to a central tower shaped like a cupcake a nod to the time we’d tried (and failed) to open a beachside “castle bakery” for passing strangers.

We declared it a draw.

“I forgot how much fun this was,” she said, flopping onto her towel beside me.

“Me too. I didn’t realise how much I missed it… missed you.”

She turned her head to look at me, her expression soft. “I’ve missed you too. Life just got busy.”

“It always does.”

We lay there for a while, listening to the waves and the distant cry of gulls, letting the quiet fill in all the things we didn’t need to say out loud.

“I’m really glad we did this,” I murmured eventually.

“Me too,” she said. “Let’s not wait another ten years before the next sandcastle battle.”

“Deal.”

She reached out, her pinky hooking around mine just like we used to do when we were little. No words, just that small, binding promise.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting everything in gold. And in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about work, or time, or how rare days like this were. I was just a girl on the beach with her best friend, heart full, toes sandy, and a castle proudly crumbling beside us.

Some parts of growing up are hard. But some, like this they’re magic.

Then, it's leaving the basket in the communal kitchen.

He grabs a few eggs cooked and chilled in their shell, stuffing them in a bag alongside dried mushrooms and sea oat cakes. 

The cooks give him smiles and nods, showing respect to Taia's masked lieutenant and hand him a bottle of berry wine, sweet and bitter for his lunch. 

He leaves, wishing not for the first time for the ability to get drunk, and pulls the mask from his face as soon as he is far enough away from people he doesn't risk anyone seeing him.

The mask dangles by the bag on his hip as he makes his way into the forest. His fingers trail over the ferns and he can feel them reaching towards him, their soft fronds wrapping around his fingers. They don't spring back like they should either, instead they linger in his wake like something still tethers them to him.

It's easy to get lost once he leaves the path, easy to get lost in his thoughts as the spring moss turns to the crunch of snow.

For a moment his breath hangs in the air and the world around him is silent. Between the trunks of barren trees a white stag stares at him. Ice covers its fur and the antlers growing from its head branch out like a forest of their own. The eyes are bright, glowing silver like the moon.

A tree crosses his vision as he steps, blocking the deer from his sight. And where the deer should appear on the other side, instead stands a man wearing brown fur and frost-coated antlers tattooed onto the skin of his forehead. His eyes are bright, the color of icicles under the full moon.

And then as soon as winter arrived, it is summer with the color of fall. The leaves turn red and orange, the wood blackened by fire and drought. A man walks forward, dressed for the warm nights of the tropics in a gauzy cloth of sunsets and molten sunlight. His curly hair is pulled back in a messy braid, strands falling down over eyes still mostly closed from sleep. He reaches out, grabbing the other man and whispering for him to come back to bed, and then he is gone.

Winter remains. And the man who was a deer continues to stare at Roon.

Roon stares back.

The man holds his gaze for just a moment, and then he turns away and steps behind a tree, disappearing before he reaches the other side.

Roon doesn't bother shaking his head to clear it or blink the illusions from his eyes. He had grown up along the southern Northern Coast and knows the tales of the spirits well enough to know them by sight.

And he knows the magic of the shadows to know this is real.

"Niit Skaala?" he calls and hopes the spirit is listening.

There is plenty of life around him, but nothing that indicates the presence of the death spirit. The butterflies are white and black, yellow and white, flecks of snow and sunlight with no dusky moonlight in sight.