#woth

Trinne flinched, barking her knuckles on the rail as she spun around. "Simone?!"

Her older sister grinned, arms crossed as she leaned against the doorframe, glint of gold and amethyst on her finger. "Miss me, sprout?"

Trinne rolled her eyes. "Told you not to call me that. An' you've barely been gone two months, that's not enough time to miss you."

(Yes, it was.)

"Ow." Simone was still grinning, despite the complaint. "Maybe you missed me a little?"

"Maybe a little," Trinne said, faux-grudging and shaking out her sore knuckles as she crossed to hug her sister. "Did you have a good honeymoon? See anything cool? Most important" --she smiled winningly, arms around Simone's waist-- "did you bring me anything?"

Simone rolled her eyes and laughed. "Funny, that was Vera's chief interest, too. But she's six. Little more understandable than when you're fourteen," she teased, mussing Trinne's hair.

Trinne yelped and ducked back. "Hey, I had other questions, too! It's not the only thing I care about."

"Well, then, in order: yes, I had a good honeymoon, and I don't think you want me to elaborate further, we did see several cool things, but I'd rather tell everyone at the same time. And..." she held out a small velvet pouch that had been curled in her hand until now, "we did get you something."

"Ooo!" Trinne just managed to not snatch the pouch in her excitement, loosening the drawstring to empty the contents, a necklace, into her palm. "It's so pretty!"

The pendent was a dark bluish-grey pebble, flat and polished glass-smooth, almost twice the size of her thumbnail. A delicate silver setting had been carefully mounted on one end to connect it to the chain.

"One of the islands we visited has tidal pools around most of the coast. The ocean coming in and out but being somewhat calmed by the pools wears all the rocks extremely smooth," Simone explained. "And because of the pools, the smaller ones don't always gets washed back out. The locals make them into jewelry. I thought you'd like that, since you enjoy traveling as much as I do."

"I love it, thank you!" Trinne effused, slipping on the necklace. She rubbed the pendent between her fingers, marveling at the silky smoothness, the thready white line that crawled through the center.

"You're welcome. It's supposedly lucky, too," Simone winked. "Safe travels and smooth sailing. Guess you'll have to convince Da to take you on one of his trips to test it out."

She grinned back. "Guess I will. So, how long're you visiting?"

"Rest of the day while our ship resupplies," Simone said, teasing glint in her eyes. "Might spend the night if my little sister doesn't have designs on my bedroom."

"Hey, you can watch the Wittens' peacocks from your balcony," Trinne defended, her neck warming. You caught me.

"You can also hear them from here," Simone deadpanned. "You want to deal with that racket in the barely-tolerable hours of the morning, you can tell Mum and Da to switch our rooms. You have my blessing, sprout."

Trinne bit down the instinctive protest of the nickname and hugged her sister again. "You're the best, Sim. Now," she let go and grabbed Simone's hand to start dragging her out of the room. "I wanna hear about where you went and what you saw, let's get everyone together!"